Amazon lists more than 3,000 books about Donald Trump, and I feel as though I’ve read most of them. (Well, at least 23, anyway.) So, why do we need yet another one? Of course, he’s now well into his second term, and a lot has happened since January 20, 2025. A whole lot. So there’s that. But it also turns out that, despite all I’ve learned from extensive reading about our 47th President, there is more to know. And author and radio personality Thom Hartmann proves the point in his shocking new book, The Last American President. It’s a lucid and timely takedown of Donald Trump.
A deeply disturbing psychological and political profile of the President
Hartmann has been an unflinching critic of Donald Trump since his first appearance in the political arena. And no wonder: the man pushes all his buttons. Trump is, after all, demonstrably a pathological liar. He is a serial sexual offender, guilty of corrupt business practices, and a failure in his chosen field of real estate whose companies filed for bankruptcy six times. (Hartmann himself is a serial entrepreneur who has built at least half a dozen businesses.) But we know all this. It’s come to light in many of those 3,000 books about the man.
What Hartmann contributes is not more of the same but a psychological and political profile of Donald Trump that burrows deeply into available records that others have missed or failed to acknowledge. If you already think you’ve got the measure of the man, Hartmann will show you aspects of his record and his personality that others haven’t brought clearly into the light.
The Last American President: A Broken Man, a Corrupt Party, and a World on the Brink by Thom Hartmann (2025) 224 pages ★★★★★
One major takeaway
Most of the material in Hartmann’s book is familiar to anyone who has tracked Donald Trump’s career for many years. (Or, as I have, read a great many books and articles about him.) But there are exceptions. And the standout is Chapter 8, “The Heist of Democracy.”
As Hartmann notes, just about everybody in America accepts the claim that Trump won the 2024 presidential election fairly and decisively. Hartmann demurs. “The corporate media keeps telling us that Donald Trump won the 2024 election fair and square. They’re almost certainly wrong: Joe Biden was, in my opinion, the last fairly elected American president.” To back up this assertion, Hartmann cites the work of investigative journalist Greg Palast, who details the many steps Trump’s campaign and the Republican Party did to prevent likely Democratic voters from casting their ballots. Here’s the gist of it . . .
Donald Trump did NOT win in 2024 “fair and square”
“if all legal voters had been allowed to vote and if all the legal ballots had been counted, Kamala Harris would have won Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Georgia. . . A staggering 4.7 million voters were purged from the voter rolls before the election, all on the false claim of ‘voter fraud,’ something so rare that you’re more likely to be hit by lightning than to ever encounter it. . . [And] a state audit in Washington, for example, found Black voters were four times more likely than white voters to have their mail-in ballots rejected. And that pattern repeated nationwide.”
Voter suppression sank Kamala Harris’ campaign
“When we apply the most conservative calculation to these numbers,” Hartmann goes on, “the suppression factor in 2024 was at least 2.3 percent of the vote. That translates to approximately 3,565,000 votes that, largely, should have gone to Kamala Harris. With those ballots properly counted, she would have topped Trump’s official total by 1.2 million and won the Electoral College with 286 votes.”
This chapter, at the least, should be required reading in every American government or introductory political science course. It shows how badly damaged the machinery of America’s democracy had become even before Donald Trump took office on January 20, 2025.
Summary of this book by artificial intelligence
If you’ve been reading my reviews over recent months, you’ll be aware that I now often turn to the AI chatbot Claude for help. (I’m now using the upgraded Version Sonnet 4.5,) Here, once again, I’m including Claude’s summary of the book I’m reviewing. It’s verbatim, although I’ve deleted the sometimes lengthy URLs that link to Claude’s sources and added subheads to break up the text.
Be assured. What follows is accurate in every respect. There are no “hallucinations” here.
An analysis of American democracy today
The Last American President: A Broken Man, a Corrupt Party, and a World on the Brink presents progressive talk show host Thom Hartmann’s analysis of American democracy, arguing that Donald Trump represents not an aberration but rather the predictable outcome of systemic failures. The book examines how wealthy elites, political cowardice, and institutional decay created conditions enabling Trump’s authoritarian rise.
Hartmann explores Trump’s psychological formation, tracing how childhood trauma, pathological narcissism, and calculated cruelty shaped him into what the author characterizes as an authoritarian leader. The investigation details how Fred Trump’s harsh parenting style and mentorship from attorney Roy Cohn taught Trump that kindness equals weakness and that power means never apologizing.
An unholy alliance yielded Trump’s ascendancy
The book exposes what Hartmann calls an “unholy alliance” between Trump’s damaged psychology and America’s deteriorating institutions. He argues that the Republican Party abandoned its principles for power while billionaire donors treated democracy as a profit-generating enterprise, essentially manufacturing the conditions for authoritarianism. Drawing on his background as both a psychotherapist and political scientist, Hartmann analyzes Trump as a pathological narcissist
Beyond examining Trump’s past, the book warns about America’s future, particularly concerning climate catastrophe and the global spread of fascism. Hartmann presents what he describes as a nightmare scenario in which a second Trump term could not only end American democracy but also trigger irreversible environmental damage. He contends that political cowardice and corporate greed have created a perfect storm threatening humanity’s survival.
A wake-up call about control by an oligarchy
Hartmann frames the book as a wake-up call, asserting that America faces its most critical moment for democracy since the Civil War. Rather than presenting mere political commentary, he positions his work as an urgent alarm about reaching a point of no return. The book examines the infrastructure of money and political power built over decades that Hartmann believes aims to transform America into an oligarchy, providing both historical analysis and warnings about the future of American democratic institutions.
About the author
Wikipedia characterizes Thom Hartmann as an American radio personality, author, businessman, and progressive political commentator. He has written dozens of books and has built a career on radio and television since 2003. He was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1951 and majored in electrical engineering at Michigan State University. While active in the anti-Vietnam war movement, he built the first of several successful businesses. Hartmann published his first book in 1992. He has three children with his wife Louise.
For related reading
Previously I reviewed the author’s book The Hidden History of the War on Voting: Who Stole Your Vote — and How to Get It Back (The Republican war on voting unmasked).
You’ll find many other books about our president at The top 5 books about Donald Trump.
It might also be worthwhile to check out Top 10 nonfiction books about politics and 20 popular books for understanding American history.
And you can always find the most popular of my 2,400 reviews, and the most recent ones, on the Home Page.
