UnPresidented: Politics, pandemics and the race that Trumped all others

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The coronavirus feels like it is changing everything. Suddenly it’s not just a public health emergency; it has the potential to upend this whole election…’ Just didn’t do it for me. Perhaps, as Mark Kermode often says about movies, I could like it more if I saw it for what it is, rather than what I wanted it to be.

I’ve never been able to understand how Trump manages to inspire so much devoted support, but Sopel’s book does shed a tiny bit of light on this, referring to his energy and ability to engage with a crowd. It’s alarming to consider how much support he still has in spite of everything - and had it not been for his disastrous handling of the pandemic it’s certainly possible that he could indeed have won the election. Maybe even BY A LOT. Sopel’s writing style is easy going and genuine, like a friend telling you a story but one that that seems too strange to be real. But as he’s a trustworthy narrator you know it is. I was eagerly awaiting the publication of UnPresidented for several months, so I was elated to receive a review copy, and it was worth the wait.as a correspondent to be here, covering this period of time has been sometimes exhausting, sometimes exasperating, sometimes exhilarating – but overwhelmingly it’s been unforgettable: the wildest of rides, the journalistic assignment of a lifetime…’ Unprecedented is an adjective that describes something that has never been done or experienced before. It refers to an event or situation that is completely new, without any prior example or precedent to compare it to. Unprecedented events are often unexpected, surprising, and can have a significant impact on society, politics, or the economy. Define Unpresidented

Jon Sopel is one of my favourite BBC reporters. Clever, incisive and witty. His USA election reports were generally spot on and this book follows his reporting style. I admit that even though it was all happening on a different continent, thousands of miles away, I was pretty much hooked on events leading up to and during the 2020 United States presidential election. It made all UK elections look bland and boring by comparison and I have to say that there is always something entertaining about Trump, no matter how little sense he sometimes makes. Jon Sopel is a respected British journalist and currently BBC’s North America editor, and as such he makes regular appearances on BBC news programmes. His updates always feel like they are on point and often they’re also wryly amusing. In addition, I’d enjoyed Sopel’s 2017 book If Only They Didn’t Speak English: Notes from Trump’s America, so sourcing a copy of this one was really a complete no-brainer. From Global, Unprecedented charts Guto’s experience working for the former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, where he was exposed to the inner workings of government. This is the final overflow from unfinished war. The word that once described Osama bin Laden and the killers of innocent Americans now extends to citizens protesting the killing of innocent fellow Americans. The concept that is not defined—terrorism—is not bounded. In particular it is not bounded by constitutional or democratic values. Trump, Barr, and the Republicans have cleared the way for a great homecoming: the war on terror, with all of its weapons for the mass destruction of legality, is being fully repatriated.

Unpresidented • Clone Gunman • Blue Bloods • Sex Machina • The Brettfast Club • My Big Flat Earth Wedding • Ghost Protocol • Buzzkill • Mole Hunt • Inside Reagan Rand is seen hate watching Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, a science documentary presented by Neil deGrasse Tyson. This is Jon Sopel’s third book about his time as as the BBC’s North American Editor, and this one is a campaign diary about the 2020 U.S. Presidential election. Sopel had a ring side seat and he documents the increasingly bizarre events that were an almost daily occurrence of the Trump White House. There’s a general feeling that Sopel can’t quite believe some of the things he witnessed, there’s a general feeling of wry amusement, very occasionally punctured with cold fury. Sopel has not interviewed Trump, but his network of “sources” gets you as close as most journalists will ever get. With his BBC career starting at Radio Solent in 1983, he has now found himself one of the few journalists to fly on Air Force one as part of the elite press pool following the President. The life of a reporter sounds exciting, exhilarating, exhausting and for Sopel covering the presidential campaign did not disappoint. If you ever perceived politics to be boring and not for you, this book is witty, but gives a well-informed analysis of the wider politics. If it had been made for broadcast it truly fulfils the BBC’s remit as a public broadcaster to “ inform, educate and entertain”. His experience helps him delve below the surface and gives important insight into what he sees in the White House and the ongoing circus around it.

The limited six-part podcast series includes exclusive interviews and clips from the news archive to provide insight into the key decisions that have changed the course of UK history. What is abundantly clear is that for all his bluster and ego, Donald Trump still holds powerful sway over the minds of millions of Americans. Although “unprecedented” and “unpresidented” sound similar, they have very different meanings. “Unprecedented” means something that has never happened before or is without precedent, while “unpresidented” means something that doesn’t have a president or is without a president. Here’s an example: IncorrectI’ve read six books about 2020 (whether that’s Covid, nature, or just general events) so far. It’s been an unusual experience reliving such recent history. If you’re a big news junkie, you might find the Sopel boring, but I only see peripheral headlines on social media. That meant that this served as a good reminder for me of the timeline of events and the full catalogue of outrages committed by Trump and his cronies. You just have to shake your head over the litany of ridiculous things he said and did, and got away with – any one of which might have sunk another president or candidate. Sopel shares that astonishment: This book is meticulously researched and documented. And it does an incredible job of showing patterns of behavior that span a lifetime. I've read several books examining our current president, but so far, this one has the most comprehensive look at his origin story. Seeing the long game doesn't make it more palatable, but it's definitely easier to understand how we arrived here. I really enjoyed Jon Sopel's book about the run-up to the 2020 US Presidential election. It was written in a diary format and took the reader through the, often bizarre, twists and turns of the election campaign, with the extra curve-ball of a pandemic thrown in. It was good to be reminded of many of the events and although I followed the US election pretty closely there were still things that were new to me. October) ‘…rolling up towards us comes the unmistakable sight of the presidential motorcade, moving at about three miles an hour. Surely not? Surely not a Covid joy ride? But yes, it is. The world’s most impatient patient, with a mask on his face, diagnosed with coronavirus only three days earlier and still infectious, is waving to his supporters.’

Jon Sopel is right. It was far more interesting following a Trump presidency than it would have been covering a Hillary Clinton one. It was certainly never dull and at times baffling. Two examples: He [Joe Biden] may be old, he may make the odd verbal slip, he may not have been the most inspiring candidate, this might have been his third attempt to win the presidency, after the best part of half a century in public life, but as I watch the scene unfold I am left with one powerful thought: whatever his shortcomings, could anyone else have beaten Donald Trump? Almost certainly not.’

UnPresidented (great title) is a fascinating read, and Sopel has a great way with words and spot-on observations, at times making me laugh out loud (for instance, “a lot of what [Trump] says comes out as an anagram of a properly constructed sentence”). This is the third of Jon Sopel's books covering Trump in office, as the BBC's White House correspondent. Guto Harri says: “It’s hard to think of a more turbulent period in British politics, with such a fascinating character at the helm. We all saw the scandals but there’s so much more to report and we owe it to history to provide the insight and perspective that comes from having a ringside seat on the inside.”