Review: Trump the Establishment

Review: Trump the Establishment

Legal Insurrection readers may recall my previous review of Don Surber’s Trump the Press.

Surber, a recovering journalist with over 30 years of experience, consolidated his many blog posts on the woefully inaccurate punditry concerning Donald Trump’s campaign for his first book. The second, Trump the Establishment, features his analysis of the presidential campaign that led to Trump’s stunning defeat of Hillary Clinton.

Like his first book, Trump the Establishment is filled with humor and keen political analysis. However, the tone is more serious, because the efforts to smash Trump’s run escalated substantially. For those of us who follow politics closely, Trump the Establishment, will become a go-to reference for specific examples of how fake news is generated as it relates to the new administration.

A truly wonderful passage in the chapter, Key Mar-a-Lago, quoted former Legal Insurrection author Anne Sorock. Her work at the Frontier Lab using the deep values methodology allowed her to predict the Trump phenomenon before anyone else. Surber noted her post-election analysis.

…While his lawsuits were a target-rich environment to attack him, most of the media gave them scant notice, as one would have to slog through thousands of pages to find dirt on The Donald. Mocking his show, The Apprentice, was easier.

However, Anne Sorock, a researcher at Cornell University, saw the show as beneficial to Trump and predicted he would win the presidency, four months before he entered the race. She based this on the positive feedback from people at the Conservative Political Action Committee’s annual confab near the capital that year.

“A mentor of mine remarked to me once that when things got truly bad, the talented and ambitious—those living their lives as doctors, businesspeople, scientists—would reenter the political realm. That’s the other thing. The GOP insiders didn’t realize things had gotten truly bad. They were still working. These people weren’t,” Sorock told the Legal Insurrection blog after the election….

Trump the Establishment summarized many key challenges the campaigning Trump team faced from an openly hostile press, made-up news, rabid progressives, and Clinton-supporting Republicans under Surber’s hallmark titles of hilarity:

•  The Veep Stakes: All the usual suspects had predictions….which failed to include Mike Pence.
• PC Conservatism: The meltown of conservative, #NeverTrump intelligensia.
• Frenemy Territory: Speaker of the House Paul Ryan’s antics during the election.
• Down Ballot Blues: Bad polls and worse reporting on how Trump was going to cause GOP problems in congressional elections.

The chapter on the North American Free Trade Agreement, comparing how it was presented and what the actual consequences of its application has been, is one of the most illuminating reviews of this topic I have seen.  This section alone, for its value as a handy reference to use when certain conservative pundits make assertions about what is good for regular Americans, is priceless.

My favorite title covers my very favorite chapter: Liberal Tears Taste Best.

Yes, yes they do!  And I raise a glass to Surber who has published another outstanding analysis.

Surber’s book is available on CreateSpace, and he published another excerpt on his website. Trump the Establishment be also be available later at Amazon and other online retailers and the Kindle version willout on March 1.

Given the continuing distortions and obfuscations of the elite media, vitriol and violence of leftists activists, and stupid progressive tricks, I suspect that Surber may be able to produce as many sequels as the Star Wars franchise.

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