Book Review Make Russia Great Again, by Christopher Buckley (2020)

The cover of Make Russia Great Again, by Christopher Buckley, 2020.

Author Christopher Buckley.

The popular assumption throughout the disaster that has been the Trump presidency is that Donald Trump is beyond satire. Donald Trump would seem to be made for satire, since he’s devoid of humor and changes his opinions as often as a butterfly changes direction. But because Trump lacks any kind of even the most basic self-awareness, he’s already a parody of himself. Fortunately for us, Donald Trump finally has the satire he deserves: Christopher Buckley’s new novel Make Russia Great Again.

Buckley admits in an interview with Andrew Ferguson of The Atlantic that he found politics in Washington, D.C. to be so self-satirizing that he left it all behind in his most recent novels: The Relic Master and The Judge Hunter, historical fictions set centuries in the past. But after years of resisting going after Trump, Buckley gave in to the temptation and he says: “I think Trump is fair game for ridicule. Why do I think this? Because it drives him nuts.” If Trump actually read Make Russia Great Again it would drive him up the wall.

Make Russia Great Again is ostensibly the memoir of Trump’s 7^th White House Chief of Staff, Herb Nutterman, a long-time manager of Trump’s resort, but a newcomer to politics. Herb is fundamentally a decent fellow who doesn’t want to insult people. Here’s his description of White House staffer Katie Borgia-O’Reilly, who is superbly gifted at putting anything Trump says in the best possible light: “Katie was sexy in a—I don’t want to say ‘creepy’—certain kind of way, as if you might discover after sleeping with her that she was in fact an android or an Albanian assassin sent to murder your grandmother for no clear reason.” (p.34)

Herb’s status as a somewhat innocent outsider allows Buckley to crank up the satire. When Vladimir Putin suddenly loses an election to the head of the Communist Party, thus triggering a runoff election, it’s revealed to Herb that the election was meddled with by a secret U.S. government AI project, called “Placid Reflux.” The premise behind “Placid Reflux” is that it was triggered when the United States didn’t respond to Russia’s meddling in the 2016 Presidential election. The program assumed that because there was no response by the U.S., the country must be operating without a leader, and so it responded by attempting to throw Russia back into Communism, a scenario more favorable to the United States, since the U.S. had defeated a Communist Russia before.

Buckley’s Trump is, well, just like the real-life one. Trump says of Stalin: “He didn’t fuck around, Stalin. You gotta give him that.” (p.21) Well, I suppose. Much later in the novel, at a rally, Herb describes Trump’s actions: “’Oooh,’ Mr. Trump said, trembling and shaking his arms the way he does when he mocks people with degenerative muscle disease.” (p.247) Buckley’s Trump also throws Diet Coke cans at the squirrels on the White House lawn.

In Make Russia Great Again, Trump is blackmailed by a Russian oligarch thanks to sex tapes, 18 of them in all, showing Trump in various stages of intimacy with the finalists in the 2013 Miss Universe competition, held in Moscow. What does it say about Donald Trump that this scenario is frighteningly plausible? Trump’s reaction to the tapes is quite subdued: “This is not porn, Herb. This is Donald Trump making it with the most beautiful women on earth. And by the way, performing like a fucking stallion.” (p.146) In other words, exactly what Trump would say in reality.

In Make Russia Great Again you’ll be introduced to memorable characters such as Senator Squigg Lee Biskitt, Republican from the Palmetto State of South Carolina. Biskitt had nothing good to say about Trump—until Trump was elected President. Now he’s one of Trump’s strongest backers in the Senate. Buckley describes Biskitt thus: “He always made himself available for an on-the-fly interview, scampering on little feet across the polished floor of the Capitol Rotunda. One observer likened his gait to ‘a penguin on an ice floe trying to escape a sea lion.’” (p.80) Is Senator Biskitt modeled on any real U.S. Senator? Probably not, there’s certainly not anyone like that currently representing the Senate from South Carolina. Certainly no one who used to be, say, John McCain’s best friend who has now turned into the biggest apologist for the Trump administration. That would be ridiculous.

One of my favorite asides in the novel was the bit about the “Ever Trumpers,” who volunteer to have Trump shoot them on Fifth Avenue, in order to fulfill his infamous pledge that he could do such a thing and not lose any voters. As Herb says, “Here, certainly, was a cult of personality taking it to a whole new level.” (p.108)

Christopher Buckley’s very first novel, published in 1986, was The White House Mess, another memoir by another fictional Chief of Staff, also named Herb. Buckley has described the two great themes of all books written by people who have worked in the White House: “It Wasn't My Fault and It Would Have Been Much Worse if I Hadn't Been There.” Herb Nutterman would certainly agree with those two points.

If you’re looking for a good laugh about the state of politics in this monumental election year, you’ll find much to amuse you in Make Russia Great Again.