Description

One of The Washington Posts 10 Best Books of 2022

The disturbing eyewitness account of how a new breed of Republicansled by Marjorie Taylor Greene Paul Gosar Matt Gaetz Lauren Boebert and Madison Cawthornfar from moving on from Trump have taken the politics of hysteria to even greater extremes and brought American democracy to the edge

The violent insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6 2021 was a terrible day for American democracy but many people dared to hope that at least it would break the fever that had overcome the Republican Party and banish Trumps relentless lies about the stealing of the 2020 electionThat is not what happenedInstead the big steal has become dogma among an everhigher percentage of American RepublicansWhat happened to the Republican Party and America during the Trump presidency is a story we more or less think we knowWhat has happened to the party since it turns out is even more disquieting That is the story Robert Draper tells in Weapons of Mass Delusion

Through his extraordinarily intrepid crosscountry reporting Draper chronicles the road from January 6 to the 2022 midterms among the Republican base and in the US Congress rendering unforgettable portraits of how Marjorie Taylor Greene and her ilk came to shape their partys terms of engagement to an extent that would have been unimaginable even five years agoHe also brings to life the efforts of a dwindling group of Republicans who are willing to push back against the falsehoods in the face of a group of ascendent demagogues who are merrily weaponizing themWith a base whipped up into a perpetual frenzy of outrage by conspiracy theoriesnot just about the big steal but about COVID and vaccines pedophilia and Antifa and Black Lives Matter and George Soros and President Obama and on and on and onthe forces of reason within the GOP are on the defensive to put it mildly The book also benefits greatly from reporting conducted in Texas Arizona Georgia New Hampshire and other bellwether states in the country of the mind one might call a fever of undending conspiracies

Robert Draper has been a wise fearless and fairminded chronicler of the American political scene for over twentyfive yearsHe has seen the good the bad and the uglyHe has never seen it this ugly Ultimately this book tells the story of a fearful test of our ability as a country to hold together a system of government grounded in truth and the rule of lawWritten on the eve of the 2022 midterm elections Drapers account of a party teetering on the precipice of madness reveals how the GOP fringe became its center of gravity