Monday, October 22, 2018

Unbelievable: My Front-Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History Paperback – August 28, 2018 by Katy Tur (Audio :HarperAudio, Hardcover: Del Street Books)



Katy Tur is the NBC correspondent who covered Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. In that position she endured his continued abuse as well as the abuse of his followers. Early in the campaign in New Hampshire, Trump booms out: “’Katy hasn’t even looked once at me.’” Another time he says to her: “’Be quiet.’” In one rally he opines that “she’s back there, little Katy.’” Then he calls her a liar and a ‘”third-rate reporter [three times in case anyone missed his harangue].’” He calls into Fox & Friends and says that Katy Tur “’knows nothing about my campaign . . . she’s a, you know, not a very good reporter.’” And Trump even gives Tur an unwanted big kiss on her cheek on one occasion.Called “Disgraceful,” “third-rate,” and “not nice” by Donald Trump, NBC News correspondent Katy Tur reported on—and took flak from—the most captivating and volatile presidential candidate in American history. Tur lived out of a suitcase for a year and a half, following Trump around the country, powered by packets of peanut butter and kept clean with dry shampoo. She visited forty states with the candidate, made more than 3,800 live television reports, and tried to endure a gazillion loops of Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer”—a Trump rally playlist staple.
From day 1 to day 500, Tur documented Trump’s inconsistencies, fact-checked his falsities, and called him out on his lies. In return, Trump repeatedly singled Tur out. He tried to charm her, intimidate her, and shame her. At one point, he got a crowd so riled up against Tur, Secret Service agents had to walk her to her car.
None of it worked. Facts are stubborn. So was Tur. She was part of the first women-led politics team in the history of network news. The Boys on the Bus became the Girls on the Plane. But the circus remained. Through all the long nights, wild scoops, naked chauvinism, dodgy staffers, and fevered debates, no one had a better view than Tur.
Unbelievable is her darkly comic, fascinatingly bizarre, and often scary story of how America sent a former reality show host to the White House. It’s also the story of what it was like for Tur to be there as it happened, inside a no-rules world where reporters were spat on, demeaned, and discredited. Tur was a foreign correspondent who came home to her most foreign story of all. Unbelievable is a must-read for anyone who still wakes up and wonders, Is this real life?

Trump’s protestors are just as bad, calling her a c—t, and going after her family and threatening her. One man actually spits in her face. She finally gets private security for all the rallies as they get rowdier.

Mr. Tur, however, in her book UNBELIEVABLE gets the last word but certainly not the last laugh. She also says in her Prologue that she hired a fact-checker, went through volumes of documents, e-mails, and videos and checked her memory with other reporters to insure that her book is accurate. The result is a well-developed and unbiased-as-possible account of what she saw throughout the Trump candidacy and ultimate victory party on election night.

This writer, who by the way, has a great sense of humor, also includes information about her parents, a lost boyfriend, a potential new boyfriend and her own feelings and fears as she zig-zags across the U. S. following Trump.

I was not aware that Ms. Tur predicted that Trump would win the presidency a few days before the election. She arrived at this conclusion in part from seeing the people who attended the Trump rallies and how he inflamed them. (A day before the election at a rally a man yells out something that Ms. Tur will not forget: “’Assassinate the b-t-h.’”)

Finally here is her quotation about Trump’s winning: “To actually watch Trump’s miracle come in is a shock like missing the last stair or sugaring your coffee with what proves to be salt. It’s not just an intellectual experience. The whole body responds.”

For me and most of the people I hold dear, Trump's victory was a full-body slam.

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