The Betrayal

In 2022, Ira Shapiro completed what Brooking scholar William A. Galston called an epic trilogy chronicling the disastrous decline of the once-great Senate. The Founding Fathers gave the Senate many functions, but it had one overriding responsibility: to provide a check against a dangerous president who threatened our democracy. Shapiros gripping portrait of Mitch McConnell and the Senate Republicans turning a blind eye to Donald Trumps abuses of power remains the definitive chronicle of the most catastrophic failure of government in American history. The updated edition carries the story forward into the Biden presidency and the efforts to restore bipartisanship in bitterly contentious times.