Kirkus
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In which America trembles like the Cowardly Lion at the door of the Trump White House. Weisberg, a longtime political journalist, opens with a memory-turned-thought-experiment, recounting his travels through Eastern Europe of Iron Curtain days, where he encountered both people who kept their heads down and people who fought the system. “How would Americans behave if standing against the abuse of power meant paying a real price?” Weisberg asks. “How well would our institutions and leaders perform in a world of censorship, loyalty oaths, blacklisting, and guilt-by-association?” Not well. Instead, he chronicles, we have the spectacle of the “Great Capitulation of 2025,” in which industry leaders, media figures, lawyers, academics, and assorted collaborators bent the knee. Their reasons are varied: Some wanted to make a buck, like the senior partners of Big Law, “a market of mercenaries.” Others wanted the favors that President Trump dispensed to his allies: Think Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos (whom Weisberg brands a “tech toady”). In his long analysis of media figure Megyn Kelly, the author shows that the price of landing on Trump’s bad side was her loss of highly lucrative TV gigs. However, she caved in, he says, given that Fox News no longer rules the airwaves: “The universe was now Trump-centric, and Kelly sought proximity to that heat.” Still others didn’t resist simply to avoid trouble—including threats of violence and sometimes the real thing. “A curious hallmark of Trump’s authoritarian style is that he’s always happy to accept surrender,” writes Weisberg. Mitch McConnell, John Roberts, and George W. Bush figure on Weisberg’s toady roll call as well—the first two for enabling Trump, the last for not speaking out, whether out of fear or, the author offers, mere laziness. A highly readable study of the politics and price of capitulation. Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.