--- title: You’re Not Imagining It: Trump Books Are Coming Out Fast description: There’s been an average of roughly one book about Trump and his inner circle released every single day for the last 188 weeks. canonical: https://time.com/5886795/trump-books-coming-out-fast/ author: Philip Elliott article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2020-09-08T17:34:19.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-24T09:11:20.599Z article:section: Politics og:title: You’re Not Imagining It: Trump Books Are Coming Out Fast og:description: There’s been an average of roughly one book about Trump and his inner circle released every single day for the last 188 weeks. og:url: https://time.com/5886795/trump-books-coming-out-fast/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt4a88a08704bd12dd/698a11ff86f68ef55a6ef2bf/donald-trump-books.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2400 og:image:height: 1350 og:image:alt: President Trump Holds News Conference og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: You’re Not Imagining It: Trump Books Are Coming Out Fast twitter:description: There’s been an average of roughly one book about Trump and his inner circle released every single day for the last 188 weeks. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt4a88a08704bd12dd/698a11ff86f68ef55a6ef2bf/donald-trump-books.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # You’re Not Imagining It: Trump Books Are Coming Out at a Rapid Clip > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME D.C. Brief: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition D.C. Brief is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. Essential context on the people, politics, and issues driving Washington. D.C. Brief goes beyond the Washington headlines to explain the politics, personalities and power dynamics shaping what happens next. Senior correspondent Philip Elliott brings sharp context to the issues driving the capital, connecting the decisions made in Washington to the institutions, industries and people they affect. 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It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, three times a week. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters.  by [Philip Elliott](https://time.com/author/philip-elliott/)  ## Philip Elliott Senior Correspondent Sep 8, 2020 5:34 PM UTC  President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference at the White House on Sept. 4, 2020. President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference at the White House on Sept. 4, 2020. Chris Kleponis—Polaris/Bloomberg/Getty Images  by [Philip Elliott](https://time.com/author/philip-elliott/)  ## Philip Elliott Senior Correspondent Sep 8, 2020 5:34 PM UTC If you feel like you can’t keep up with all of the bombshell books about President Donald Trump and his Administration, you’re not alone. In terms of raw numbers, there’s been an average of roughly one book about Trump and his inner circle released every single day for the last 188 weeks. Last week, we had a tell-all from a [former](https://time.com/5177145/melania-trump-stephanie-winston-wolkoff-inauguration/) friend and aide to First Lady Melania Trump, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff. Today, we have former Trump fixer Michael Cohen’s searing [account](https://time.com/5886439/michael-cohen-memoir/) of the dastardly deeds he undertook on behalf of his former pal. And next week, we’ll have the second Trump-era tome of master Washington insider Bob Woodward. All three are on Amazon’s bestseller list. Among the site’s top 25 books of all varieties, seven are Trump [related](https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/05/peter-strzok-would-like-to-clear-a-few-things-up-409280). The sheer volume of books about an incumbent administration is at a pace twice as fast as we saw at this point during Barack Obama’s first term. A couple of things may explain this glut of writing about Trump. First, he’s unlike anything America has produced before: a former reality-show star and accidental President who has shown little, if any, respect for the [norms](https://time.com/5884318/trump-political-use-of-office-convention/) of his current gig. His Administration is perhaps the most dysfunctional since President Jimmy Carter served as his own chief of staff for more than two years. Trump is surrounded by top officials and junior aides alike who are short on genuine loyalty and heavy on personal agendas. It seems as though every disagreement is leaked to reporters in virtually real time. And the President himself has taken no steps to calm tensions inside his White House. If anything, he fuels them. That means there has been no shortage of information coming from inside the gates of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Some aides have taken the extraordinary steps of [recording](https://time.com/5366978/omarosa-tape-trump-operations-security/) their conversations, such as former _Apprentice_ contestant-turned-top aide Omarosa Manigault Newman and Mrs. Trump’s former friend Winston Wolkoff. Both used them to write fast-selling books. Similarly, Mary L. Trump, the President’s niece, [taped](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/maryanne-trump-barry-secret-recordings/2020/08/22/30d457f4-e334-11ea-ade1-28daf1a5e919%5Fstory.html) her conversations with her aunt and turned them into a Trump-on-Trump skirmish and one of the quickest-selling books in years. Others have covered their tracks, instead feeding their juicy stories to journalists and authors who are creating a real-time history of this era in ways unmatched in recent years. Taken together, most of these books paint a negative picture of the President and those around him. But not all. A subset of these books are hagiographies of Trump. Donald Trump Jr. is now a New York Times best-selling author, thanks to a bulk [buy](https://www.npr.org/2019/12/03/784553266/what-bestseller-lists-really-tell-us-about-a-books-popularity) from the Republican National Committee. His second book released in under a year, which is about Democratic nominee Joe Biden, is Amazon’s Number-One New Release right now. A subset of Fox News personalities’ books have worked overtime to discredit Robert Mueller’s probe of the President’s conduct and subsequent impeachment. And right-wing pundits, like those on the left, have always found baked-in audiences eager to share their grievances. So not all of the more than 1,200 books related to Trump released since Inauguration Day — per a _New York Times_ [tally](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/31/books/trump-books.html) — have been hate-reads. But most are. And if the last four years have taught us nothing, it is this: Voters may have more unflattering information available about any modern presidential contender in recent history and still be unmoved by it. America [heard](https://time.com/4523755/donald-trump-leaked-tape-impact/) Trump bragging about sexual assault before the 2016 election and still [carried](https://time.com/5422644/trump-white-women-2016/) 47% of white women. Since then, we have learned that Cohen paid-off an adult actress to buy her silence about an affair with the President, that he leveraged every bit of his official power for personal political gain, and he seems incapable of changing his hard-nosed approach to life even in the face of a pandemic that has killed nearly 190,000 Americans. Despite all this, he is still positioned to be competitive this fall. Are any of these books really making a difference, or are they just giving us sagging bookshelves buried in incendiary accounts of this presidency? As much as his critics may hate it, the publishing pace confirms one central theme of recent history: there is no escaping Trump’s shadow. _Make sense of what matters in Washington._ [_Sign up for the daily D.C. Brief newsletter._](https://cloud.newsletters.time.com/politics?source=dc%5Farticle) ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/5886795/trump-books-coming-out-fast/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/5886795/trump-books-coming-out-fast/"},"headline":"You’re Not Imagining It: Trump Books Are Coming Out at a Rapid Clip","datePublished":"2020-09-08T17:34:19.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-24T09:11:20.599Z","description":"There’s been an average of roughly one book about Trump and his inner circle released every single day for the last 188 weeks.","url":"https://time.com/5886795/trump-books-coming-out-fast/","keywords":["The D.C. 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