Phil Rucker

Dear Friends & Ticket Holders,

We’ve just learned that Philip Rucker and Ashley Parker will not be able to join us in person for this event. Unfortunately, they are stuck in Washington, D.C. and have been asked by The Washington Post to stay there. So, we’ve quickly put our creative and journalistic heads together in order to move forward and have come up with what we hope will be the next best option to keep us from disappointing you: We are moving forward with this event and have prepared to bring the author into Books & Books LIVE VIA SKYPE from the TV Desk at The Washington Post! The author and his moderator will appear to us, on the screen, inside Books & Books, via Skype, for a moderated conversation that will include a guided Q&A with the audience. This will be just like any other author event, except you’ll be seeing the authors LIVE on the screen in front of you.

Please consider joining us and keeping your copy of Phil Rucker’s A VERY STABLE GENIUS: DONALD J. TRUMP’S TESTING OF AMERICA which is the cost of your ticket. Mr. Rucker has quickly and kindly signed book plates that are being overnighted to us and will be distributed with the books at this event, so all copies will be signed copies. We realize this is not the same as hearing from them in person, and should you want a refund, we are prepared to give you one. However, we sincerely hope you will give this novel approach a chance and join us for our first Books & Books televised event! We’ve worked hard to move forward with this event and appreciate your flexibility and understanding. We look forward to seeing you tomorrow night!

About the Book:

Washington Post national investigative reporter Carol Leonnig and White House bureau chief Philip Rucker, both Pulitzer Prize winners, provide the definitive insider narrative of Donald Trump’s unique presidency with shocking new reporting and insight into its implications.

“I alone can fix it.” So went Donald J. Trump’s march to the presidency on July 21, 2016, when he accepted the Republican presidential nomination in Cleveland, promising to restore what he described as a fallen nation. Yet over the subsequent years, as he has undertaken the actual work of the commander in chief, it has been hard to see beyond the daily chaos of scandal, investigation, and constant bluster. It would be all too easy to mistake Trump’s first term for one of pure and uninhibited chaos, but there were patterns to his behavior and that of his associates. The universal value of the Trump administration is loyalty – not to the country, but to the president himself – and Trump’s North Star has been the perpetuation of his own power, even when it meant imperiling our shaky and mistrustful democracy.

Leonnig and Rucker, with deep and unmatched sources throughout Washington, D.C., tell of rages and frenzies but also moments of courage and perseverance. Relying on scores of exclusive new interviews with some of the most senior members of the Trump administration and other firsthand witnesses, the authors reveal the forty-fifth president up close, taking readers inside Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation as well as the president’s own haphazard but ultimately successful legal defense. Here for the first time certain officials who have felt honor-bound not to publicly criticize a sitting president or to divulge what they witnessed in a position of trust tell the truth for the benefit of history.

This peerless and gripping narrative reveals President Trump at his most unvarnished and exposes how decision making in his administration has been driven by a reflexive logic of self-preservation and self-aggrandizement – but a logic nonetheless. This is the story of how an unparalleled president has scrambled to survive and tested the strength of America’s democracy and its common heart as a nation.

GET TICKETS TO THE EVENT HERE

Tickets include entry for (2) guests and (1) one copy of the book, which will be handed out at check in. Please arrive early, seats are limited.

In Conversation with Ashley Parker

Ashley Parker is a White House reporter for The Washington Post. She joined The Post in 2017, after 11 years at the New York Times, where she covered the 2012 and 2016 presidential campaigns and Congress, among other things. Parker is also an on-air contributor to NBC News and MSNBC.

About the Author: 

Philip Rucker is the White House Bureau Chief at The Washington Post, leading its coverage of President Trump and his administration. He and a team of Post reporters won the Pulitzer Prize and George Polk Award for their reporting on Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election. Rucker joined the Post in 2005 and previously has covered Congress, the Obama White House and the 2012 and 2016 presidential campaigns. He serves as an on-air political analyst for NBC News and MSNBC, and graduated from Yale University with a degree in history.