Overall, the book is cleverly packaged ... his praise [of Trump] is often inadvertently damning ... If, as Sims argues, Trump got a team of vipers, he has only himself to blame.
Unlike memoirs of other Trump officials, Sims’s book is neither a sycophantic portrayal of the president nor a blistering account written to settle scores. The author presents himself as a true believer in Trump and his agenda, and even writes whimsically of the president, but still is critical of him, especially his morality. Sims also finds fault in himself, a rarity in Trump World, writing that at times he was 'selfish,' 'nakedly ambitious' and 'a coward.'
For those who have followed any of the half-dozen earlier 'inside stories' of Trump World, all this will be as familiar as re-used videotape on cable TV news ... Sims the wordsmith can be charming, and he works at winning us over the way he once served Trump and his minions needing speeches and media statements ... tells us more about Sims than about the famous people around him. And it offers a metaphor for the larger conundrum affecting all those who want to take their moral code seriously, while also lionizing the person who is Donald Trump.
Ladles out scoop but is short on insight. The author is critical of Trump world’s visceral brutality but does not adequately trace the mien and tenor of the West Wing to its occupant-in-chief. In his closing pages, Sims takes Trump to task for treating loyalty as a one-way street. The reader is left wondering what took so long for the scales to fall from Sims’ eyes ... leaves more than just the impression that cultural resentment fuels the administration and the modern Republican party ... What is most memorable about Team of Vipers is the joylessness of working for this president and the acrid aftertaste it leaves.
It’s challenging to write a tell-all when your legal fees will exceed your book advance. It’s even more challenging when you don’t have anything to tell, which is Sims’ problem. His book, Team of Vipers: My 500 Extraordinary Days in the Trump White House, could easily have been written by a complete stranger to 'Trump World' ... there’s virtually nothing in this book that couldn’t have been written by a careful viewer of MSNBC ... Team of Vipers would have considerably more punch if it weren’t so clearly written by one of the vipers.
