In the first week following its publication, former President Barack Obama’s memoir A Promised Land has sold a total of a little over 1.7 million copies, according to the book’s publisher, Penguin Random House. According to the publisher, the book has enjoyed the highest first-week sales total of any Penguin Random House book, ever. The first-week sales totals for Obama’s book sits at about the level of first-week sales totals for memoirs from former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush combined. In eight days, Clinton’s book My Life passed one million total sales, and Bush’s later work Decision Points sat at about three-quarters of a million sales after one week.
Just in from Penguin Random House: "@BarackObama's A PROMISED LAND has sold 1,710,443 units in all formats and editions in the U.S. and Canada during its first week of publication." This is the "largest week-one sales total for any book ever published by Penguin Random House."
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) November 24, 2020
Donald Trump hasn’t even conclusively admitted that he lost the recent presidential election, let alone moved into the post-presidency reflection stage of his political career. Besides, what topics or concepts would a look back on his time in office from Trump even hinge on? Would a Trump memoir covering his time in the White House just be hundreds of pages of Trump figuring out new ways to call himself “great”? What pieces of erudite wisdom would any serious non-Trump supporter ever expect Donald to possibly share in the first place? Trump runs on vitriolic hatred.
Former President Obama has not been quiet during recent political developments. He’s sounded an alarm about the so-called “truth decay” that has wreaked havoc across American political society with Trump in charge at the White House. As Obama put it:
‘We have gone through a presidency that disregarded a whole host of basic institutional norms — expectations we had for a president that had been observed by Republicans and Democrats previously. And maybe most importantly, and most disconcertingly, what we’ve seen is what some people call ‘truth decay,’ something that’s been accelerated by outgoing President Trump, the sense that not only do we not have to tell the truth, but the truth doesn’t even matter.’
Watch Obama’s comments below:
“What we've seen is what some people call truth decay. Something that's been accelerated by outgoing President Trump, the sense that not only do we not have to tell the truth, but the truth doesn't even matter,” says former President Obama. https://t.co/SemqJzMGMD pic.twitter.com/oaV7vGG3K2
— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) November 16, 2020
Trump has pathologically lied throughout his time in office, and the time since Election Day has been no different — he’s pushed utterly unfounded, unhinged conspiracy theories about supposed fraud that plagued the recent election. In court fights across the country, his team has come nowhere remotely meaningfully close to overturning enough of the results to hand Trump a win. Trump’s legal team has utterly failed to prove his fraud claims in court.
