Trump’s Alleged Favorite Spy Novel Uncannily Echoes Present Circumstances

I am a big fan of a podcast called Benjamin Walker’s Theory of Everything, which is produced by Roman Mars’s Radiotopia podcast network. The first half of Walker’s latest episode, titled “The Twentieth of January,” involves a discussion with Josh Glenn, a “cultural and brand semiotician,” according to his LinkedIn profile. If you don’t want to listen, read the transcript of Walker and Glenn’s conversation here. (Archive.is link, for safe keeping.)

Okay, so Glenn discusses an obscure and out-of-print spy novel called The Twentieth of January (later republished under the name Cold Tactics) by Ted Allbeury. It was originally published in 1980, but the novel’s plot seems ripped from today’s headlines. Glenn describes the plot as “ridiculous.” He explains: “A Republican — Logan Powell — has just been elected president. This guy has never been in politics before, but he beats a crowded field of experienced politicians to become first a senator, then president. He’s from a wealthy East Coast family, but he sells himself as a populist. And his big idea is — he wants the US and Russia to be friends. And despite opposition from within his own party, this guy wins the election.”

Other plot points to note:

• This president, Powell, is compromised by the Russians, who have risqué photos of him
• This is revealed to the government by an MI6 spy, roughly a month before inauguration day
• “The FBI is too political and can’t be trusted with this intel. So the CIA get involved. But they’re reluctant to investigate — because they don’t want to meddle in the electoral process.”
• “He’s a capitalist. But he’s also a narcissist who desperately wants power and recognition. So he keeps dancing to Moscow’s tune, because he knows he can’t win without them.”

I won’t spoil the ending, which you can read in the interview transcript.

Glenn then goes into a delicious, if unverified, story of how the now Russian ambassador to the UN, Vitaly Churkin, gave Trump the book in 1986, shortly before Trump started talking about the book and how he wants the relationship between the US and Soviet Union to improve. (Recall his 1988 full-page ad in the New York Times advocating for this.)

But wait, it gets better, except you’ll have to read the interview transcript. I lack the capacity to summarize it all here.

The whole story seems too juicy to be true, but to be honest, at this point, I’m one to believe that anything is possible. And before you say, “This has to be some #FakeNews, or, rather, ‘alternative facts’ perpetuated by Walker, a known Trump skeptic and occasional fabulist for the sake of his art,” know that, just a couple days ago, The BBC made a nice little video summarizing some of the parallels between the book and the present day situation.

The existence of the book, if not the rest of the story that Glenn relays, is verified.