Weapons of Mass Delusion

Chapter One

The Dentist-Patriot

At eight thirty in the morning on January 6, 2021, a tall and wispy-haired man in a gray tweed overcoat with a red necktie stood at the Ellipse with his back to the Washington Monument-seemingly alone, except that he happened to be posing for a photograph that would soon be posted to his Twitter account beneath the phrase "Morning in America." He wore a COVID face mask decorated with the American flag, pulled well below his nose. He moved with a slightly rolling gait from a hip injury and twitched a bit from an unspecified neurological disorder but otherwise cut an indistinct figure-the kind of man who managed to draw attention only through painstaking effort.

Paul Gosar was his name. He was a dentist by trade and by disposition, the kind of fellow one could easily imagine pleasantly humming ancient melodies and cracking cornball jokes while his fingers rifled through the mouth of a captive audience.

Gosar was no one's idea of a history maker. But history swivels, more often than not, from rogue acts committed by rogue actors who trip the wire and blow up the bridge and then are barely heard from again.

This, at least, was Paul Gosar's intention, except for the barely-heard-from-again part.

For the past decade, Gosar had been a U.S. congressman. He was a Republican whose district in Arizona was one of the most conservative in America. His ten-year span of legislative accomplishment was relatively thin: a few post office renamings, several federal land exchanges, a couple of lucrative federal works projects in his district, and most of all, four years of assisting the Trump administration in slashing environmental protections on Arizona's federally owned lands.

Until that day, Paul Gosar's reputation, to the extent that he had one, was not the kind an officeholder traditionally sought to cultivate. His fellow House Republicans found him odd and occasionally offensive. Some harbored deeper concerns

Robert Draper is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and National Geographic Magazine. He is the author of several books, including the New York Times bestseller, Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush. He lives in Washington D.C. with his wife, Kirsten Powers.

Vital and indispensable . . . [Draper s] rigorous reporting adds an unusual level of depth . . . The book s first section, One Day in Washington, will be consumed by most readers in a single breathless gulp. For an event as widely reported as the insurrection at the Capitol has been, Draper provides a startling level of new, first-person detail. We have watched the hearings. We have read the newspaper accounts of that dreadful day. But Draper s extensive interviews with 150 sources pierce the staid facts with vivid humanity . . . Fighting falsehood is all that matters if democracy is to survive, and Draper comes with the fiercest weapon yet: the truth. The Washington Post

Engrossing. Michelle Goldberg, The New York Times

Draper provides pungent new anecdotes about and original analysis of the most outrageous actors [in the Trump era]. The Guardian

A masterpiece of meticulous reporting. George Will, Washington Post columnist

Vastly adds to our understanding of the Trump era. Politico

A must read. POLITICO Playbook

Excellent . . . In focusing on Trump s enablers in Congress and elsewhere, Draper helps to show why the fringe became the center in the GOP and why it isn t going away anytime soon. Jacob Heilbrunn, Washington Monthly

A seamless, terrifying, inside-the-room account and an unsparing one, at that about how the Republicans went from the party of Liz Cheney to the party of Marjorie Taylor Greene. Julia Ioffe, Puck

Fascinating. Anderson Cooper

Brilliant. Johh Heilemann, Showtime s The Circus
 
Deeply reported. Salon.com