Liar's Circus: A Strange and Terrifying Journey into the Upside-Down World of Trump’s MAGA Rallies

Summary

"A brilliant, riveting, funny, terrifying journey into the beating heart of Trumpland." —Liza Mundy, author of Code Girls

In this daring work
of immersive journalism, based on hundreds of hours of reporting, Carl Hoffman journeys deep inside Donald Trump’s rallies, seeking to understand the strange
and powerful tribe that forms the president’s base. 

Hoffman, who has written about the most dangerous and remote corners of the world, pierced this
alternate society, welcomed in and initiated into its rites and upside-down
beliefs, and finally ushered to its inner sanctum. Equally freewheeling and
profound, Liar’s Circus tracks the MAGA
faithful across five thousand miles of the American heartland during a crucial arc
of the Trump presidency stretching from the impeachment saga to the dawn of the
coronavirus pandemic that ended the rallies as we know it.

Trump’s
rallies are a singular and defining force in American history—a kind of Rosetta
stone to understanding the Age of Trump. Yet while much remarked upon, they
are, in fact, little examined, with the focus almost always on Trump’s latest
outrageous statement. But who are the tens of thousands of people who fill these
arenas? What do they see in Trump? And what curious alchemy—between president
and adoring crowd—happens there that might explain Trump’s rise and powerful
hold over both his base and the GOP?

To
those on the left, the rallies are a Black Mass of American politics at which
Trump plays high priest, recklessly summoning the darkest forces within the
nation. To the MAGA faithful, the rallies are a form of pilgrimage, a joyous
ceremony that like all rituals binds people together and makes them feel a part
of something bigger than themselves. Both sides would acknowledge that this
traveling roadshow is the pressurized, combustible core of Trump’s political
power, a meeting of the faithful where Trump is unshackled and his rhetoric
reaches its most extreme, with downstream consequences for the rest of the
nation.

To
date, no reporter has sought to understand the rallies as a sociological
phenomenon examined from the bottom up. Hoffman has done just this. He has
stood in line for more than 170 hours with Trump's most ardent superfans and
joined them at the very front row; he has traveled from Minnesota to Texas,
Louisiana, Mississippi, and New Hampshire immersing himself in their
culture. 

Liar’s Circus is a revelatory portrait of Trump’s America, from
one of our most intrepid journalists.