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Fools on the Hill: The Hooligans, Saboteurs, Conspiracy Theorists, and Dunces Who Burned Down the House Audiobook
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From inside the chamber, bestselling author Dana Milbank exposes the petty, inchoate, and dysfunctional state of the Republican House—a confederacy of dunces racing to the bottom, without shame and certainly without the ability to get anything done.
On January 3rd, 2023, a slim Republican majority took control of the House of Representatives, and the dysfunction began immediately, when they needed fifteen ballots to elect Kevin McCarthy as Speaker—the longest since the eve of the Civil War. They would then dump McCarthy and spend a month in the wilderness searching for a replacement, only to threaten the understudy with the same fate. This is more of a circus than a caucus: from Majorie Taylor Greene to George Santos to Jim Jordan, this crowd could find conspiracies everywhere, in space aliens, in the “war” on gas stoves, and in Hunter Biden’s artwork. They would turn Americans against each other, attacking immigrants, members of the LBGTQ community, and even the US military, and they would hijack every bill imaginable with far-right fantasies and crazy ideas. And, yet, they would achieve practically nothing; rather than enact legislation, they would consistently fall into fratricide and petty squabbles, doing everything but the fundamental work required of them: paying bills, keeping the government running, and protecting national security.
Dana Milbank spent a year reporting from the Capitol and what he witnessed was beyond imagination. It would prove to be the most insane and incompetent Congressional session in living memory. Fools On the Hill is the first book to pull back the veil, and expose all the shenanigans, chaos, and tomfoolery that defines the modern GOP. It is simultaneously horrifying and laugh-out-loud funny—yet, sadly, all true.
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"With characteristic wit, Dana Milbank reveals how, step-by-step, characters like Newt Gingrich and Karl Rove (bolstered by a barrage of dark money and rightwing media) replaced normal politics with character assassination, violence, endemic lying and racial division. Trump was the inevitable result after the party of limited government morphed over decades into one obsessed with holding power at all costs. Dana documents how Trump accelerated the downward spiral, making it 'safe' to be a bigot and 'weaponizing' conspiracy theories. If you want to understand Trump, this account of Republicans’ destruction of democracy, truth and decency is essential reading."
— Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post columnist and author of Resistance: How Women Saved Democracy from Donald Trump
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Dana Milbank is one of the most exhilarating writers covering Washington today. When I see his by-line in my morning paper, I know my day is getting off to a bracing start.
— Christopher Buckley, author of Thank You For Smoking -
Who better to unpack the unserious insanity of the MAGA shock jock caucus than Dana Millbank, the D.C. columnist with the wryest wit and sharpest insight of them all? Dana will have you laughing while you cry for our republic.” —Joy-Ann Reid, TV host and author of The New York Times bestselling Medger and Myrlie
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If you crossed Dante's Inferno with Hieronymus Bosch's paintings of depravity you would get Dana Milbank's astounding account of the Fools on the Hill who have sacked America's House of Representatives. Milbank, a seasoned political columnist for the Washington Post, is a wonderful writer and his eye-witness reporting on the meltdown of democracy is mesmerizing. Equal parts funny and horrifying, it will make you both laugh and weep.
— Jane Mayer, author of Dark Money and Chief Washington Correspondent, The New Yorker -
There is a fine and elegant line between humor and horror, and no one walks it any better than Dana Milbank. Literally no writer in Washington is better suited to answering the GOP’s ever-present 'How Did We Get Here?' question. It’s all right here in The Destructionists, in all its depressing, spiraling detail – and yet so thoroughly enjoyable, too. That’s the Milbank Miracle, right there. I devoured this.
— Mark Leibovich, This Town and Thank you for Your Servitude -
Dana Milbank is a sizzling hot observer of American politics. His writing is irreverent, provocative and, whether or not you agree with his point of view — always entertaining.
— Jonathan Karl, Front Row at the Trump Show and Betrayal -
In this painful, powerful, and deeply necessary account of the devolution of the GOP, one of the nation’s most trenchant political observers chronicles the growing threats to our democracy. Dana Milbank has written a riveting history and a bracing warning about the challenges we continue to face. How did we get here? Where did the epic failures, divisions, and dysfunctions in our politics come from? Milbank argues that Donald Trump, for all his faults, didn’t create this noxious environment -- he was the monster that the GOP had been creating for more than a quarter century.
— Charles J. Sykes, How the Right Lost its Mind -
In this stunning historical review of the modern Republican Party, Dana Milbank chronicles the GOP’s race to the bottom in undermining faith in government by destroying long held and established democratic norms and principles. From swift boating a presidential candidate to sparking the birtherism movement of America’s first Black President and the non stop repeats of the 'Big Lie,' Milbank proves that the Republicans' war is with democratic institutions and perhaps with democracy itself.
— Donna Brazile, former Interim Chair, Democratic National Committee, Hacks: The Inside Story of Break-ins and Breakdowns That Put Donald Trump in the White House -
A thorough and scathing account of how the Republican Party fell prey to Trumpism.
— The New York Times Book Review
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About Dana Milbank
Dana Milbank is a columnist for the Washington Post. Milbank is the author of Smash Mouth: Two Years in the Gutter with Al Gore and George W. Bush—Notes from the 2000 Campaign Trail, as well as the author of the polemic biography of conservative pundit Glenn Beck: Tears of a Clown: Glenn Beck and the Tea Bagging of America. He is a graduate of Yale University, where he was a member of Trumbull College, the Progressive Party of the Yale Political Union. He is a graduate of Sanford H. Calhoun High School in Merrick, New York. Milbank has been married since 1993 to Dona Lynn DePasquale.