Perhaps the most surprising thing about Make Russia Slap-up Once more, Christopher Buckley's funny and often hilarious new novel, is how normal—erstwhile normal, not new normal—and relatively subdued things seem in this fictional White Business firm, at least compared with existent life.

To regular viewers of the all-breaking-news-all-the-time networks, Make Russia Keen Once again reads like a whispered procedural of everyday life in the 2020 White House. Herb Nutterman—a former hospitality executive at a Trump property with no previous political experience—has been named the seventh White Business firm chief of staff for a fictional president named Donald Trump. Nutterman'south sole qualification for this job is that he was a erstwhile hospitality executive at a Trump property with no previous political feel. Fans of Buckley volition meet in Nutterman a strong resemblance to Nick Naylor, Thank You for Smoking's lobbyist for the tobacco industry. Both have powers of rationalization and cognitive dissonance far beyond those of mortal men.

Trump and Putin
Donald Trump looks on Vladimir Putin in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on November 30, 2018. Fictional characters bearing a strong resemblance to these two people are at the heart of Christopher Buckley'due south biting new satire, "Make Russian federation Cracking Again." Mikhail Svetlov/Getty

Nutterman is writing his memoirs from Wingdale, a federal prison; this is his letter from Camp Cupcake every bit it were. It was Nutterman's unfortunate circumstance to go principal of staff in an election year—in Russia. For some reason the intelligence customs came up with the theory that the 2016 U.S. presidential elections were meddled with past Russian federation and so a system, Placid Reflux, was set up to prevent and counter whatsoever attempts to meddle in the 2020 U.S. elections.

All is alt-right with the world until Placid Reflux decides to return the favor and interfere in Russia'southward election, and a very fictional Vladimir Putin loses to a very surprised Communist. Well commotion ensues, as Trump does his best to make Russia neat again and ensure that Putin, who in Buckley's volume is actually seen as an ally of Trump, stays in power.

At this point Buckley takes us on a fictional roller-coaster ride of blackmail, intrigue, more than blackmail and way more than intrigue that rivals reality, well almost, at to the lowest degree at printing time. And this was written before the pandemic and earlier the George Floyd Black Lives Matter protests. At that place are no masks, no marches, no TikTok-inflated rallies, [no fill-in-the-blank insanities that were not known at printing time]. Their absence actually gives Make Russian federation Bully Once more an virtually nostalgic appeal.

But enough of meat is left on the carcass of the Executive Branch for Buckley to banquet on. While the plot plays out—and really saying anything more about that would exist gilding the lily, sorry, painting the lily—he gives some of the well-nigh brilliantly funny characterizations. In a few words he can size up, cut downwardly and serve up slightly roasted thumbnail descriptions of people who may or may non represent purveyors of the White House Kool-Aid.

To wit: Beulah Puckle-Peters is a the one-time printing secretary whose default expression is a scowl. She looks similar a main matron in a women's prison house who has discovered that ane of the women in cake 6 is keeping a pet mouse. There is also son-in-law Jored, who looks like a "prince minus the codpiece." And Katie Borgia O'Reilly, a "meth-lab Lauren Bacall" who is non and so much a spin doctor but a "centrifuge," a whirling dervish of alternative facts, conspiracy theories and full-courtroom trash talk.

Buckley, a old speechwriter for George H.Westward. Bush-league, knows this earth inside out—which is maybe the only manner to truly know it—and it shows in every sentence. He describes the grotesqueness of day-to-day life inside the Beltway with the affair-of-fact casualness of a baseball writer covering a Yankees-Nationals game in June—when there were baseball games in June. He uses few if any assertion points and none of the unbelievable exaggerations you might see on the nightly news. Existent incidents that have happened during the real Trump presidency are interwoven with fictitious ones with such ease that I occasionally plant myself wondering which were existent and which were Buckley.

For a few years, Buckley took a break from writing political satire. He had long targeted targets on all specks of the political spectrum. No one was safe; even heroes and icons had feet of clay, and God knows what their pilus and makeup were made of. Simply and so, he claimed, real life had moved beyond satire and Donald Trump was beyond real life.

Buckley didn't entirely give up on the technique. His two books written over the past 4 years, The Relic Master and The Approximate Hunter, are sharp satires, but they avoid any overt mention of modern-solar day politics. Buckley's return to tarnishing the shine on the buckle of the Beltway is long overdue, but his hiatus has not dulled his dry, cutting wit at all. His subtlety is a more than welcome antidote to the bold-faced, all-caps exclamations that define the Twitterverse, 24-hour news cycle and their No. 1 subject, one who does non ordinarily invite subtlety.

People working from home are in luck: While reading this, they can laugh out loud freely and non fear the strange looks of fellow commuters or diners. Then, as well, all readers are in luck anyway, because Make Russia Great Again gives them a reason to express mirth out loud once more.

Make Russia Great Again is published by Simon & Schuster, and it is bachelor online and wherever you can find an open up bookstore.

Make Russia Great Again
The cover of "Make Russia Not bad Again," designed by Richard Ljoenes for Christopher Buckley's latest novel gear up in the mythical place called Washington.