This memoir starts with the insurrection and ends with what Trump's second impeachment tells America about whom we have become.
To establish a connection to readers, and to set the stage as all memoirs do, Schiff tells us whom he was before becoming a congressional representative.
Throughout this book, he demonstrates that he is humorous, compassionate a master at one of my favorite tools (verbal judo),
Throughout this story, Schiff also is great at describing not only the key players in Trump's agenda; he also beautifully describes everyone closest to him, including family and those he works with.
When Trump started calling him names like "sleazy", one of his first concerns was his 14-year-old son, who was at camp during that public insult. So, when his son had returned, the first thing Schiff did was to sit him down and tell him what the former president called him.
He wanted to protect his son.
But his son's response was, "Can I call you sleazy?" Schiff's response was, "Okay, but you will be "Sleazy Junior." In this exchange, he showed that he is human, compassionate, and funny.
And he demonstrated time and again, throughout the impeachment trials that he is a verbal judo master. During the first impeachment trial, when Nadler was lied about, again and again, Nadler desperately tried to push back, as a boxer might do. And Schiff, being in charge and used to the attacks, initially quelled the disruption that could have happened - until Nadler couldn't take it anymore. His abrupt takeover of the podium gave the media fodder for a few days.
During the first impeachment trial meetings, when Schiff said to his managers, "If anyone raises concerns about our process on this, ... they could blame me." Congresswoman Val Demings' humorous response was, "Why not? Everyone else is."
And when he waited too long during the first impeachment trial to see a dentist for a toothache, he was inspired by one of the managers to use his tooth pain to inspire his focus on the trial - until he waited too long and needed a root canal, and was fortunate enough to get that on the weekend.
While his day-to-day experiences in this memoir truly draw readers into what he shares, readers never forget that this is a story of how good people were persuaded to abandon their beliefs to support Trump's agenda, and how this has and continues to put America at peril.
The title of this book seems to come from two areas. He uses midnight as a metaphor for where the country finds itself after the third impeachment in our history, after the first impeachment trial without a witness or documents. Midnight, as I recall from reading this memoir, is his favorite time of that day, where so many changes occur. And there was that infamous "Midnight Run," when Congressman Devin Nunes desperately took an Uber to the White House to get "alternate facts" that would discredit Former Director of the FBI, James Comey's testimony.
From the Russian involvement here are some highlights:
1. April 2016, Russians secretly communicated with the Trump campaign through George Papadopulos that they possessed stolen Clinton emails;
2. June 2016, Russians inform Don, Jr. in a meeting at Trump Tower, which was attended by Don Jr, Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort, that they could help his father in the election, with the stolen emails.;
3. Russians used WikiLeaks to announce the Clinton emails:
4. June 27, 2016, Trump encouraged Moscow with is, "... if you are listening, I hope you're able to find the thirty thousand emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press;"
5. Roger Stone intimidated the witnesses;
6. Coordination of the leaks by Don Jr., along with a large social media campaign;
7. Paul Manafort held meetings with Russian intelligent agent, Kilimnik, where he gave this agent sensitive internal campaign polling information;
8. Obama imposed sanctions on Russian for its interference, yet afterward, Michael Flynn met with Sergey Kislyak to undermine the bipartisan policy in the United States;
9. Trump continued to work with Russia, in hopes of sealing a deal for a Trump Tower in Moscow; and,
10. Michael Cohen regularly spoke on the phone with Dmitry Peskov, regarding the Trump Tower in Moscow project.
While this demonstrated that the Russians successfully meddled in U.S. democracy and that our intelligence agencies concluded that Russia would do this again, Trump and his circle did everything to ignore the intelligence agencies.
Off-camera, and in passing, Republicans were telling Schiff to keep investigating Trump and Russia.
And after Trump fired FBI Director Comey, Trump celebrated this by having the Russian Foreign Minister and the Russian Ambassador over at the Oval Office. No U.S. Press were allowed to attend that party. But one state-run Russian news agency was allowed to attend. They took pictures during that party.
As the investigations against Trump continued, he went out of his way to create counternarratives to put the focus on the FBI, Hillary Clinton, Mueller, and anyone else who disagreed with him.
Standing next to Putin in Helsinki, when asked by journalists to denounce the Russian attacks against our democracy, Trump said he didn't see any reason why Russia would be responsible for hacking our election. His public comments infuriated even Fox News. And after those comments, Trump had everyone but the interpreters leave the room, so he could privately talk to Putin.
He publicly made Russia more important than America.
When the Mueller Report came out, Attorney General William Barr, who had replaced Sessions, summarized the report, in his own words. This was not necessary, because Mueller had already provided a summary. But Barr's summary was written and presented to the public, in an effort to protect Trump.
Then there's the withholding of millions in military aid to pressure Ukraine to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden. Trump told the president of Ukraine to work with Attorney General Barr to get dirt on the Bidens, and to Ukraine, not Russia interfered with the election. At this point, the Rubicon had been crossed, and Congressman Schiff decided to move forward with the impeachment proceedings.
As the truth continued to come out, this memoir shows how desperate Trump became - so desperate that he fired anyone who did not "kiss his ring."
He even took to the air, threatening witnesses that if they didn't support his agenda, they too would experience his raft.
The more he lost, the more threats he hurled on everyone.
Then, weeks before the insurrection, the Trump campaign spent millions on advertising, "Stop the Steal." This was followed by an invitation to come to Washington for a big protest on the day of the joint session. He promised in this invitation that this would be "wild." He also told the crowd at the National Mall, that they needed to "fight like hell" if they were going to save our country.
Though House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy called Trump during the insurrection, to beg for his help, Trump's response was, "Well, Kevin. I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are."
This demonstrates that Trump encouraged this insurrection.
It is interesting to note here that afterward, Trump said he was exercising his First Amendment rights when he told his followers to "fight like hell."
He ignores the fact that for a private citizen, that would have a different meaning than this coming from a president. The analogy in this memoir is like a fire chief ignoring a burning house, versus a private citizen with no power to extinguish that fire, walking away from that fire.
The fire chief would have been immediately fired. Trump should have been removed, and probative evidence along with witnesses in both trials, as in all trials should have been allowed. But, because Congress' oversight and impeachment powers had been taken from them, due to Trump and those who allowed his threats to make them betray themselves, Right Will Have to Wait.
I enjoyed reading this book because it truly walks readers beyond what we saw in the media, and inspires readers to own their voice, even if it means that others lack the moral strength to honor their core values.
By walking readers through the mindset and dialogues of senators, congressional representatives, and other key legislative members, I hope that those who minimized what was happening, and the risk on our democracy, will find a way to rethink the clarion bell that this memoir expresses.
The only thing that gave me pause in reading this was some of the acronyms were not clearly explained the first time they were used.
Otherwise, thank you for carrying your skill at speaking to your audience into this memoir.
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Midnight in Washington: How We Almost Lost Our Democracy and Still Could
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Reviews with images
Adam Shiff’s deeply personal perspective on our country’s delima.
I finished MIDNIGHT IN WASHINGTON at three this morning.The book describes events we witnessed on TV newscasts and gives Adam Shiff’s perspective on what we saw and heard along with his struggle to participate in the life of his family while leading an effort to combat false claims of self-serving politicians supporting a greedy, incompetent leader who cared only about himself and failed to protect our country’s constitution and our democracy.Needless to say, I found this book to be unputdownable.
Top reviews from other countries
Louna
Riveting and extremely well written
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 19, 2022
Diane Watt
Interesting and well written
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 6, 2022