Pete Souza's New Book Is a Painful Reminder of What We've Lost in the Trump Years

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/pete-souza-new-book-obama-trump-738454/

October 16, 2018 1:34PM ET
Pete Souza’s New Book Is a Painful Reminder of What We’ve Lost in the Trump Years
Pix at link~
The former White House photographer juxtaposes Trump’s petty, reckless tweets with iconic portraits of Obama
By Sean Woods


Amid the daily chaos of the Donald Trump presidency, it’s easy to forget the stability we gave up two years ago. Obama administration chief photographer Pete Souza’s new book, Shade: A Tale of Two Presidents, serves as a brutal reminder. Souza juxtaposes his iconic portraits of the Obama presidency with some of Trump’s most insane tweets and comments to highlight the differences between the 44th and 45th presidents. It’s a striking, at times even hilarious book, but by the end it leaves the reader with a profound sense of loss.

In its simplicity, Shade drives home Obama’s humanity and dignity and Trump’s petty mind and epic failings like few other documents. Where we now have a president who allegedly pays off porn stars to hide extramarital affairs, insults victims of sexual assault and calls the free press the “enemies of the people,” we once had a commander-in-chief who didn’t abdicate the presidency’s function as the moral anchor of the country, was a loving father and a devoted husband.

Souza’s work is some of the most intimate documentation of the Obama years, and when the photographer speaks of Obama there’s clearly a deep affection and reverence, but with Trump there’s scorn. “Trump’s conduct has been unbecoming of the office,” Souza says. “He’s been an embarrassment. The book is a record of the first 500 hundred days of the Trump administration, which is easy to forget, because of all the craziness.”

snip//

He says he hasn’t talked with anyone in the Trump White House but says former Obama staffers are still in “disbelief” over what’s happened to their former place of work. So what would he say to President Trump if he were in a room with him? “There’s so much,” Souza says. “One, stop lying all the time. Two, stop bullying people all the time. Three, I’ll bet Jared wrote the anonymous editorial.”

Despite the nation’s deep partisan divide, Souza remains an optimist. At the end of the book, he urges readers to participate in democracy and to vote in new leaders. “Because Trump does and says crazy shit every day, it’s difficult to take a broader view of whether this is the most divided the country has ever been,” Souza says. “The fact that the Republicans had all white men on the Judiciary Committee is an embarrassment. We need to elect some new leaders, especially more women, to really try to move the country forward.”