Sinking in the Swamp review: dispatches from the
belly of the Trumpian beast
Lachlan Markay and Asawin Suebsaeng deliver gossip as
well as the goods from behind the scenes of our national reality show
Lloyd Green
Sun 9 Feb
2020 07.00 GMT
In July
2018, the Daily Beast’s Lachlan Markay posted a short piece about a mysterious
$375,000 contribution from “Global Energy Producers” to America First Action, a
pro-Trump Super Pac. Eighteen months later, federal agents arrested Lev Parnas
and Igor Fruman en route to Dulles airport; they were holding one-way tickets.
Republican politicians who took their cash are offloading it as if it were
doused with coronavirus and the president has suddenly forgotten the name of
their former patron: Rudy Giuliani.
With Beast
White House correspondent Asawin Suebsaeng, Markay now delivers a breezy look
at Trumpworld and our nation’s capital. Their book is constructed out of fresh
reporting, prior columns and gossip, lots of it. It is filled with tales of
greed, envy and near violence, together with schemes, outbursts and profanity.
Think of it
as non-fiction beach reading for our impeachment winter.
Few are
spared. Donald Trump’s insecurities and temper, Steve Bannon’s foul mouth and
Jared Kushner’s habit of knowing less than he thinks he does – all are on
display. Sinking in the Swamp contains at least a week’s worth of material for
The Daily Show.
It
chronicles the president’s fear of assassination, as he repeatedly asks if the
White House windows are bulletproof. “You sure?” Trump would repeat. Tweets
about “your favorite president, me!” belie a man who knows he’s despised by
nearly half the country.
Item. In
the closing days of the 2016 election, Trump unloaded on David Bossie, the
deputy campaign manager, who repeatedly tried to rein in the candidate’s
tweets. Although Kellyanne Conway was technically Bossie’s superior, it was he
who reportedly possessed nuts-and-bolts depth. Still, according to Markay and
Suebsaeng, Trump went from unamused to perturbed, then lost it: “GET HIM THE
FUCK OUT OF HERE!!! GET HIM THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME.”
That Bossie
was instrumental in delivering Pennsylvania and Wisconsin mattered little. He
would be banished, relegated to the Citizens United political action committee,
penning books praising the president but never to serve in the White House.
Gratitude? Not exactly.
Item. In
May 2017, a day after the president fired the FBI director, James Comey, Bannon
screamed at a TV screen tuned to CNN: “THEY WANT TO TALK ABOUT RUSSIA? THEY CAN
SUCK MY MOTHERFUCKING DICK!”
Yet for all
of Bannon’s bluster, he reportedly counseled against firing Comey, terming it
the biggest mistake “maybe in modern political history”. Unlike his ex-employer
and his son-in-law, Bannon possessed a sense of history and an appreciation for
irony.
As for
Trump, he was envious and angered by the attention Saturday Night Live lavished
on Bannon. According to the authors, SNL “helped contribute” to Trump “souring”
on his counsellor, providing a catalyst for his early departure from the West
Wing. Like the deity of the Decalogue, there shall be no other gods before Him
for He is a jealous god.
Trump also
has difficulty discerning between friend and foe. Sinking in the Swamp captures
him dumping on Fox News’ Sean Hannity for his “ultra-sycophantic” interviewing
style, referring to Hannity’s questions as “dumb”.
But then
again, Hannity has been caught saying of the president: “What the fuck is wrong
with him?” That was after Trump failed to offer condolences to the widow of
Roger Ailes, Hannity’s former boss. The camera doesn’t always tell the whole
story.
Item. Jared
Kushner’s knowledge of Nato isn’t the greatest. Markay and Suebsaeng relay that
the president’s son-in-law did not “seem to know what Nato actually did”. In
the run-up to a Nato trip in May 2017, Kushner spewed to assembled reporters a
“word salad reminiscent of the president’s own rambling when it came to issues
and minutiae with which he couldn’t be bothered”.
A dauphin
whose father bought his kid into Harvard was apparently ignorant of article 5,
the Nato treaty clause that stipulates an attack on one member is an attack on
all. Hanging with Benjamin Netanyahu and Mohammed bin Salman doesn’t make you a
foreign policy maven. On the other hand, if you’re married to the president’s
daughter it need not matter. As for Kushner’s vaunted “deal of the century”?
Its appeal appears limited.
Sinking in
the Swamp also records some lighter moments, such as Suebsaeng and Cliff Sims,
a Trump White House refugee and tell-all writer, nearly getting into a
fist-fight at the bar of Trump’s DC hotel. Sims would be expelled from Eden on
the Potomac after allegedly surreptitiously recording a meeting with the
president, which he then reportedly replayed to others.
Other
vignettes include actor Jon Voight mistaking “Swin” for Steve Mnuchin, the
treasury secretary, in a phone call. Voight and Suebsaeng eventually met in
person at the religiously infused Values Voters Summit. The actor was stunned
but polite.
Almost on
cue, the book concludes with the closing lines from Goodfellas, the authors
saying “most every bagman and water carrier for this president ends up a Henry
Hill”, the mobster who in Martin Scorsese’s movie finds himself in a witness
protection program, lamenting his fall from grace. In the movie, Hill announces:
“We ran everything … Today, everything is different … I get to live the rest of
my life like a schnook.”
Or not. Not
everyone in Trump’s orbit is Michael Cohen or Roger Stone.
The
president stands acquitted by the Senate, his approval at a high-water mark,
the Democratic field looking dwarfed and in disarray. Another book on the mob,
the late Jimmy Breslin’s The Gang that Couldn’t Shoot Straight, would be apt
reading.
The debacle
of the Iowa caucuses will be relived and replayed through November. What lies
between our never-ending reality show and the sands of Rome’s Colosseum? Time
and technology. Little more.
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