Skip to main content
PBS logo
 
 

Book Review of Team of Vipers: My 500 Extraordinary Days in the Trump White House

Team of Vipers: My 500 Extraordinary Days in the Trump White House
reviewed on + 1775 more book reviews


My rating is based on Mr. Sims here sharing with readers what Pt. Trump is like because I feel we can now better make our own shrewd evaluation of the president dipping into this book. In my case, I am still not a fan.
As I type this I am listening to yet another stream-of-consciousness briefing updating the war on Covid-19.
Sims worked hard to publish this book and will likely do well with it. I learned of it via a favorable review or heard him flogging it, I don't remember which, wished for it to send to the old soldiers' home as it is so current, and thank Ms. Katrina Benson, our PBS comrade.
The author took careful notes as he labored beside Mr. Trump for the best part of two years in a job that burns out aides, but gave the work gave him a close up viewpoint. For example, the president shared an idea to present trophies to those news organizations that he felt were notorious purveyors of prejudiced reports, such as 'CNN-Fake News Network of the Year.' "As everyone working for Donald Trump knew, there were generally two kinds of presidential requests--ones you acted on and ones you ignored unless he brought it up again. I figured this was the latter. A little over a month went byn without him saying anything else about it, at least to me. But late on New Years Day of 2018, I got a text from a friend traveling back from Mar-a-Lago with the president in Air Force One. 'POTUS is back to talking about the Fake News Awards. He wants to host an awards show and hand out trophies.' The text ended with an Emoji character that's laughing so hard its crying."
The photographs are well chosen.
This was pursued but wound up entangled in the advice of the White House Counsel's office, etc. and in the end the RNC published the list online and the president could Tweet about it, not giving the bang the showman hoped for. Mr. Sims concludes, "...Seeing some of the most egregious reporting errors of 2017 all in one place was actually pretty striking. For all the justifiable criticism of the Trump administration's credibility issues--and there were plenty of them--the media gave the President numerous opportunities throw that charge back at them."
Index.