Of youth, truth conscience
Cassidy Hutchison is 26 years old. Read that again.
She was only 25 when she testified at the congressional hearings to investigate the attempted coup by Donald Trump at the US Capitol in January 2021. Her hearing was instrumental to the confirmation that Trump and his henchmen had knowingly lied about the outcome of the presidential election and then summoned militias to disrupt the certification of Biden’s victory.
Admittedly, she was awkward about the hearing and what she would say, even as she walked in to the hearing. But something in her was stronger than her nerves.
Here are our Bookstrapping insights.
1. “My conscience was bothering me,” she writes. As assistant to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, when solemnly asked if she would take a bullet for Trump, she replied, “Yeah,” adding later that she’d prefer to take it in the leg. So she was not really a devoted Trump loyalist, even though she worked for him with commitment.
2. The courage to speak up came from her family- she remembers how her grandmother told her that ants work hard for their communities and families and ‘there’s a whole world being built beneath our feet.’
3. The combination of youth and conscience in this book make it compelling. And thankfully, not everything is resolved. She credits her hunter-warrior father for making her tough as a child. As this relationship evolves – she learns that her father admires Trump as a warrior too. Yet, she is quick to point out Trump’s dislike of animals, which to her was a‘a symptom of his quaking cowardice.’
4. A chance observation by her mom that ‘people found her approachable and liked talking to her,’ shaped how she saw herself. The honesty with which Cassidy talks about the unpredictability that her father bought to her life, in contrast to her mother who was stoic, calm, dependable is very relatable.
5. The memoir is almost everything that you would readily believe about Donald Trump. He smashed plates right next to the Oval Office, where he has a private dining room. He squirts ketchup on the walls to express frustration!He disliked people who were unimpressed by his wealth. Quite graphic.
At the end of the book, her Trump-loving father sells his house and disappears with no forwarding address. She is relieved to be rid of him. And one sentence may stay with the reader for a long time, “Titanically petulant, Donald Trump sought to overturn the US constitution because he felt “embarrassed” by his lost bid for re-election.”
Reeta Ramamurthy Gupta is a columnist and bestselling biographer. She is credited with the internationally acclaimed Red Dot Experiment, a decadal six-nation study on how ‘culture impacts communication.’ On Twitter @OfficialReetaRG.