Pod Save America

I just turned 80, and I can tell you, you lose a step. You're not as sharp.

She's like, have you not read my new true crime thriller?

Chris Christie was so sick, he had a priest rubbing oil in the shape of a cross on his forehead.

Trump called him to say, 'You're not going to blame me for this, are you?'

Known and Unknown.

Known and Unknown is Donald Rumsfeld's memoir.

It is just an incredibly important piece of reading for understanding and contextualizing the moment we are in and the four years we just went through.

I just want to congratulate you on the book.

the title of the book, which comes from a column I wrote in 2018, was basically it was inspired by I was watching this was during the Kavanaugh hearings and I was watching a rally that the president was holding, the then president was holding in defense of Brett Kavanaugh, who had been accused by Christine Blasey Ford of sexually assaulting her when she was a teenager.

Everyone go out and buy The Cruelty of the Point.

It's an essential read to understand what we went through and what we're still going through.

I'm showing America a plan to make America democracy again, my book that was released in February, 2020, three and a half weeks before the entire country and bookstores shut down due to a pandemic mishandled by, uh, the man whose name is in the title is out in paperback this week.

And when I was writing the book, I was filled with the anxiety of writing a book about contemporary politics because things change very quickly.

Well, the paperback is out. I hate to say this, John, but Trumpism has outlasted Trump and Democrats still trumped America is still Trump's.

So if you did not get a chance to read it when I was on hardback or if you just want to read it again, because it has a new epilogue that talks about the 2020 election and where we go from here on trumping America, a plan to make America a democracy again is available where we get your books these days. Go buy it, people go buy it.

I'm reading a book called Descent, which is coming out in a few weeks from our old friend Jackie Calms, who was a reporter who covered the White House.

And so when, you know, obviously the response and there's a great, very in-depth look at the response to the virus by Lawrence Wright in The New Yorker, I suggest everybody read it, set aside a few days for it, it's quite long.

I remember I was on that Trip and I remember that meeting So well because I had read Summer Meditations in college And I brought along my copy of the book Right here with me on the trip Because I naively thought that Spokespeople on foreign trips with the President have time to read books That is not how it works

So these comments came as part of 18 separate interviews that Trump gave Woodward for his new book Rage.

I don't want to create panic.

I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down.

It's also more deadly than your, you know, your even your strenuous flus.

This is more deadly. This is five per... You know, this is 5 percent versus one percent and less than one percent. You know, so this is deadly stuff.

Then I read a book called Weather by Jenny Ophel, which is very, it's very short sort of amazingly written book about people dealing with the existential threat of climate change, which also is less dark than it seems.

It is the TV correct, New York Times who wrote a book about how TV informed Trump's relationship, which is a great book, which whose title I have totally forgotten right now.

And I just started A Death in Her Hands by Otessa Mavska. I think I might mispronounce her name, but she is a American author who wrote a book called Eileen that won a lot of awards a few years ago. And this is a bit of a sort of a literary murder mystery and I'm only 10% in, which I know that cause I read on a Kindle, but it's superb.

And then, you know, Timothy Krause's Boys on the Bus about the reporters covering the 1972 election is sort of helps you understand the modern, how we got to the place where we've been covering campaigns like sports for decades now.