Trump in Exile

by Meridith McGraw

Overview

Filled with deep insights and never-before-seen details, Trump in Exile is an explosive, all-access account from behind the scenes at Mar-a-Lago as former president Donald Trump regroups from an election defeat that he refuses to acknowledge and plots his return.

The Capitol riots on January 6, 2021, put a horrific closing note on a norm-shattering presidency, as the twice-impeached Donald Trump rode a wave of denial and resentment out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and crashed back at Mar-a-Lago—seemingly wounded, seemingly done.
 
But he wasn’t. And what, exactly, was he building in there?
 
Meridith McGraw vividly chronicles the incredible period of Trump’s exile in South Florida—a postpresidency like no other in American history—and brings us inside the gilded walls of his private club, where an alternate reality in which the 2020 election was stolen became Republican Party orthodoxy. How did the country go from Trump’s political banishment to his renewed dominance over his party, as he effortlessly destroyed the once-formidable Ron DeSantis and now stands on the verge of returning to the White House—all while facing the heavy shadow of multiple federal and state criminal indictments? The Mar-a-Lago period is essential for understanding Trump’s implausible resurgence and the many missed opportunities to stop him.
 
From a reporter who has covered the Trump era from its beginning, through the White House years, to his 2024 campaign, Meridith McGraw’s Trump in Exile is riveting contemporary history, vital to our understanding of this defining American moment.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780593729649
Publisher:	Random House Publishing Group
Publication date:	08/06/2024
Sold by:	Random House
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	48,076
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Meridith McGraw is a national political correspondent at Politico, where she has worked since 2019, first as a White House reporter. She previously worked as a White House reporter and producer at ABC News, where she began her career. She is a regular contributor on television and has appeared on MSNBC, Fox News, CNN, CBS, NBC, and ABC. She holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Texas at Austin, and a master’s degree from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She grew up in West Virginia and now resides in Washington, D.C.

Editorial Reviews

09/02/2024

In Politico correspondent McGraw’s tart debut, ex-president Trump claws his way back to mastery of the Republican party thanks to crude bluster and the fanatical loyalty of his base. McGraw begins in 2021 with a disgraced Trump’s post–January 6 retreat to Mar-a-Lago. His grip on Republican voters remained strong, she notes—two thirds of them believed his stop-the-steal narrative—and made him a kingmaker who compelled Republican candidates in the 2022 midterms to embrace his election denialism. Banned from Twitter and Facebook, he started his own social media platform, Truth Social (McGraw gives an eye-opening rundown of how Trump snookered the main investors in that venture). Later, he bested his main Republican primary rival, Florida governor Ron DeSantis, with a mix of schoolyard taunts (“Meatball Ron”) and sheer chutzpah (he attacked DeSantis for promoting the same Covid vaccines that Trump did as president). In McGraw’s vivid rendering (“at Mar-a-Lago he was like a spinning top losing momentum”), Trump was able to survive self-inflicted disasters that would ruin any other politician (lunching with Kanye West in the midst of furor over West’s antisemitic remarks; calling for the Constitution to be suspended so that he could reclaim the presidency; undergoing criminal investigations). McGraw evocatively captures Trump’s season of despond and the chaotic energy that powered him out of it. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

2024-06-14
Out of the White House, Trump rages.

McGraw, a national political correspondent atPolitico, makes her book debut with a close look at Trump’s life as ex-president, much of the time spent at Mar-a-Lago, his “decadent, sprawling, gilded mansion on the sea.” Trump bought the estate in 1985, converting it 10 years later into a posh club and resort, where “membership costs hundreds of thousands of dollars up front, plus annual fees of $14,000.” Drawing on interviews with politicians and aides, source notes from her reporting, and published articles, McGraw reveals Trump denying his presidential loss and plotting ways to burnish his political clout. He constantly whipped up conspiracy theories. Frustrated after being banned from Twitter, he founded Trump Media LLC to give him an internet presence in Truth Social, and he encouraged Republicans to grovel for his backing in upcoming races. “Believing—or at least peddling—Trump’s falsehoods about the election,” McGraw writes, was “a litmus test for a Trump endorsement.” Republicans who had voted for his impeachment were targeted for defeat. The much-publicized FBI raid of his premises in the summer of 2022 proved a fundraising boon. “More than ever,” writes the author, “he would become his own rallying cry.I am suffering for you would become his gospel.” McGraw chronicles Trump’s fury over books warning against the perils of another Trump presidency, as he kept close tabs on who was—and wasn’t—defending him. He dubbed the Jan. 6 committee the “Unselect Committee of political Hacks and Thugs.” He refused to take the blame for Republicans’ poor showing in the midterms, “the worst performance by an out of power party in decades.” McGraw ends with his victory in the Iowa caucuses, auguring the dismaying prospect of another Trump presidency, fueled by his desire for apocalyptic revenge.

Informative but largely unsurprising.

Kirkus Reviews