How to test negative for stupid And why Washington never will

The Louisiana senator shoots (craw)fish in a barrel. "This book is about the mighty weapon of candor, which most people in Washington, D.C., have only a casual relationship with," writes Kennedy, who relies on folksy, often groan-worthy witticisms to get him through his contentious narrative. His take on Washington, where he's been since the first Trump term, is that it's a "place full of deceptive, ambitious, self-absorbed ex-class presidents who would unplug your life-support system to charge their cell phones." Most of Kennedy's subsequent observations are meant to support the thesis. He professes at many points to be an equal-opportunity critic of a wobbly system, and he gets off a few zingers in the direction of fellow Republicans like Lindsey Graham ("Invite him to dinner, and you don't know if he'll sit down for an intelligent conversation or get drunk and vomit in the fish tank"). But mostly he's all in for President Trump and contemptuous of liberals, who, he quips, are "partial to man-purses and organic broccoli." Trump, he continues, won "because Hillary and Kamala kept finding new ways to be stupid, and there weren't enough childless cat people to bail them out." As the pages add up, the soufflé collapses: Kennedy, in an odd bit of projection, calls Biden a "transactional" president, a term that's been practically a Trump trademark for a decade, and he seems quite satisfied to have coined the infantile term "weenie-wokers" to disparage liberals. To his credit, Kennedy decries the use of federal agencies as instruments of retribution (though he categorizes the prosecution of Trump's felonies among them). And, no surprise, he isn't fond of DEI, transgender athletes, the press, China, the 1619 Project--and to all appearances, half of the voting electorate. No joke. If Stephen Miller is your idea of a stitch, this book is for you. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.