New 'must read' book about Trump has 1 needless flaw

I have long had a soft spot for the National Review's Andy McCarthy, the author of the must-read new book "Ball of Collusion."

In September 2008, when I introduced on these pages my thesis that Bill Ayers played a major role in the writing of Barack Obama's memoir, "Dreams from My Father," McCarthy was the only person in the "respectable" conservative media to come to my defense.

He called my analysis "thorough, thoughtful and alarming – particularly his deconstruction of the text in Obama's memoir and comparison to the themes, sophistication and signature phraseology of Bill Ayers' memoir."

McCarthy paid for his honesty. The left quickly attacked him and the National Review. In the Atlantic media darling Ta-Nehisi Coates extracted one of McCarthy's quotes in my defense and introduced it with the slur, "How desperate can it get? This desperate."

The Atlantic added another quick review that began thusly, "At The Corner, Andy McCarthy evaluates Cashill's argument and proves himself to be an idiot."

McCarthy's short review appeared a month before the 2008 election. As Obama biographer David Remnick later wrote about my thesis and McCarthy's support, "If ever proved true, or believed to be true among enough voters, [it] could have been the end of [Obama's] candidacy."

It unfortunately was not. Remnick explained why without meaning to. You see, mine was a "racist insinuation," one with a "particularly ugly pedigree." If you criticized Obama, or even endorsed a criticism, you were a racist.

I suspect McCarthy caught heat at National Review for jeopardizing its reputation among liberals. What I do know is that the link from Coates's article to McCarthy's is dead. I did not even know of his article until I read Remnick's book two years later.

The fear of being called a racist shaped NR's cautious coverage of the Obama presidency just as it shapes, I believe, its intemperate coverage of the Trump presidency.

That brings us back to "Ball of Collusion." McCarthy has been covering the Russian collusion story from the beginning. A former U.S. attorney, he is the one writer I have trusted to deliver the real goods.

His book is much more than a summary of his columns. McCarthy goes deeper into the underpinnings of the scandal than anyone yet has. He writes well, if a little bit too lawyerly, and tells even the informed reader stuff he does not know.

Pundits who have not read the book are no longer qualified to discuss this extraordinary scandal. It is that essential a read.

What is annoying about the book, alas, is its frequent and utterly gratuitous Trump bashing. If McCarthy were a NeverTrumper, his unpleasant little asides would make some sense, but he is not. He voted for Trump.

One phrase that caught my attention was this one: "[Trump's] nauseating habit of laying the treacle on dictators."

Ughh, Andy! What were you thinking?

In another aside McCarthy writes about Trump's "strange ingratiation of Putin" and his "the seamy dots connecting Kremlin cronies to Trump campaign officials."

McCarthy drops "treacle" like this into his punch bowl far too often and always needlessly. It is as if he is trying to prove to someone – not sure who – that his aversion to Trump gives him legitimacy.

The "one-star" reviewers on Amazon aren't buying. Some samples:

"His bias is rooted in defense of trump while grinding away at his previous theme that liberals are out to destroy America."
"A sad attempt to legitimize a criminal and traitor."
"It's total b.s. from a Trumpy. Enjoy, Fox News viewers."
"Written by a tRump (sic) lover to placate his base whom I'm surprised know how to read."

The major media are not buying either. As with all authors who challenge the progressive orthodoxy, there will be no late nights with Colbert for Andy or mornings with George, no flattering profile in the New York Times magazine or fawning interviews on 60 Minutes.

The people who will make "Ball of Collusion" a bestseller are the ones who support the man McCarthy so pointlessly needles, but that's all right. We've got thick skins by now.