Politics
Journalist Takes Readers Inside Trump’s Hush-Money Trial in ‘American Reckoning’
All authors want to sell their books.
Jonathan Alter considers it a sort of imperative.
Alter, who grew up in a politically active Chicago family, was among the small group of journalists in the courtroom in April for former President Donald Trump’s hush-money trial. Alter watched as he saw Trump look as if he’d been “punched in the gut” before putting his “game face on” as the 34 felony conviction counts were announced.
Alter chronicled the proceedings in the New York Times’ opinion section, but told WTTW News that barely “scratched the surface” of what he witnessed in the courtroom: the picture of a “criminal operation.”
He hurried to write a broader picture of the legal drama in his latest book, “American Reckoning: Inside Trump’s Trial―and My Own,” which also examines Alter’s own frustration over Trump’s continued clench on the Republican Party and half of the American electorate.
Alter told WTTW News he wants his books in the hands of as many undecided, swing state and Trump voters as possible ahead of the Nov. 5 election, in hopes that his writing will persuade them to also view Trump as a danger and to vote against him.
Election Day will be the United States’ “national moment of truth,” Alter said, as voters participate in what he called the “most significant election” since President Abraham Lincoln’s 1864 election during the Civil War.
“He doesn’t represent American values of freedom and democracy,” Alter said. “He wants to be a strong man. He wants to be an American (Russian President Vladimir) Putin.”
Alter’s book also covers U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s role in persuading President Joe Biden to resign the Democratic nomination, and how Biden’s COVID-19 diagnosis was the “last straw” in the president’s decision to drop out of the 2024 race.
Alter also covers some of his experiences growing up with a politically involved Chicago family, like when his parents hosted a fundraiser for the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. that Alter said was relatively sparsely attended because many Democrats were frightened to anger Mayor Richard J. Daley.
Alter wrote about his mom, Joanne Alter, whom he describes as the “Jackie Robinson of gender politics in Chicago” for becoming the first woman elected to office in Cook County when in 1972 she was elected as a sanitary district commissioner.
Joanne Alter ran and lost a 1990 race for Cook County clerk and was featured on “Chicago Tonight” during the campaign.
“I think it’s important for our political establishment and our elected officials to reflect our society,” Joanna Alter said during her appearance, “and when we can put up an all-man ticket, completely men — sheriff, state attorney, president of the county board, assessor, all men — we’re not reflecting our society. Now there are women who are qualified to run for higher office, and I believe I’m one of those. And I think that it’s important for men and women to understand that we have to have a representative government, and representative means young and old and Black and White and men and women, and presenting a ticket without any women on it is a disgrace, I think, in 1990.”
Contact Amanda Vinicky: @AmandaVinicky | [email protected]
