Unmaking the Presidency

Donald Trump's War on the World's Most Powerful Office

Susan Hennessey, Benjamin Wittes

• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Year: 2024
• eBook ISBN: 9780374718411
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In American presidential history, this is "perhaps the most penetrating book to have been written about Trump in office" ( Times Literary Supplement ).

The extraordinary authority of the US presidency has no parallel in the democratic world. Today that authority resides in the hands of one man, Donald J. Trump. But rarely if ever has the nature of a president clashed more profoundly with the nature of the office. Unmaking the Presidency tells the story of the confrontation between a person and the institution he almost wholly embodies.

From the moment of his inauguration, Trump has challenged our deepest expectations of the presidency. But what are those expectations, where did they come from, and how great is the damage? As editors of the "invaluable" ( New York Times) Lawfare website, Susan Hennessey and Benjamin Wittes have attracted a large audience to their hard-hitting and highly informed commentary on the controversies surrounding the Trump administration. In this book, they situate Trump-era scandals and outrages in the deeper context of the presidency itself. How should we understand the oath of office when it is taken by a man who may not know what it means to preserve, protect, and defend something other than himself? What aspects of Trump are radically different from past presidents and what aspects have historical antecedents? When has he simply built on his predecessors' misdeeds, and when has he invented categories of misrule entirely his own?

By setting Trump in the light of history, Hennessey and Wittes provide a crucial and durable account of a presidency like no other.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Notice
• Dedication
• Introduction: “It’s MODERN DAY PRESIDENTIAL”
• One: “I do solemnly swear”: The Oath
• Two: “The President needs help”: White House Decisions
• Three: “This president runs this government”: The Non-Unitary Executive
• Four: “When a President speaks … it is for keeps”: The Official Voice
• Five: “An inexhaustible fund of political lies”: The War on Truth
• Six: “The love of power, and the love of money”: Ethics in the White House
• Seven: “The power to protect the guilty”: Corrupting Justice
• Eight: “A TOTAL POLITICAL WITCH HUNT!”: Investigating the President
• Nine: “Without deliberation … or appreciation of facts”: The Conduct of Foreign Affairs
• Ten: “It squints towards monarchy”: The Kingly Powers
• Conclusion: “A man unprincipled in private life desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper”
• Postscript
• Notes
• Acknowledgments
• Index
• Also by Benjamin Wittes
• A Note About the Authors
• Newsletter Sign-up
• Contents
• Copyright