It's Even Worse Than You Think: What the Trump Administration Is Doing to America Hardcover – January 16, 2018

The author has been a long time observer of Donald Trump so he brings to this book a rich background of facts about our president long before he was elected.He covers a multitude of subjects such as “The Wall” that Trump has been talking about for some time. If this wall is ever built, you can rest assured that the U. S. will be paying for it and not Mexico. Our State Department is woefully understaffed and Trump seems to be in no hurry to replace those who have departed. In Trump’s view, nobody would be able to conduct diplomatic activities better than himself. Our Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, is putting the interests of bankers ahead of students and their families. Scott Pruitt, the fellow who is head of the EPA and the lawyer who has been trying to destroy the agency he now heads, is rolling back all the regulations intended to keep our planet’s air and water free of pollution.What about our infrastructure? Trump made a major point during his campaign about devoting great attention and money to our crumbling infrastructure, promising a comprehensive plan immediately after his inauguration. However, such a plan has not yet appeared.The Defense Department is clearly that part of the Federal Government receiving the largest increase in its budget. It seems rather ironic that our military will be defending a country that, in the long run, will no longer be as well off as it is today.Reading this relevant book was riveting but, after a couple of chapters, I found it depressing and had to put it aside for another day. I continued in this start-stop fashion until I eventually finished it. I hope that the coming mid-term elections will change the composition of our Congress so that this national self-defeating trend can be reversed.

No one knows Trump better than David Cay Johnston who as a journalist spent the better part of 30 years documenting his life. Johnston pulls no punches when it comes to reporting the facts. He is a journalist in the true sense.

I really would give it 3 1/2 stars, but what the hell, there's no option for that. The book is organized by topic, clearly written and comprehensive, and fulfills the promise inherent in the title. It is very useful in bringing together all the little bits that have been scattered over these long, dreary political months since inauguration, so many that they tend to slip away if not re-noted. It is not, however, the gossipy fast-read of one of its competitors, Fire and Fury, that is a lot more fun but perhaps a bit more suspect. I believe that I can rely on Johnston's reporting because I have read his earlier books and not found them wanting in accuracy. Depends on what the reader is looking for.

David Cay Johnston is a working journalist who has covered Donald Trump for decades, and has written two previous books about him. In this book, he looks not at Trump's personal life and all the possible, ah, colorful details, which at this writing are much in the news, but strictly at his actions as President, and his business dealings that explain and illuminate those actions.This is very much a fact-based book, examining what Trump has actually done, and the practical effects, as well as the direct contrast between Trump's specific and oft-repeated campaign promises to help, for instance, students struggling under student loans or workers who aren't finding jobs because companies have moved those jobs overseas, or to help small businesses, and what his policies really are. Trump has appointed Betsy DeVos to head the Dept. of Education. She has no real education experience, but is deeply involved in for-profit education companies. Under Trump and DeVos, President Obama's progress toward protecting students from predatory loan practices by for-profit schools are being reversed, not improved. This is just one easily summarized example. To fully understand this example and others, Johnston's careful detailing of the actions, their background, and their effects are necessary.He lays out Trump's many conflicts of interest, and the extent to which Trump's approach to the Presidency is truly different not just from our most respected Presidents, but even from the ones we've considered incompetent or corrupt. We see how tangled, contradictory, and profoundly unhelpful his immigration actions and policies are to the American workers he has promised he will help with those immigration policies are. Again, another example, one better understood with Johnston's detail and context than in a short review.This is an important book. It is fact-based, not ideology-driven. You will learn by reading or listening to it.Highly recommended.I bought this audiobook.

David Cai Johnston has very comfortable writing style that makes reading history enjoyable.