Everything Trump Touches Dies: A Republican Strategist Gets Real About the Worst President Ever
Written and Narrated By: Rick Wilson
Length: 10 hrs and 3 mins
Was crying from Minute One—dunno whether from laughter or from deepest sorrow
Lemme just get it outta the way first: Do NOT for one second think that author Rick Wilson is a decent human being. Noooo, and he’d be the first to tell ya: Attack ads? Oh, he’s done ‘em to serve the GOP. Devoted worker for Super PACs? Oh, he’s there—the more money milked into the GOP the better. Democrats? Oh, he’s done all he can to make ‘em not only lose, but be crushed, crying in the dust. I woulda said he’s no soul, but at least here in Everything Trump Touches Dies, he’s a bit of a backbone. Well, one helluva backbone.
And jeeeeeez, has he gotta a foul mouth, or what?!
Loved it, tho’ it brought these past yeeeeeears greatly to mind.
To begin with, the book starts with a vehement slaying of Trump, his supporters, his enablers. And the man ain’t kind. You wanna hear about Trump and his bloviated orangeness? Here ya go. His supporters being ignorant racists with no teeth? Here ya go. His male enablers in Congress lacking masculine nether regions? Here ya go (Okay okay, maybe that’s me saying it, but Wilson comes close). It’s suuuuch a diatribe that just goes on and on that, quite frankly, I didn’t care that I was on the page with him so much as I just started getting tired. It was like when my husband comes home from work after being thrown under the bus: I know; I get it: true reason for anger, but duuuuude—the venting is KILLing me.
But then Wilson settles down and names names and how inCREDible it is that ANYone supported him. Ted Cruz? What kind of a man is he when Trump calls his wife ugly, calls him Lyin’ Ted, and then the man turns around and runs right over trying to be the favorite lapdog (Wilson tells us: That’s a man bucking for a position on the Supreme Court. Uhm, sorry Ted… Trump is loyal to nobody but Trump. Tsk Tsk Tsk).
Paul Ryan? Oooooh, tooooo bad. Once he was a respected, if a bit too GQ-ish, GOP star, but then he decided to throw it all away and play all nice nice with Trump in order to get tax cuts. Ryan sold his soul, and for what? Stratospheric deficits. Oooooooh, tooooo bad. You thought you could just retire from politics and not have that stain on your record? Uhm, nope. Sorry, Paul—Wilson just wrote a book that called you out.
Over and over you’ll hear the cheap shots, like how tiiiiiiny Trump’s hands are, but along with it, Wilson gives us a straight on target history of the many many many failings of Donald Trump, of how many things he touted went so awry.
What you WON’T hear is how much Wilson himself had to do with setting systems in place which ushered in this era of Soulless Politics—of how the GOP did NOT start its fiscal irresponsibility with Trump (Let’s look, oh I dunno, back to the start of something a certain Once Actor Turned President lovingly called The Trickle Down Theory), its beginnings of deficit spending. You won’t hear about what the Grand Old Party did to boost wealth concentration in the hands of the very few (And don’t get mad at me, I haven’t been thrilled with Democrats either, but they just haven’t been as heinously devoted to it). You won’t hear about GOP-led voter suppression, GOP-led Birther Conspiracies, none of that. To hear Wilson, you’d think Republicans prior to Trump’s trip down a golden escalator was the start of all of this. Uhm, nope—and Wilson had a hand in that.
It’s just that the monsters they let outta the box got outta their control, and now Wilson is mad. So, I guess I’m somewhat peeved with him and the rise of obnoxious speechifying by the likes of the woefully ignorant Sarah Palin the GOP promoted which was before Trump’s disastrous presidency. But at least Wilson is sooooo danged scathing, and he has SUCH a way with obnoxious words for obnoxious people doing obnoxious things, that I was laughing even as I was rolling my eyes.
Mind you, this was written before the 2020 election, so Wilson didn’t know how bad things were going to get. He ends the book with a few possibilities, between a Mad Max-like world, and a world where the old GOP is destroyed and true Republicans come together to reform and reshape and remake their brand.
Which is why I googled him and got his take on what happened after the Mob at the Capitol rioted, desecrated, killed, and died.
And?
He’s leaning more towards Mad Max…
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