Enough

I followed Cassidy Hutchinson’s January 6 Committee testimony very closely, and I believed every word she said, but I still felt compelled to buy and read Enough the moment it was published. They got me with the promise of “brand-new revelations,”, and the book does offer quite a few previously unknown-to-me details about life in the Trump White House, including the allegation  that Rudy Giuliani groped Ms. Hutchinson (an allegation that I believe to be 100 percent truthful). 

However, I was more interested in the behind-the-scenes story of how Cassidy Hutchinson came to testify before the J6 Committee, and what the experience was like. She writes about it in vivid and moving detail; everything from the desperate search for an attorney who would represent her either pro bono or at a reduced fee, to her first “I don’t recall” sessions with the Committee and her decision to ask for a second chance to tell the whole truth, to the security arrangements, including a move from Washington DC to Atlanta. 

Cassidy Hutchinson grew up very working class, with a very difficult and borderline-abusive father. With very little help from her family, she got through college and found her way to Capitol Hill and then the White House, fulfilling her childhood dream of living in Washington DC and becoming part of the political power structure. Not only do I believe that she told the truth about January 6, I also believe that she genuinely believed that she could make a difference within the Trump Administration. She’s only 27 now. She was barely past adolescence when she began working on Capitol Hill and not much older when she joined the White House. She is different from the cynical enablers - the Chris Christies and Mitch McConnells and Mike Pences and Nikki Haleys - who knew from DAY ONE who this man was, and who chose to support him anyway, because he was the surest conduit to power for them. And now that there’s no reasonable way for them to ignore what he is, they pretend that they didn’t know. But they knew. They all knew. I’ll never forgive the Republican party. 

And this is why I don’t write book reviews. I can’t stay on topic for five seconds because the topic is supposed to be this book, and not the fact that Donald Trump was the worst President in U.S. history, and that he was and is a vile and contemptible person. Enough was very good, and I recommend it, as both an expose of the Trump Administration, and a personal story of a bright young person forced to choose between her ideals and her ambition.