Fools on the Hill: The Hooligans, Saboteurs, Conspiracy Theorists, and Dunces Who Burned Down the House

From inside the chamber, bestselling author Dana Milbank exposes the petty, inchoate, and dysfunctional state of the Republican House--a confederacy of dunces racing to the bottom, without shame and certainly without the ability to get anything done.

On January 3rd, 2023, a slim Republican majority took control of the House of Representatives, and the dysfunction began immediately, when they needed fifteen ballots to elect Kevin McCarthy as Speaker--the longest since the eve of the Civil War. They would then dump McCarthy and spend a month in the wilderness searching for a replacement, only to threaten the understudy with the same fate. This is more of a circus than a caucus: from Majorie Taylor Greene to George Santos to Jim Jordan, this crowd could find conspiracies everywhere, in space aliens, in the "war" on gas stoves, and in Hunter Biden's artwork. They would turn Americans against each other, attacking immigrants, members of the LBGTQ community, and even the US military, and they would hijack every bill imaginable with far-right fantasies and crazy ideas. And, yet, they would achieve practically nothing; rather than enact legislation, they would consistently fall into fratricide and petty squabbles, doing everything but the fundamental work required of them: paying bills, keeping the government running, and protecting national security.

Dana Milbank spent a year reporting from the Capitol and what he witnessed was beyond imagination. It would prove to be the most insane and incompetent Congressional session in living memory. Fools On the Hill is the first book to pull back the veil, and expose all the shenanigans, chaos, and tomfoolery that defines the modern GOP. It is simultaneously horrifying and laugh-out-loud funny--yet, sadly, all true.


Author: Dana Milbank
Publisher: Little Brown and Company
Published: 09/24/2024
Pages: 320
Binding Type: Hardcover
ISBN: 9780316570923

About the Author
Dana Milbank is a nationally syndicated op-ed columnist with The Washington Post and a New York Times bestselling author.

His column appears in the Post and hundreds of other newspapers. Milbank also has provided political commentary for MSNBC, CNN and various other TV and radio outlets, and he is the author of four books on politics, including the New York Times bestseller "The Destructionists" and the national bestseller "Homo Politicus."

Before starting the column, Milbank was a White House reporter for the Post and won the White House Correspondents' Association Beckman award for "repeated excellence in White House coverage." He previously worked as a political reporter in the Post's Style section, as a senior editor of the New Republic, and as a congressional and foreign correspondent of the Wall Street Journal. He is a graduate of Yale University.