Trump Announces New Book about the 2020 Election
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Former president Donald Trump announced Tuesday that he will publish a new book, The Crime of the Century, about the 2020 election.
Trump made the announcement at a rally in Austin, Texas on Saturday. The book will comprise Trump’s argument that his campaign for re-election as president was systematically “rigged” against him in 2020, in favor of president Joe Biden.
No conclusive proof of this claim has been offered to date. In the aftermath of the election, the federal courts across the country, including the U.S. Supreme Court, dismissed scores of legal challenges to voting in several states brought by Trump allies that reflected his claims.
In his rally, where he was joined by former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the former president claimed that the 2020 election was a “heist” and “one of the greatest crimes in the history of our country.” On the book, he said “you’ll be very depressed when you read it,” given that it chronicled his loss, but “we want to have it down for historic reasons,” he added.
Ever since he left office in 2021, Trump has been widely expected to release a memoir about his time in office. Given his continued political involvement and popularity among Republicans, he was initially courted by various publishers, with some estimates of a Trump book deal’s value being as high $100 million.
However, in the aftermath of Trump’s claims about the election and the storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, followed by his second impeachment, many ruled out book deals with Trump. Sources at major publishing houses – e.g., Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Macmillian – which frequently release political memoirs, told Politico in June that Trump-authored book would be a “fact-checking nightmare” and cause difficulties for the company, given Trump’s divisive public image.
Other figures in the Trump Administration, meanwhile, have continued to publish books at major houses, though not without controversy. Last year, former Vice President Mike Pence signed a “seven figure” two-book deal with Simon & Schuster. In response, however, nearly 15 percent of the company’s staff began a petition to have the deal scrapped – which was rejected by CEO Jonathan Karp.
Trump’s new book, meanwhile, is being published by ‘Winning Team Publishing,’ a new company co-founded by his son, Donald Trump Jr. to “represent the Silent Majority, America First patriots, and liberty minded readers,” per its website. It has already published a coffee-table book, Our Journey Together, with pictures of Trump’s time in office, which grossed over $20 million within two months of its release. It has also published Liberal Privilege, a book on the Biden Administration by Trump Jr. No release date has been announced for the former president’s book.
The Crime of the Century would be Trump’s 20th book, the first having been The Art of the Deal, ghost-written by Tony Schwartz, in 1987, which became a New York Times bestseller. Trump has previously been the focus of many books, both before and after his presidential term. An analysis by the British newspaper, The Guardian, in 2018 found that – after one year in office – over 4,500 English-language books had been published about Trump, a number that has dramatically increased since.
