The Man Who Sold America: Trump and the Unraveling of the American Story

by Joy-Ann Reid

Overview

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

MSNBC'S Joy-Ann Reid calculates the true price of the Trump presidency, now updated with a new afterword on the events of 2020.

"The host of [The ReidOut] on MSNBC argues that President Trump’s administration is characterized by grift and venality that demeans the office and diminishes America.” —New York Times Book Review

Is Donald Trump running the “longest con” in U.S. history? How did we get here? What will be left of America when he leaves office? 

Candidate Trump sold Americans a vision that was seemingly at odds with their country’s founding principles. Now in office, he’s put up a “for sale” sign—on the prestige of the presidency, on America’s global stature, and on our national identity. At what cost have these deals come? Joy-Ann Reid's essential new book, The Man Who Sold America, delivers an urgent accounting of our national crisis from one of our foremost political commentators.

Three years ago, Donald Trump pitched millions of voters on the idea that their country was broken, and that the rest of the world was playing us “for suckers.” All we needed to fix this was Donald Trump, who rebranded prejudice as patriotism, presented diversity as our weakness, and promised that money really could make the world go ’round.

Trump made the sale to enough Americans in three key swing states to win the Electoral College. As president, Trump’s raft of self-dealing, scandal, and corruption has overwhelmed the national conversation. And with prosecutors bearing down on Trump and his family business, the web of criminality is circling closer to the Oval Office. All this while Trump seemingly makes his administration a pawn for the ultimate villain: an autocratic former KGB officer in Russia who found in the untutored and eager forty-fifth president the perfect “apprentice.”

What is the hidden impact of Trump, beyond the headlines? Through interviews with American and international thought leaders and in-depth analysis, Reid situates the Trump era within the context of modern history, examining the profound social changes that led us to this point. 

Providing new context and depth to our understanding, The Man Who Sold America reveals the causes and consequences of the Trump presidency and contends with the future that awaits us.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062880116
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	08/11/2020
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	555,180
Product dimensions:	7.90(w) x 5.20(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Joy-Ann Reid is a political analyst for MSNBC and the host of The ReidOut. She is the author of Fracture: Barack Obama, the Clintons, and the Racial Divide and co-editor (with E. J. Dionne Jr.) of We Are the Change We Seek: The Speeches of Barack Obama. A graduate of Harvard University, she is the former managing editor of TheGrio.com, and her columns and articles have appeared in the New York Times, New York magazine, the Guardian, the Miami Herald, and Salon.com. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, and Maryland.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Welcome to Gotham 1

1 How Trump Happened 19

2 Two Nations, Under Trump 38

3 The Trump Republican Party 57

4 A New American Civil War 84

5 The Man Who Sold the World 122

6 American Strongman 143

7 What America Can Learn from South Africa 167

8 The Media in the Trump Age 186

9 "Mr. Barr Goes to Town" 223

10 Un-Democratic America? 237

Epilogue: After Trump, Who Are We? 265

Acknowledgments 273

Notes 275

Editorial Reviews

“Joy Reid masterfully combines the immediacy of news reporting, the intimacy of memoir, and the sweep of a history book—from the anti-immigrant Know Nothing Party of the 1850s to Nelson Mandela’s post-apartheid attempt at ‘reconciliation.’ The Man Who Sold America delivers a compelling account of how we got to Trumpism and what will happen next.” — Lawrence O’Donnell, host of MSNBC’s The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell

“Passionate, smart, and breathtakingly original, The Man Who Sold America will explain Trump to readers for years to come.” — Michael Tomasky, contributing opinion writer, The New York Times; editor, Democracy: A Journal of Ideas; and author of If We Can Keep It: How the Republic Collapsed and How It Might Be Saved

“The political analyst and host of AM Joy on MSNBC argues that President Trump’s administration is characterized by grift and venality that demeans the office and diminishes America.” — New York Times Book Review, “New & Notable”

“Passionate, well-intentioned and certain to draw approving nods. ... Imagines a path beyond our current divisions.” — Carlos Lozada, Washington Post

“An impassioned exposé of Donald Trump. … In fiery prose, Reid delivers a well-researched narrative. … A searing indictment.” — Kirkus Reviews

“A shrewd analyst of current political trends, Reid offers fierce scrutiny of Trump’s controversial performance and fresh insights into his potential legacy.” — Booklist

“Valuable. … Reid does a fine job. … Find[s] real wisdom.” — The Guardian

From the Publisher

Passionate, well-intentioned and certain to draw approving nods. ... Imagines a path beyond our current divisions.

Carlos Lozada

The political analyst and host of AM Joy on MSNBC argues that President Trump’s administration is characterized by grift and venality that demeans the office and diminishes America.

New York Times Book Review

Valuable. … Reid does a fine job. … Find[s] real wisdom.

The Guardian

A shrewd analyst of current political trends, Reid offers fierce scrutiny of Trump’s controversial performance and fresh insights into his potential legacy.

Booklist

Passionate, well-intentioned and certain to draw approving nods. ... Imagines a path beyond our current divisions.

Carlos Lozada

07/15/2019

President Trump and his supporters come across as nearly cartoonish villains in this vehement screed. Likening Trump to Batman nemesis the Joker, Reid (Fracture), host of MSNBC’s AM Joy, flays the president as a corrupt liar, a monstrous xenophobe (“there was no cruelty he wouldn’t visit on the teeming masses of brown and non-Christian aliens”), a puppet of Fox News, “a potential threat to national security, acting on behalf of a foreign power,” and an “autocrat” whose “appetite for destruction and revenge was only growing” and who wants “to bond the U. S. to Russia North Korea.” She dismisses Trump administration initiatives as merely efforts toward pandering to the bigotry of insecure white reactionaries. Reid takes further swipes at Trump’s voters, who “bonded around the ritualized pain inflicted on the brown, the foreign and the poor” and “enjoyed seeing them suffer”; at Trump adviser Stephen Miller (she repeats comments by an anonymous White House staffer likening Miller to members of Hitler’s SS); and at Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, “a favorite of Russian state media.” Reid’s indictment of Trump’s misdeeds, from sleazy business deals to Russia collusion allegations, is a sketchy rehash. There’s plenty of red meat for Trump haters here, but not much substantive or nuanced analysis. Agent: Suzanne Gluck, William Morris Endeavor. (June)

Publishers Weekly

Joy Reid masterfully combines the immediacy of news reporting, the intimacy of memoir, and the sweep of a history book—from the anti-immigrant Know Nothing Party of the 1850s to Nelson Mandela’s post-apartheid attempt at ‘reconciliation.’ The Man Who Sold America delivers a compelling account of how we got to Trumpism and what will happen next.

Lawrence O’Donnell

Passionate, smart, and breathtakingly original, The Man Who Sold America will explain Trump to readers for years to come.

Michael Tomasky

A shrewd analyst of current political trends, Reid offers fierce scrutiny of Trump’s controversial performance and fresh insights into his potential legacy.

Booklist

Joy Reid masterfully combines the immediacy of news reporting, the intimacy of memoir, and the sweep of a history book—from the anti-immigrant Know Nothing Party of the 1850s to Nelson Mandela’s post-apartheid attempt at ‘reconciliation.’ The Man Who Sold America delivers a compelling account of how we got to Trumpism and what will happen next.

Lawrence O’Donnell

Joy Reid masterfully combines the immediacy of news reporting, the intimacy of memoir, and the sweep of a history book—from the anti-immigrant Know Nothing Party of the 1850s to Nelson Mandela’s post-apartheid attempt at ‘reconciliation.’ The Man Who Sold America delivers a compelling account of how we got to Trumpism and what will happen next.

Lawrence O'Donnell

08/01/2018
The host of MSNBC's AM Joy urges those alarmed by Trump to funnel their efforts into activist causes that will build a stronger base for the next election. With a 200,000-copy first printing.

Library Journal

2019-05-29
Another heated examination of the current president, who "seems ripped right out of [a] comic book supervillain universe."

MSNBC political analyst Reid (Fracture: Barack Obama, the Clintons, and the Racial Divide, 2015, etc.), the host of AM Joy, serves up an impassioned exposé of Donald Trump, from his early adult years as an ethically challenged businessman through his first two years as president. As part of the big picture, the author also skewers the corruption of the Republican Party. In fiery prose, Reid delivers a well-researched narrative about how Trump methodically overcame establishment Republican opponents to dominate a political party he had shunned for most of his life. The author terms the new partisan reality the "Trump Republican Party." She explains how Trump managed to divide the country into factions that constantly battle over both politics and culture. She scrutinizes Trump's dealings with nations both friendly and hostile, delineating the president's ugly attraction to "strongmen" in other nations. Russia's Vladimir Putin is the most prominent example, but others include the dictators of the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, Hungary, and Poland. The chapter in the book containing the least amount of rehashed material is titled "What America Can Learn From South Africa." Reid's father is Congolese but spent much of his life working in South Africa, and she explains how Nelson Mandela instituted racial reconciliation as a national imperative, despite the persecution he faced for decades. The "frankness about race, from black and white South Africans, felt refreshing and surprisingly healthy," she writes. Reid contrasts the selflessness she saw in South Africa with Trump's self-centered approach of dividing and conquering, especially along racial and cultural faults. Another chapter that moves beyond relating oft-repeated allegations about Trump highlights the author's frustration at the news media for more or less normalizing his unique cruelty as president.

A searing indictment and a good choice for readers who have never delved into Trump's pre-presidential background.

Kirkus Reviews