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

by Dana Milbank (Author)

From the halls of Congress, New York Times bestselling author Dana Milbank exposes the chaotic, incompetent and dysfunctional state of the current Republican House--a confederacy of dunces, united by paranoia and conspiracy theories, blundering from one self-inflicted crisis to the next.

When Republicans took control of the House in the 2022 midterm elections with a historically slim majority, mayhem began immediately. "Failed completely." "Can't govern." "Broken." "Lunatics." "Embarrassing." "Bunch of idiots." And that's how House Republicans described themselves. Take it from Marjorie Taylor Greene, who said in May 2024 that "many Americans in general are sick and tired and fed up with a feckless, useless Republican Party, a conference that does nothing." This is the House of George Santos and Jim Jordan, of Lauren Boebert and Matt Gaetz. They investigated space aliens and Hunter Biden's art dealer. They punched and they groped. They championed Confederates and insurrectionists--while disparaging the military and sabotaging the economy. They tied up the House so often with far-right fantasies that they produced what was arguably the least effective session of Congress in history.

Dana Milbank, widely-read Washington Post columnist, spent a year reporting from inside the Capitol, watching the circus from the front row. The result, Fools on the Hill, is simultaneously horrifying and laugh-out-loud funny. Sadly, it is all true.

Author Biography

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.