To be sure, asking readers in 2022 to revisit the Sturm und Drang of the Trump years may seem like asking a Six Flags patron, staggering from a ride on the Tsunami, to jump back on for another go. It’s all here: the culture wars and the corruption, the demagogy and the autocrat-love, the palace intrigue and the public tweets, the pandemic and the impeachments (plural). Yet the husband-and-wife team of Baker and Glasser pull it off with assurance. Squeezing the tumultuous events of the long national fever dream that was the Donald Trump presidency between two covers - even two covers placed far apart, as is the case with this 752-page anvil - would tax the skills of the nimblest journalist. Comprehensively researched and briskly told, “The Divider” is a story of disasters averted as well as disasters realized. But in truth it describes any of several dozen beleaguered helpmates to the former president, whose propensity for petulant rage kept Washington in a fit of indignation and the White House in a mode of perpetual damage control for the better part of four years. “His job wasn’t to get things done but to stop certain things from happening, to prevent disaster.” This line from Peter Baker and Susan Glasser’s detail-rich history of the Trump administration, “The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021,” technically applies to his first secretary of state, Rex Tillerson.
THE DIVIDER: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021, by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser
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