First look: Mark Leibovich takes on Trump enablers
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Cover: Penguin Press
Mark Leibovich — author of the bestselling "This Town," about Beltway rituals — will be out July 12 with a new vivisection, "Thank You for Your Servitude: Donald Trump's Washington and the Price of Submission."
Why it matters: Leibovich told me this is about people who allowed Trump to happen — "Republican collaborators who helped and enabled and rehabilitated him despite profound misgivings about his character and where he was leading their party, their country and themselves."
Leibovich — who left The New York Times for The Atlantic, where he starts in April — tells me: "I set out to write a sequel to 'This Town,' but for the Trump years. It didn’t take long to realize that this was a ... different and scarier story than the 'This Town' of a decade ago."
- "It is about the dirt that Trump tracked in during his Washington residency, the people he broke, the weakness he seized upon and the party he came to own."
Originally, the title was going to be something like "Trumptown."
- But Leibo said he found "the most compelling part of this story has been about the servitude and submission of the Trump era GOP: the people ... Trump brought to heel, and who were willing to do what it took to make themselves 'relevant' in this dark carnival."
When I asked Leibo if D.C. is back, he replied: "'This Town' never left. It’s a living, breathing mutating organism — like a virus."
