I am beyond halfway through the book “Enough” by Cassidy Hutchinson. It is an excellent read from one of our American heroes who offered steely and scary testimony of the events leading up to and during the January 6 insurrection to keep Donald Trump in the White House. In an article in The Guardian by Peter Conrad called “Enough review – inside story of the Trump White House by star witness at Capitol riot hearings” comments about the book can be gleaned.
The subtitle is “Whistleblower and former aide Cassidy Hutchinson dishes the dirt – from crockery-based temper tantrums to sexual harassment – on the former president and his cast of underlings” which sheds more light. Here are a few opening paragraphs;
“Every legal drama needs a surprise witness. Until June last year, the congressional hearings to investigate the attempted coup at the US Capitol in January 2021 were unsurprising: Democrats presented evidence that Trump had riled up the incendiary mob, to which Republicans responded with regurgitated abuse. Then into the room walked Cassidy Hutchinson, a Republican true believer who had worked as an aide to Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff. No one gasped, because the then 25-year-old woman was unknown, but her testimony, provoked by an uneasy conscience, quietly confirmed that Trump and his henchmen had knowingly lied about the outcome of the presidential election, then summoned loony militias from the backwoods and dispatched them, armed with bear spray and flagpoles sharpened into spears, to disrupt the certification of Biden’s victory.
Hutchinson’s memoir adds many greasy, sleazy details to the more sanitised account she gave in Congress. Trump, she recalls, smashed plates in his dining room beside the Oval Office, squirting ketchup on the walls to express his exasperation. She observes Meadows illicitly incinerating bags of telltale documents that should have been passed to the government archives; his wife complains about the cost of dry-cleaning his suits to remove the stench from so many bonfires. And as Trump exhorts his horde to invade the Capitol, Rudy Giuliani, for whom the mayhem was like a double dose of Valium, leers at Hutchinson with jaundiced eyes and slides his hand up her thigh. Disillusioned and disgusted, she decides, as the title of her book tersely puts it, that she has had enough of the president and his thuggish praetorian guards.”
The book is a matter-of-fact and excellent read just like her testimony was in front of the House Select Committee. Trump supporters who tried to downplay her testimony saying she was an underling and did not have access are, frankly, being untruthful. She worked directly for the last Chief of Staff Mark Meadows after working for the White House liaison group with Congress and she was quite loyal to the former president. Her name and face was known by the former president and she was well thought of by him, Meadows, then Speaker Kevin McCarthy among many others,
The title of the book is telling – “Enough.” It is akin to a mother telling her children to behave or a cheated on wife calling her philandering husband on the carpet. I encourage people to read her account as it shares details that will paint a more complete picture. For those who have been led to believe the former president was not involved directly in the insurrection, this book counters that in a forceful way. Let me just say the insurrection would not have occurred without his demands for results.
At the heart of all the illicit shenanigans is a person with a shallow ego who cannot admit he lost. A quote from the former president to Meadows when she was present is telling, “I don’t want people to know we lost, Mark. This is embarrassing. Figure it out.”
This quote is consistent with what Trump’s niece Mary said in November 2020 “My uncle will burn it all down to avoid losing the election.” For the record, that is not a sign of strength. It is a clear sign of weakness.
Again, I encourage people to read this especially Republicans. They need to know how people who should have pushed back more on the former president failed their oaths to the Constitution.
musingsofanoldfart 