“A brilliant, riveting, funny, terrifying journey into
the beating heart of Trumpland.”—Liza Mundy, author of Code Girls
In this daring work of immersive journalism, New York
Times bestselling author Carl Hoffman journeys deep inside Donald Trump’s
rallies, providing a definitive portrait of the strange and powerful tribe that
forms the former president’s base.
Hoffman, who has written about the most dangerous and remote
corners of the world, pierced this alternate society, welcomed in and initiated
into its rites and upside-down beliefs, and finally ushered to its inner
sanctum. Equally freewheeling and profound, Liar’s Circus tracks the
MAGA faithful across five thousand miles of the American heartland during a
crucial arc of the Trump presidency stretching from the impeachment saga to the
dawn of the coronavirus pandemic that ended the rallies as we know them.
Trump’s rallies are a singular and defining force in
American history—a kind of Rosetta stone to understanding the Age of Trump. Yet
while much remarked upon, they are, in fact, little examined, with the focus
almost always on Trump’s latest outrageous statement. But who are the tens of
thousands of people who fill these arenas? What do they see in Trump? And what
curious alchemy—between leader and adoring crowd—happens there that might
explain Trump’s rise and powerful hold over both his base and the GOP?
To those on the left, the rallies are a Black Mass of
American politics at which Trump plays high priest, recklessly summoning the
darkest forces within the nation. To the MAGA faithful, the rallies are a form
of pilgrimage, a joyous ceremony that like all rituals binds people together
and makes them feel a part of something bigger than themselves. Both sides
would acknowledge that this traveling roadshow is the pressurized, combustible
core of Trump’s political power, a meeting of the faithful where Trump is
unshackled and his rhetoric reaches its most extreme, with downstream
consequences for the rest of the nation.
To date, no reporter has sought to understand the rallies as
a sociological phenomenon examined from the bottom up. Hoffman has done just
this. He has stood in line for more than 170 hours with Trump’s most ardent
superfans and joined them at the very front row; he has traveled from Minnesota
to Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and New Hampshire immersing himself in their
culture.
Liar’s Circus is a revelatory portrait of Trump’s America,
from one of our most intrepid journalists.
“Revealing. … A sobering, scarifying account that leaves the reader exhausted and in awe at the author’s endurance during these ritual gatherings of the MAGA tribe.”
