Blowback

December 1, 2022

In 2018, former Department of Homeland Security chief of staff Taylor wrote an anonymous opinion piece for the New York Times titled "I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration," explaining that he and other members of the administration saw Donald Trump as dangerously unfit for office and sought to undermine his orders for the sake of the country. He subsequently wrote the New York Times best-selling A Warning, also anonymously. Here he comes out to warn against a second Trump presidency and the continued fracturing of the country.

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April 17, 2023
Taylor, the former Homeland Security official who anonymously denounced the Trump administration in 2019’s A Warning, returns with a mixed-bag thought experiment on what would happen if the “Make America Great Again movement does the unthinkable and retakes the White House.” Noting that Trump got pushback from the “adults” in the room, Taylor claims that those guardrails would not be present in a second term. Even if a “savvier successor,” rather than Trump himself, wins the presidency, distrust of the federal bureaucracy and the instinct to distort reality will rule the day. Taylor identifies numerous areas of concern, including an October 2020 executive order that would have allowed Trump “to strip large parts of the federal workforce of their employment protections.” Though President Biden repealed the order, it could be revived by Trump or a “Trump-like figure,” leading to a “mass exodus” of competent, experienced, and law-abiding officials. Throughout, Taylor interweaves snapshots of his life before and after he went public as the author of A Warning, revealing how his relationships and mental health suffered. Unfortunately, the book’s rhetorical flourishes, including a scene set in 2019 in which Taylor suggests that Trump was about to push the “nuclear button” in the Oval Office, then reveals he was simply ordering a Diet Coke, undermine its core message. This is a disappointment.

June 1, 2023
An urgent alarm about the nation's future. In a New York Times op-ed piece in 2018 and again in his book A Warning, both published anonymously, Taylor exposed the lies, corruption, and craziness within the Trump administration--of which he was a member--and argued vehemently against his reelection in 2020. Now facing the 2024 contest, Taylor reiterates his dire predictions. "The MAGA movement--or Trumpism, which I use interchangeably--remains the fastest-growing political coalition in America," he contends. Even if Trump himself is not the Republican Party's standard bearer, "the rule of a savvier successor" will promote the same policies, authoritarian postures, vindictiveness, and hatred. Taylor had an inside view of the administration, serving as a national security adviser under John Kelly at the Department of Homeland Security; when Kelly became Trump's chief of staff, Taylor stayed on at the DHS. He witnessed a president who was impulsive, raging, and out of control, focused on building a wall on the southern border, to the exclusion of most else. Trump demanded protestations of loyalty, and he was quick to fire anyone who dared to cross him. Taylor predicts that "appointees in the next GOP White House will be heavily vetted for obedience," and career civil servants will be ousted in favor of lackeys. There will be "what might be called the Two Houses of MAGA (the White House and a right-leaning House of Representatives)" that would "do each other's bidding." The culture wars--"guns, gays, and girls"--a GOP operative told Taylor, "will be the primary legislative agenda," and the "Next Trump...will exacerbate political violence and push the nation to the brink of a Second Civil War." The author urges citizens to speak out against extremism. "Social fear," he writes, "is creating a mass bystander effect in our politics," but "the final guardrail of our collective democracy," he declares, is truth. Another rousing plea to all Americans to stand against authoritarianism.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

June 21, 2023
National security expert and whistleblower Taylor (A Warning, 2019) presents another alarm about the authoritarian turn in the Republican Party. In this sprawling memoir about his time inside the Trump administration and as an opponent to the MAGA cause, Taylor repeatedly states that a future Republican administration will be even more chaotic and cruel. Blowback is a blueprint of what to expect should Trump or another MAGA Republican become president again, drawn largely from internal conversations. Americans will hope that Taylor is relaying obvious anti-democratic actions and not giving MAGA ideas. One thing he is certain of is that competent conservatives like himself won't be tempted to join in the next Trump administration, leaving swaths of the federal government run by ideologues and hacks whose primary qualification will be loyalty to the boss. This book presents a standard list of reforms to safeguard democracy, but with no innovative strategy to enact them over MAGA obstruction. Taylor's cautionary narrative has a place in library collections for its compelling backstory and for its guidance for dissent against MAGA extremism.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.