Cassidy Hutchinson claims to have written this book, as well as finding the courage and determination to come out against Trump, after getting to know Alex Butterfield, who had a staff position in the Nixon White House fairly similar to her position on Trump’s staff.
Butterfield, perhaps you are old enough to remember, was the guy who was called as a witness by the Watergate Committee in 1973 and revealed the existence of the taping system which became the story that broke the Nixon Presidency in half.
Nothing that Cassidy said in her testimony before the House Committee in its public hearings on what happened before and during January 6th had anywhere near the drama or impact of what Butterfield said about the White House tapes. On the other hand, Cassidy, like Butterfield, started out as a loyal supporter of a Republican President, only to find herself unable and unwilling to defend this President when the chips were down.
And that’s the real problem with this book, namely, the author doesn’t disclose anything that we already didn’t know, nor did she tell us anything particularly shocking or revelatory about Trump when she testified in front of the House January 6 Committee on national TV in June 2022.
What she didn’t discuss in front of the Committee was the fact that while Trump was delivering his speech at the Ellipse on January 6th, Rudy Giuliani was in the speaker’s tent with Cassidy and tried to cop a quick feel. She also didn’t mention the five- or six-times Matt Gaetz put the hit on her – public testimony about both those episodes would have been a lot more riveting than how she wiped some ketchup off a wall in the White House dining room.
To her credit, early on in the book, Cassidy lays it on the line and describes the Trump White House as ‘chaos.’ [p. 146] And the lack of organization mostly reflected the way in which Trump managed the Executive wing of the government, or perhaps it’s more accurate to say there was no management at all.
But again, there’s nothing in her narrative which we haven’t heard countless times and read in countless previously published books. How many times did Trump change his mind about how to deal with the Covid-19 virus, including a plan to quarantine infected Americans at Guantanamo before letting them come home? Try at least once every day, according to the book by Yasmeen Abutaleb and Damian Paletta, two reporters from the Washington Post.
Here’s the real question that I hoped Cassidy Hutchinson would answer, a question that has been on my mind since I watched her testify on live TV. She states that she first heard about the election being stolen from Trump in May 2020. By early Fall, according to her narrative, she knew the entire election ‘fraud’ story was bunk.
Why did she hang around until Trump left the White House the day that Joe was inaugurated and why did she actively pursue a staff job with Trump at Mar-a-Lago even when her boss, Mark Meadows, was burning documents in his office during the final days?
Cassidy claims she decided to follow Trump to Florida because he ‘needed good people around him’ in order to get anything done. Exactly what was Trump going to get done? Spend the next three years pushing the Big Lie about the 2020 election and promote the MAGA brand for another run in 2024?
And this is why Cassidy Hutchinson not only chased after a staff position as everything connected to Trump was turning to shit, but actually accepted an offer which was then withdrawn when she was suspected of leaking confidential information to the press.
The point is that when Cassidy appeared before the House Select Committee and has been congratulated all over the place for being such a courageous American at such a critical time, she had nothing to lose by standing up, raising her hand, and telling the truth.
Maybe I don’t get it and maybe I’m just too dumb or too naïve, but I have never felt that telling the truth to the United States Congress should mark me as some kind of exceptional man.
And yet Cassidy Hutchinson agonized for months over her decision to say what she knew was true and has used a 350-page narrative to share her agony with us.
The title of this book is Enough. What’s enough is listening to her explain how difficult it was to say what everyone already knew.
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