- George Sorial, a Trump organization lawyer and executive, produced "The Real Deal: My Decade Fighting Battles and Winning Wars with Trump" in June 2019.
- Anthony Scaramucci, a Harvard Law grad and Wall Street executive who was Communications Director briefly in August 2017. Produced "Trump: The Blue Collar President" in October 2018.
- Chris Christie produced "Let Me Finish" in January 2019.
Christie frequently and bitterly disagrees with Steve Bannon's descriptions of events (which figure prominently in Michael Wolff books). Christie recounts a statement of Bannon and adds, "That flatly never happened" or similar remarks. Here is the story of the elaborate Transition Planning work - "two dozen three ring binders" - that were tossed the day after the election. Instead, seemingly random interviewers were summoned at odd intervals to Trump's New Jersey estate.
Christie would have taken Chief of Staff in the new White House; DOJ was locked down by Jeff Sessions who long before had endorsed Trump in the first hours when it became possible. However, he felt railroaded out by Kushner and Bannon. This was a second slam-down, the first having being the transition plan.
There is an interesting story that Christie was dangled, and would have taken, head of the Republic National Committee, but this proved to be another bait and switch that really p--d him off and he couldn't take that gang any more.
He talks about his early strong interest in opioid treatment programs, and that he was trying to wrangle $300M out of New Jersey health plans (Horizon BCBS) for this in 2017, leading to a budget shutdown and the infamous picture of him on the empty beach.
Christie is quite proud of his rule as chairman of an Opioid Policy commission that produced an elaborate roadmap report in November 2017.
See Christie on Bill Maher, February 2019, here.
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The Scaramucci book was entertaining; I listened to most of it as an audiobook. He had written several books before this one and he has had an interesting career up to his current age 55. Scaramucci was a working-class Long Island kid who worked himself up to Harvard Law and Goldman Sachs and later started his own hedge fund. He says he reads 60 books a year (1800 in 30 years.) Tidbit: he likes audiobooks himself.
Scaramucci's book is clearly an update of his prior "Hopping Over the Rabbitt Hole," which describes his business career and learnings up to 2016. Publication date October, 2016. His "Trump" book from late 2018 reprises (simply copies) large swaths of his prior autobiography while appending several chapters on the 2016 campaign and the August 2017 White House adventure.
Both Christie and Scaramucci detest Bannon. For more on Bannon, see the recent documentary The Brink (here, here).
The Soriol book was a little too hagiographic to be sustaining, but an easy skim-through. Or pass on the book, and invest an hour in the podcast/interview at CSPAN BookTV "After Words" from June 2019 (online here).
Soriol's book is the only one that prominently lists a co-author on its cover; Christie's book lists a co-author in fine print.
All three books available as audiobooks; Christie and Scaramucci narrate themselves.
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The Michael Wolff books are #1, Fire and Fury (January 2018), and #2, Siege:Trump Under Fire (June 2019).
