Two Views of a Single Presidency

They have, however, mostly declined to put their names to their tales.

That preference for anonymity has begun to end. On the same day—January 29—Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey and Trump ally, released a memoir of his political career, Let Me Finish, and the former Trump communications aide Cliff Sims published an account of his service in the Trump White House, Team of Vipers.

Each book offered up some news-making stories. Sims confirms in excruciating detail the bizarre story of Sean Spicer personally stealing a drink mini-fridge from his own staff. The story was reported in The Wall Street Journal the day Spicer resigned, and was ferociously denied by Spicer at the time and in his own memoir—but after Sims’s account, nobody will doubt that the Journal’s report was true in every shabby detail.”