A behind the scenes look at reporting on the 2016 Trump campaign

Book Review: Unbelievable: My Front-Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History by Katy Tur

If you had asked me a year ago, I would never have thought that Americans would stoop so low or accept gratuitous name-calling — on either side, against either candidate. But now, as Trump sniffs and paces onstage tonight in St. Louis, it suddenly seems easy to imagine him surviving this scandal — or even getting a bump from it. Trump is crude, and in his halo of crudeness other people get to be crude as well.

During the entire 2016 presidential campaign, I kept waiting for that one thing that Donald Trump would do that would be the line in the sand, the bridge too far. Reading Katy Tur’s campaign memoir Unbelievable after the 2020 election gave me a much better grasp of why Trump appeals to his base and why they are not going to stop supporting him — even after the Covid-19 pandemic has killed more Americans on his watch than one hundred 9/11's (and counting).

Tur was working as a reporter for NBC in London when she got called on what the network thought would be a short assignment: Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. A colleague joked when Tur got the assignment: “It will be fun...and if you hate it, at least it will be short.”

Little did anyone know when he launched his campaign in the summer of 2015 with paid supporters in the crowd gathered to hear his announcement speech at Trump Tower that he would take his campaign all the way across the finish line — to the White House.

Tur reluctantly gave up her life in London and went on the campaign trail, following Trump across America for a front row seat to what she calls the “craziest campaign in American history.” And even after the 2020 election her assessment of 2016 still rings true. Although, perhaps it’s crazier for people to attend campaign rallies during a pandemic.

Tur did a great job of making me feel that I was along for the ride. I got a glimpse into those infamous rallies that I didn’t get from merely watching the news in 2016. And I’m astonished at how she withstood not only the grueling schedule, but also the abuse from the candidate and his supporters.

Image: The Guardian

The thing I found most interesting were her descriptions of rally-goers. I am used to Trump’s crude behavior, but reading a first-hand account of the countless people who joined in was shocking.

In one passage Tur says: “The thing is, they don’t look like cruel people...it’s hard to imagine them acting this way at home or in the office...But inside a Trump rally, these people are unchained. They can drop their everyday niceties. They can yell and scream and say the things they’d never say out loud on the outside.”

In the end it was indeed unbelievable. Post 2020, and the level of support Trump still has, it still is.

My Rating: 4/5 

Unbelievable: My Front-Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History by Katy Tur, Dey Street Books. 320 pp. Published August 28, 2018 Day  (Publisher Link)