Right after I finished this book, I mean like the next day, Senator Eric Schmitt (R-Missouri) attempted to slam dunk former special prosecutor Jack Smith in a congressional hearing. Who stole the ball and swished it, with an assist from Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota). And then Schmitt, incensed that he had been (gasp!) found in the wrong, regressed right back to second-grade, called Smith a bunch of infantile names, and went off to yip about it on Liars R Us News in hopes Trump would see it and throw him a Milk Bone.
In short, Schmitt would have felt right at home in this book. Here author Jacob Weisberg mirrors the structure of John F. Kennedy’s book, Profile in Courage, which highlighted seven US senators who did not bend the knee, knowing it would cost them and did it anyway. Weisberg’s book is like the negative image of an old photograph, in which each of his seven subjects doesn’t just bend the knee to Donald Trump but abases themselves on the filthy floor before him and don’t care how grubbily they rise again to their feet.
For some of them, it paid off, bigly. For others, not so much. Brad Karp of the law firm of Paul, Weiss, of whom Weisberg writes
You can’t be fully committed to principle and relentlessly committed to making more money.
Sure you can. Of Wall Street financier Stephen A. Schwarzman, of whom Weisberg writes
For the causes and institutions Schwarzman professed to care about, Trump’s second presidency was devastating.
Like for, say, the Kennedy Center, and Schwarzman’s Chinese student foreign exchange program. Of Jeff Bezos, oh my dear good lord. I didn’t know you could watch too much Star Trek but his might be the example that proves the rule.
Blue Origin was back in contention for government contracts—and now potentially to be favored over SpaceX. In June 2025, Trump withdrew the nomination of Jared Isaacman, a Musk protégé, to head NASA. Musk exploded. On X, he threatened to cut off SpaceX’s shuttle service to the International Space Station, the way NASA had to ferry astronauts. Trump responded by threatening to cancel all of Musk’s government contracts. NASA, the Pentagon, and other agencies began calling Blue Origin, as well as a few other companies, to ask whether they could fill the gap. In the new privatized space race, fealty and favoritism would drive outcomes, as they did with everything else under Trump.
The rest of Weisberg’s sell-outs—Megyn Kelly, Mitch McConnell, George W. Bush, Sian Beilock, and the never-to-be-enough-despised John Roberts—are all of a piece. Who was it who said that ambition is a good servant but a bad master? These people are so mastered by their ambition that they have lost sight of anything else, least of all the good of the nation that made it possible for them to thrive.
I can’t say I enjoyed reading this “J’accuse!”, but I’m glad Weisberg wrote it. It will be a useful aide-mémoire for future prosecutors.
To read more of my reviews, download a copy of No Stars right here!
