Crippled America: How To Make America Great Again by Donald Trump

I just recently got done reading Donald Trump's book; Crippled America: How To Make America Great Again. The book was copyrighted and published in 2015, while Donald was still newly on the campaign trail. Before I talk about the book itself, let me shed some backstory on how I came to find and read it.

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First, I had no fucking clue Trump wrote (i.e., had a ghostwriter write it for him) a book while campaigning. I was stumbling around a local Ocean State Job Lots (a ridiculously named store that sells a bunch of discounted/second-hand junk). They have a large book section with all sorts of cheap books, so I always poke around it when I'm there. Crippled America: How To Make America Great Again was lying on the floor. I looked down to this little book sitting on the dusty cement tiles, and there I see it.

The front cover flap with Donald Trump sitting there, glaring at the reader with all the intimidation and body language of someone trying to suppress one of those painful heartburn belches. It had three price stickers on it. The first sticker was unreadable behind the other two (they were all slapped over top each other). The second price the book was listed at (down from its cover flap price of 25 dollars) was 12 dollars. The price I bought it for was 3. Anyways, I snatch up the book (seemingly the only copy there) and take it away to begin reading it. It's a fairly short book, with only 169 pages (and even then it's a small book, so the pages themselves aren't very big, fitting only around 30 lines of 6-7 words each in about size 10 font. I'd estimate there's got to be around 40,000 words ((tops)) to this book, if even that). But let's talk about the book itself.

The book is interesting from the perspective that, penned in early 2015-ish or so, it shows off the earlier, more reasonable version of Donald Trump. Back when he was campaigning on more legitimate ideas and when, yeah, people were unfairly labeling him as racist because he wanted border security. The book talks about Donald's desires to reform education by removing Common Core and giving schools more money. By reforming tax code by taking pressure off the middle class. By putting judges into place all around the country that will defend the right to bear arms. To make other countries somehow 'pay in' for the work America does for them. To rebuild infrastructure and create jobs. To let marketing benefits lure corporations back to operating in America. It's all the stuff his different demographics of voters wanted to hear, without any of the more insane things Trump would begin to say or tweet around the earlier parts of 2016.

The book is written pretty badly. In fact, if it wasn't so short, I may have stopped reading it (it takes quite a lot for me to abandon reading a book). From an objective standpoint, there are typos and miswrites fucking everywhere. It isn't as bad as a typo on every page or anything, but I counted at least 8 alone that I found on one quick read-through. 8 typos on 169 pages is unacceptable in the literary world, and this is a Simon and Schuster publication, no less. It was obviously self-published and ghost-written, but still. Considering the book talks about how great everything Trump makes is and how the book itself is "another great Trump product", it's pretty funny when you consider how badly it's written. There are typos ranging from "biggger" to nonsensical passages like;

"I've said it before - I think the Bible is the most important book ever written - not even close."

This was literally in its own paragraph all by itself. It makes no sense even when put into the context of the paragraphs before or after it.

Then there's this one;

"I'm criticized for not issuing elaborate, detailed policy statements. What good are detailed plans if your country doesn't have the credibility to carry them out- but I issue them anyway."

You're criticized for not issuing statements, but you also issue them anyway in the face of not having a country with the credibility to carry them out? What?

For the record, in the publishing world, an "acceptable" rate of typos or editing mistakes that a lot of people will go by is about 1 mistake per 100,000 words or so (so, roughly, 1 mistake per book). This book managed to have at least 8 in around 35,000-40,000 words. That is an editing mistake every 5,000 fucking words. That is a ratio on par with sloppily/amateurishly proofed self-published novels.

The way this book makes it out to be, you'd think "Trump" brand was "Disney" or "Google" or something. It does not shut the fuck up about how the Trump brand is the most recognizable in the world and everyone knows that it's a top quality brand and how it's all over and how it's the greatest and blah blah blah.

It's basically a pointless summary of all the stuff everyone already knew (or had access to the information of) about Donald Trump. While it's something that gives you a glimpse into the more moderate, old Trump we saw in the early election campaign and it gives more detailed look into the man and the logic behind some of his good (and not good) would-be policies, it's also kind of a slog to read through. Not to mention that with an "About the Author" section that is no fewer than 16 pages long, I don't recommend the book.

FINAL POINTLESS NUMERICAL SCORE:

3/10

It's seriously just not worth it. This book is poopy.