“It’s [hard] to get a man to understand something, when his community and identity depends on his not understanding it. […] Instead of tie-dyed shirts, they donned red “MAGA” hats. Instead of being young adventurers running away from their parents, these “front-row Joes” (as he calls them) tended to be people who were “retired or close to it” and “estranged from their families or otherwise without children”; they also had “plenty of time on their hands.” What they found was that “Trump had, in a surprising way, made their lives richer.” His rallies gave them a “reason to travel the country, staying at one another’s homes, sharing hotel rooms and carpooling. Two had married—and later divorced—by Trump’s second year in office. […] Trump’s status as both a “rock star” and, simultaneously, a persecuted victim made him an attractive leader for this kind of movement.”
How Trumpists Prey on Loneliness, and Loneliness Preys on Trumpists
To say that I “couldn’t put this book down,” is a time-worn cliche. And let’s face it, I can put just about any non-fiction book down. But I read this book in 24 hours which is really fast for me. I picked this book because I like the way Michael Wolff writes. I’ll let others judge his reporting, but the man knows how to tell a story. In Landslide, he comes as close as anyone could to making sense of the chaos and madness of Donald Trump’s final days. This book reads like a thriller (or a horror story).