According to a report at the Daily Beast, Donald Trump's penchant for promoting books that praise his presidency on Twitter hardly moves the needle on book sales -- while books that detail the horrific inner-workings of his White House fly off the shelves.
As author and Beast contributor Molly Jong-Fast notes in her piece, "The Donald Trump Book Club is a bizarro world powered by resentment and hostility. In many cases, the president hasn’t so much as looked at the jacket copy of the titles he promotes. After all, the Trump presidential book club doesn’t pretend to be about content."
"And, unlike Oprah, Donald’s club hasn’t done much to attract readers to his friends, even as his hate tweets have paid off handsomely for his enemies," she bitingly adds.
Case in point, the insider account of former White House spokesperson -- and SNL target -- Sean Spicer.
“A friend of mine and a man who has truly seen politics and life as few others ever will, Sean Spicer, has written a great new book, 'The Briefing: Politics, the Press and the President.' It is a story told with both heart and knowledge. Really good, go get it!" Trump tweeted, with Jong-Fast adding that the tweet, "barely moved the needle for his hapless former press secretary Sean Spicer."
The author notes that some books Trump promotes may be too over the top for even his most ardent fans.
"Some of the president’s book club picks are too preposterous to possibly sell no matter what the positive or negative spin of the tweet may be. For example, The Faith of Donald J. Trump is ranked at #99,655 on Amazon perhaps because its central tenet is so preposterous and of course the book includes this terrifying quote: 'As president of the United States, Donald Trump has been put in a position of authority by Almighty God, which makes the narrative about his faith even more vital to understand the man who promises to Make America Great Again'," she writes, adding, "Um, what?"
To be fair, it's is highly unlikely that Trump has read any of the books he flacks, with Michael Wolff , author of the Trump-bashing "Fire and Fury" writing, “He didn’t read. He didn’t really even skim. Some believed that for all practical purposes, he was no more than semi-literate.”
As for Jong-Fast, she cuts right to the heart of Trump's shameless promoting.
"Ultimately, the Trump presidential book club has nothing to do with books or literature. It has to do with the power of the president’s Twitter account, an imperfect instrument used largely for self-dealing—a brutal tool more like a sledgehammer than a scalpel, but often mercifully ineffective, like a tiny sledgehammer made for someone with very small hands," she writes.
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