Summary of John W. Dean & Bob Altemeyer's Authoritarian Nightmare

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

Sample Book Insights:

#1 Trump, despite being unschooled in genetic mutation and viral transmission, still decided that the COVID-19 virus was not a big deal. As a result, America took totally inadequate protective measures, and became widely infected with the virus.

#2 The first known victim of the coronavirus was a Chicago woman who had traveled to Wuhan and become ill after returning on Jan. 13. A second passenger from Wuhan arrived in Seattle on Jan. 15 with the disease. But it turned out that two persons in Northern California may have contracted the disease even earlier through community spread.

#3 For years, many people had warned that a pandemic like COVID-19 would eventually strike the country, and scientists had developed models predicting how it would spread and what would be needed to minimize the damage. But Trump was not interested in the virus, and his staff knew they shouldn’t bother him with uninteresting things unless they were prepared to be yelled at.

#4 On January 22, 2020, Trump was asked if there were concerns about a pandemic, and he replied, No. Not at all. But new cases continued to appear elsewhere, and American health officials began speaking aloud about how unprepared the country was for an epidemic.