An insider's account of the Trump White House told by former Special Assistant to the President and Director of White House Message Strategy Cliff Sims.
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.
