The return of Donald J. Trump to the White House and US leadership in November 2024 was a bombshell few expected ever to go off.
In the last Trump bite at the cherry of US presidency (2017-2021), as president, he had encouraged worldwide skepticism about the Coronavirus pandemic that the World Health Organisation estimates killed over seven million people across the globe.
Ever the maverick, Trump announced that the USA was not prepared to continue playing the world’s policeman for “free.” He rattled many capitals in Europe when he demanded that Western countries increase their contribution to the joint defence fund that runs NATO.
At the end of his presidency in 2021, after he had lost his re-election bid to former Vice President Joe Biden, like a third-world strongman, Trump attempted to stage a coup. The result being the infamous January 6 insurrection where his supporters marched on the US Capitol building in an attempt to stop the certification of results that he had lost the presidential race.
All through his presidency, Trump made it a point to relentlessly hammer the media that tried to criticise his style of leadership as “fake news.” His attacks weakening an already beleaguered profession as media houses struggled to keep journalists on payroll.
By the time the Marine One lifted off the White House lawn taking Trump for his last ride as president, not many missed his bad tempered absence at the swearing of Joe Biden.
At least that was the impression. That with a below 50% approval rating as he left the White House, there was no way Trump could make a comeback.
But this is exactly what has happened in 2025! In Trump’s own words, against all odds, he managed to stage the “greatest political comeback” with a stunning victory against his Democratic Party competitor Kamala Harris.
Uncharted by Chris Whipple attempts to understand how Trump pulled off what many experienced commentators believed was impossible, a second non-consecutive term for a president who had been very controversial in and out of office.
Uncharted suggests that for at least the last two years of his presidency, Joe Biden may not have been in charge of running the United States.
Biden, as the June 24, 2024 debate demonstrated, may have suffered some sort of mental decline due to the rigours of trying to run the world’s number one superpower many months before that. His inner circle decided to keep it secret by limiting his exposure to a nosy press.
In touch with the Biden and Trump camps from his work as a journalist, Whipple is able to show that Trump won not because he was such a great candidate but because of the Democratic Party’s many unforced errors.
There was the glaring fact that Biden did not much like or trust his number two Kamala Harris. He did not anticipate that he would suffer a mental deterioration and she might have to step in for him.
Fully cognisant of the biases against her as a mixed race, black Indian woman trying to climb to the top of the ultimate power ladder, Harris was terrified of taking one wrong step that would give her enemies ammunition.
When she should have asserted her individuality, Harris did not, trying to cater to all interest groups after “forcing through” her nomination to succeed Biden who had been forced to step down.
Uncharted comes with the receipts of how decades long friendships between former president Barack Obama, former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and the Bidens’ were strained as they strove to force the incumbent out of the way in time to be ready to confront the “nuisance” they thought Trump would be. Trump would be more than a nuisance.
Whipple details in some thrilling detail how the star of Trump’s campaign run, apart from the candidate himself, should probably be Susan Wiles. Uncharted is a quick, straight to the facts read for political junkies who want a peek behind the curtains of power.
Uncharted can be read alongside Fight by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, the first salvos about a period of American history that is likely to attract hundreds of books of examination in the coming years.
For it cannot be denied, Trump is reshaping our world, how he came to be in control of it deserves careful study.
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