Leaders & Notable People
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The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021
"The most comprehensive and detailed account of the Trump presidency yet published."-The Washington Post
"A sumptuous feast of astonishing tales...The more one reads, the more one wishes to read."-NPR.com
The inside story of the four years when Donald Trump went to war with Washington, from the chaotic beginning to the violent finale, told by revered journalists Peter Baker of The New York Times and Susan Glasser of The New Yorker-an ambitious and lasting history of the full Trump presidency that also contains dozens of exclusive scoops and stories from behind the scenes in the White House, from the absurd to the deadly serious.
The bestselling authors of The Man Who Ran Washington argue that Trump was not just lurching from one controversy to another; he was learning to be more like the foreign autocrats he admired.
The Divider brings us into the Oval Office for countless scenes both tense and comical, revealing how close we got to nuclear war with North Korea, which cabinet members had a resignation pact, whether Trump asked Japan's prime minister to nominate him for a Nobel Prize and much more. The book also explores the moral choices confronting those around Trump-how they justified working for a man they considered unfit for office, and where they drew their lines.
The Divider is based on unprecedented access to key players, from President Trump himself to cabinet officers, military generals, close advisers, Trump family members, congressional leaders, foreign officials and others, some of whom have never told their story until now.
"A sumptuous feast of astonishing tales...The more one reads, the more one wishes to read."-NPR.com
The inside story of the four years when Donald Trump went to war with Washington, from the chaotic beginning to the violent finale, told by revered journalists Peter Baker of The New York Times and Susan Glasser of The New Yorker-an ambitious and lasting history of the full Trump presidency that also contains dozens of exclusive scoops and stories from behind the scenes in the White House, from the absurd to the deadly serious.
The bestselling authors of The Man Who Ran Washington argue that Trump was not just lurching from one controversy to another; he was learning to be more like the foreign autocrats he admired.
The Divider brings us into the Oval Office for countless scenes both tense and comical, revealing how close we got to nuclear war with North Korea, which cabinet members had a resignation pact, whether Trump asked Japan's prime minister to nominate him for a Nobel Prize and much more. The book also explores the moral choices confronting those around Trump-how they justified working for a man they considered unfit for office, and where they drew their lines.
The Divider is based on unprecedented access to key players, from President Trump himself to cabinet officers, military generals, close advisers, Trump family members, congressional leaders, foreign officials and others, some of whom have never told their story until now.
Editorial Reviews
"Well-paced and engagingly written...the most comprehensive and detailed account of the Trump presidency yet published."
-The Washington Post
"[A] detail-rich history of the Trump administration...Comprehensively researched and briskly told...Squeezing the tumultuous events of the long national fever dream that was the Donald Trump presidency between two covers...would tax the skills of the nimblest journalist. Yet the husband-and-wife team of Baker and Glasser pull it off with assurance."
-The New York Times
"A beautifully written, utterly dispiriting history of the man who attacked democracy."
-The Guardian
"The book everyone is talking about"
-Politico
"As a sumptuous feast of astonishing tales, it may hold wonderments indeed for those first contemplating the enormity of the Trump phenomenon...But even a reader steeped in years of Trump coverage and well-versed in the precedent literature may be surprised at how compelling this narrative proves to be. The more one reads, the more one wishes to read."
-NPR.com
"A sweeping, dishy, 700-plus-page history of Trump's almost cartoonishly chaotic White House"
-Axios
"A scorched-earth account of an utterly failed presidency."
-Kirkus Reviews *Starred Review*
"An insightful account of a chaotic president by two of the best journalists writing on Washington today."
-Anne Applebaum, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Gulag and Twilight of Democracy
"Finally, the synthesis we need about the Trump presidency. Adding their own repor...
-The Washington Post
"[A] detail-rich history of the Trump administration...Comprehensively researched and briskly told...Squeezing the tumultuous events of the long national fever dream that was the Donald Trump presidency between two covers...would tax the skills of the nimblest journalist. Yet the husband-and-wife team of Baker and Glasser pull it off with assurance."
-The New York Times
"A beautifully written, utterly dispiriting history of the man who attacked democracy."
-The Guardian
"The book everyone is talking about"
-Politico
"As a sumptuous feast of astonishing tales, it may hold wonderments indeed for those first contemplating the enormity of the Trump phenomenon...But even a reader steeped in years of Trump coverage and well-versed in the precedent literature may be surprised at how compelling this narrative proves to be. The more one reads, the more one wishes to read."
-NPR.com
"A sweeping, dishy, 700-plus-page history of Trump's almost cartoonishly chaotic White House"
-Axios
"A scorched-earth account of an utterly failed presidency."
-Kirkus Reviews *Starred Review*
"An insightful account of a chaotic president by two of the best journalists writing on Washington today."
-Anne Applebaum, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Gulag and Twilight of Democracy
"Finally, the synthesis we need about the Trump presidency. Adding their own repor...
Readers Top Reviews
L Stephs
This is a TRUE account of the president who succeeded in divided the USA more then any other POLITICIAN ever!!!! We watched a lot of it happen right in front of our own eyes. We all heard him say many of his terribly faction /divide making narcissistic, demeaning comments. This book recounts for history the TRUTH even for those cult of personality followers, who are blind....because they refuse to see!!
Short Excerpt Teaser
CHAPTER 1
Ready, Set, Tweet
On the afternoon of January 20, 2017, just hours after taking the oath of office, Donald John Trump strode into the Oval Office for the first time as the forty-fifth president of the United States. In that profound moment of transition, he was not moved to comment about the history of the room or the burden he had just assumed. He did not ruminate out loud about the weighty decisions that had been made there nor his ambitions for the next four years.
Instead, the first thing that struck him as he looked around the storied space once occupied by Roosevelt and Kennedy and Reagan was the fantastic illumination.
"How do they get the lighting to do that?" he wondered.
Then he invited his daughter Ivanka Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to take pictures with him.
Trump, America's first reality television star turned president, had long fixated on lighting. Wherever he expected to be photographed, he evaluated the angles and shadows and brightness of the sun or artificial bulbs that would frame the shot. As he entered the White House, he did not know much about government or health care policy or foreign affairs. But he knew a lot about lighting.
Trump preferred not to allow artificial illumination when cameras were on him. The harsh light changed the ever-shifting color of his hair and highlighted the caked-on makeup that gave his skin an orange tint. He hated artificial lighting so much that news photographers were reproached for using a flash in his presence. Trump's preference for natural lighting would soon lead him to hold many of his encounters with reporters outside on the White House's South Lawn on the way to his helicopter. Never mind that the roar of the rotor blades made it hard to hear what he was saying-it was the visual that counted. He studied iPad images of himself before television interviews to check the best angle, preferring to be shot from his right side so the part in his hair did not show. And if he did not like a picture on the front page of the newspaper, he sometimes called the photographer to complain. "That made me look horrible," he would grouse.
All presidents are image conscious. But Trump was something different, the first president for whom the shaping of reality to fit his demands became the preoccupation of his presidency. He would spend exhaustive amounts of time each morning combing and twisting the long strands of his awkwardly colored hair into place, a three-step process that "required a flop up of the hair from the back of his head, followed by the flip of the resulting overhang on his face back on his pate, and then the flap of his combover on the right side," as his lawyer Michael Cohen once explained. Trump cemented it with TRESemmé TRES TWO hair spray (extra hold). An aide carried a travel-size can everywhere they went. When the wind was strong, Trump wore one of the red Make America Great Again baseball caps that had become a signature of his improbable candidacy. When his hair was not done, it fell over the right side of his head below the shoulder, making him look "like a balding Allman Brother or strung out old '60s hippie," as Cohen put it. Trump cut it himself with giant scissors, like the kind used at shopping mall ribbon cuttings.
Trump was also sensitive about his weight. He did not like being photographed from below, fearing that would make him look heavier than the 236 pounds he claimed to weigh. Hope Hicks, his communications adviser, had issued an edict during the campaign barring news cameras from the buffer zone in front of the stage beneath Trump; only after vociferous complaints did she finally allow photographers there for just a few minutes. For that matter, Trump did not like being shot from above either. The angle had to be on the same plane as he was, because he felt it looked better on television.
Whatever the circumstances, he almost always appeared in public in a dark suit with a tie knotted all the way to the top and hanging below his belt in a way that he thought was slimming-not for him the casual bomber jacket and blue jeans that George W. Bush and Barack Obama donned for photo ops. Even in Florida, in hundred-degree heat, Trump kept the suit on, usually an off-the-rack Brioni costing several thousand dollars and worn extra-baggy so that the pants flopped around his legs. The only time he did not wear the suit jacket typically was on the golf course, but even then he tried to stymie photographers from recording that image, ordering palm trees planted to block the view on his Florida golf course after television networks managed to shoot too many pictures of him there. Perhaps even more important than the suit was what aides called "the stare." Trump did not smile often for the...
Ready, Set, Tweet
On the afternoon of January 20, 2017, just hours after taking the oath of office, Donald John Trump strode into the Oval Office for the first time as the forty-fifth president of the United States. In that profound moment of transition, he was not moved to comment about the history of the room or the burden he had just assumed. He did not ruminate out loud about the weighty decisions that had been made there nor his ambitions for the next four years.
Instead, the first thing that struck him as he looked around the storied space once occupied by Roosevelt and Kennedy and Reagan was the fantastic illumination.
"How do they get the lighting to do that?" he wondered.
Then he invited his daughter Ivanka Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to take pictures with him.
Trump, America's first reality television star turned president, had long fixated on lighting. Wherever he expected to be photographed, he evaluated the angles and shadows and brightness of the sun or artificial bulbs that would frame the shot. As he entered the White House, he did not know much about government or health care policy or foreign affairs. But he knew a lot about lighting.
Trump preferred not to allow artificial illumination when cameras were on him. The harsh light changed the ever-shifting color of his hair and highlighted the caked-on makeup that gave his skin an orange tint. He hated artificial lighting so much that news photographers were reproached for using a flash in his presence. Trump's preference for natural lighting would soon lead him to hold many of his encounters with reporters outside on the White House's South Lawn on the way to his helicopter. Never mind that the roar of the rotor blades made it hard to hear what he was saying-it was the visual that counted. He studied iPad images of himself before television interviews to check the best angle, preferring to be shot from his right side so the part in his hair did not show. And if he did not like a picture on the front page of the newspaper, he sometimes called the photographer to complain. "That made me look horrible," he would grouse.
All presidents are image conscious. But Trump was something different, the first president for whom the shaping of reality to fit his demands became the preoccupation of his presidency. He would spend exhaustive amounts of time each morning combing and twisting the long strands of his awkwardly colored hair into place, a three-step process that "required a flop up of the hair from the back of his head, followed by the flip of the resulting overhang on his face back on his pate, and then the flap of his combover on the right side," as his lawyer Michael Cohen once explained. Trump cemented it with TRESemmé TRES TWO hair spray (extra hold). An aide carried a travel-size can everywhere they went. When the wind was strong, Trump wore one of the red Make America Great Again baseball caps that had become a signature of his improbable candidacy. When his hair was not done, it fell over the right side of his head below the shoulder, making him look "like a balding Allman Brother or strung out old '60s hippie," as Cohen put it. Trump cut it himself with giant scissors, like the kind used at shopping mall ribbon cuttings.
Trump was also sensitive about his weight. He did not like being photographed from below, fearing that would make him look heavier than the 236 pounds he claimed to weigh. Hope Hicks, his communications adviser, had issued an edict during the campaign barring news cameras from the buffer zone in front of the stage beneath Trump; only after vociferous complaints did she finally allow photographers there for just a few minutes. For that matter, Trump did not like being shot from above either. The angle had to be on the same plane as he was, because he felt it looked better on television.
Whatever the circumstances, he almost always appeared in public in a dark suit with a tie knotted all the way to the top and hanging below his belt in a way that he thought was slimming-not for him the casual bomber jacket and blue jeans that George W. Bush and Barack Obama donned for photo ops. Even in Florida, in hundred-degree heat, Trump kept the suit on, usually an off-the-rack Brioni costing several thousand dollars and worn extra-baggy so that the pants flopped around his legs. The only time he did not wear the suit jacket typically was on the golf course, but even then he tried to stymie photographers from recording that image, ordering palm trees planted to block the view on his Florida golf course after television networks managed to shoot too many pictures of him there. Perhaps even more important than the suit was what aides called "the stare." Trump did not smile often for the...
