MixedThe Washington PostHassan seems torn between his desire to prove that Trump has brainwashed millions of Americans and his understanding that you do not change people’s minds by attacking their beliefs ... Hassan wants to believe that candid, empathetic conversations between friends (or ex-friends) can nudge Trump supporters back to who they were before the fateful ride down the Trump Tower escalator. Curiously, Hassan never says that he’s tried this method on anyone or that it has worked ... Hassan is eager to diagnose the president (and his opponents, who he says often suffer from Trump Anxiety Disorder) ... But what if the most helpful analogy to explain Trumpism isn’t medical but rather political? ... Nobody got deprogrammed. They just moved on.
Emily Jane Fox
PanThe Washington Post[A] breezy tour through the lives of four of the five Trump children ... There’s just so little to go on. The book has no source notes, no bibliography and precious few cues about the quality of the information. Maddeningly, Fox, who has written about the Trump family for Vanity Fair, employs a classically Trumpian device to make juicy allegations ... Fox says she based the book on interviews with \'hundreds\' of Trump friends, classmates and business associates, as well as a review of news stories. Few of those friends are named ... The axis between government policy and the operations of the Trump Organization is murky and troubling terrain. But such questions go nearly unmentioned here. There are, however, at least a dozen detailed, delightful descriptions of Ivanka’s dresses and gowns.
Joshua Green
PositiveThe Washington PostGreen makes an important point about the vital role that “The Apprentice” played in making Trump president. Trump was even more popular among blacks and Hispanics than he was among whites. That made Trump a darling of advertisers eager to be associated with a show and a character that were friendly to a multicultural image of the new America ... Devil’s Bargain markets itself as a dual profile, the story of the core relationship that shaped Trump’s appeal and his presidency. The tendency here to put Bannon at the heart of the action perhaps stems in part from the fact that Green had more than 20 hours of interviews with Bannon, and just 90 minutes with Trump. But there are some remarkable parallels between the two men.
