“Here’s what nobody gets,” first term strategist Steve Bannon told biographer Michael Wolff, speculating on a possible Trump second term, “He’ll be unchained. Off the reservation. No moral constraints, no scruples, no cares.”

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At this point Bannon burst into laughter at the sheer absurdity of the idea, before continuing, “It’ll be vendetta, and payback, and f**k everybody. It’ll be an America that nobody ever dreamed of. Donald Trump off his meds is something that nobody is prepared for.”

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So if the danger was foreseen, why wasn’t it avoided? This is the question the author sets out to answer in the Spring of 2025. In the tradition of Steinbeck, Theroux, Least Heat-Moon and many others, Dwyer takes a road trip through ‘red’ America during the first year of Trump’s second term, talking to the locals.

 

In parts comical, always curious and occasionally contentious and combative, the result is much more than an entertaining US travelogue; it’s a barely-believable record of the end of the rules-based world order as we know it, seen through the blinkered eyes of those who’ve helped enable it.