The latest exposé from Donald Trump's chaotic White House isn't getting the expected response

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Kelly Rissman

US News Reporter

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The jury is out on exactly how many jobs Donald Trump has helped create since he took office in 2017, but there is no doubt that he has allowed a number of authors to make a better living by tracking his behavior.

The latest such work is A Warning, a tell-all book written by the same anonymous author who first captured attention in 2018 as the unidentified writer of a New York Times opinion column titled “I am part of the resistance inside the Trump administration”, which was decried by the White House. The author, who claims to be a member of Trump’s inner circle, writes that a number of senior officials considered resigning en masse last year in a “midnight self-massacre” to highlight the president's conduct. Ultimately, however, he says they did not follow through because they believed it would further destabilize an already teetering government.

According to the Post, which has seen the book, A Warning also alleges that misogyny is rampant in Trump’s White House (“He comments on makeup. He makes jokes about weight… He questions the toughness of women in and around his orbit. He uses words like ‘sweetie’ and ‘honey’ to address accomplished professionals”) and that Trump was keen not to “pick a fight” with Saudi Arabia over the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi because of oil prices. The writer also says that they no longer believe officials are attempting to rein the president in, having accepted that “he is who he is”.

Some may wonder why this person continues to write anonymously, rather than revealing who he or she is post-White House. “Some will call this ‘cowardice’… [but] this debate is not about me,” they wrote in explanation, though perhaps the real reason is that Trump and his officials have shown a shocking disregard for the whistleblower who sparked off the impeachment probes, and have assassinated the characters or entertained conspiracies about pretty much anyone who has stepped out of line (see: Gordon Sondland, John Bolton, Anthony Scaramucci, Rex Tillerson, Jeff Sessions, and so on and so on.) No wise person would want to be the subject of an enraged midnight tweet by the president of the United States — that much is clear. So perhaps we shouldn’t judge the writer too much for this singular decision, even if it is providing much fodder for denial and conjecture from the White House.

In ordinary times, A Warning might have caused global upheaval. But these days, when Trump’s impeachable conduct has been clearly on display — with the call to Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky in July seeming to amount to the president calling on a foreign power to help his re-election campaign — the response has been a little more muted.

The first White House exposé about Trump’s administration which made it onto the shelves — Fire and Fury by Michael Wolff — caused a major stir when it was published in January 2018, with the publisher shifting the date forward a few days due to what it called "unprecedented demand". Having been granted access to the West Wing, Wolff set about crafting a picture of chaos that would become the prism that Trump's administration was seen through.

Then came the second wave of exposés. Watergate’s own Bob Woodward penned one called Fear, while former White House official Omarosa Manigault Newman wrote Unhinged: An Insider's Account of the White House. Wolff even took a second crack earlier this year with Siege: Trump Under Fire. During an eventful first 12 months of his tenure where diplomatic norms were being circumvented almost weekly, America could not wait to find out exactly what was going on behind the curtain. A steady stream of leaks to news outlets served to whet the appetite for a deeper read.

As Robert Mueller's Russia investigation hung over the White House like a progressively blackening cloud, such books also allowed those who believed the president was guilty of something to point to the conduct illustrated on the page and say that he needed further investigation. As Trump rode out the election-meddling/possible obstruction of justice inquiry with blanket denials, smears against Mueller's character and statements that all was well in the White House, the exasperation from Democrats and left-leaning citizens was clear. Exposés provided solace that the president would eventually put himself in a position to get his comeuppance.

After the much-publicized telephone call between Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, many feel he has finally done it.

Public hearings are set to begin next week, with a number of officials who have already testified behind closed doors to Congress set to do so in front of the cameras. The Democrats leading the impeachment investigation have been able to curate who will get to appear — so expect some less-than-ideal cable news coverage for the president. Trump has denied any wrongdoing, as he always will, but the public will soon get a chance to make up their own mind.

The Democrats believe that the advantage they have with Ukraine over the Mueller investigation is that events are happening in real time, and testimony is revealing new elements quickly and frequently. That’s good news for them, and bad news for authors like the one of A Warning. For those seeking to understand what drives the Trump White House, and those who believe the president does not act in a way befitting of his high office, a tell-all book is now less of the attention-grabber it once was. We’re into much more high-stakes territory now, and whether or not government officials have given up on trying to restrain Donald Trump’s worst impulses is fast becoming irrelevant.