In the days after Trump’s 2016 shock victory, Leibovich considered that a reality television president who had once spanked a porn star with a magazine cover bearing his own face could actually be a good thing. “That premise was way too light.” Instead, he produced a “less fun book,” one that chronicles how Trump “turned the swamp into his own gold-plated Jacuzzi,” as he writes in the book’s introduction, and how the characters of This Town capitulated to Trumpism to preserve their livelihoods. “ This Town, in retrospect, feels like a comedy of manners,” he says. He’d set out to write a This Town for the Trump era, only to discover the deep cynicism at the premise of his 2013 hit wouldn’t cut it for his encore. There’s no shock to this revelation after reading through Leibovich’s latest. “I’ve been tired of the Trump story for a long, long time.”

“I’m absolutely tired of this story, no question,” he sighs. Leibovich had chronicled this milieu of Washington in a 2013 bestseller by the same name, and when Donald Trump steamrolled into the capital city in January 2017, he undertook a sequel, Thank You For Your Servitude: Donald Trump’s Washington and the Price of Submission, out on July 12.Īnd how was the journalist responsible for popularizing “This Town” feeling about it after four years of Donald Trump?

The honeyed wood paneling, sienna leather, and $34 wagyu steak salad screamed “This Town,” shorthand for the circle jerk of Washington lobbyists, lawmakers, and lackeys who ostensibly run our global superpower. I met Mark Leibovich on a Friday in June in exactly the sort of place I’d expect to find him: At BLT Steak, a power lunch spot three blocks from the White House in the heart of downtown D.C.

Leibovich thank you for your servitude