Cassidy Hutchinson has the inside scoop of the previous administration, but her memoir is so much more than that
BY: JACOB POLITTE
Managing Editor
“She has no idea who I am or what I did. She probably won’t ever know. But I did it for her. For the country that’s her home.”
Cassidy Hutchinson looked down at the street from her Atlanta hotel window in June of 2022, noticing a little girl who waved at her following her entrance into the history books. Hutchinson is a brave soul, which may sound weird considering her willingness to work in the inner circle of the Trump administration. Her decision to testify during the January 6 Hearings had been compared to that of Alexander Butterfield, whose testimony in August of 1973 turned the Presidency of Richard Nixon on its head.
It’s easy to dismiss Hutchinson’s retelling of her experiences as nothing more than a cash grab. She herself even admits that she fell on hard times financially. Even so, the information provided in “Enough” transcends that argument. Hutchinson paints the late stages of the Trump White House as a truly unhinged environment, and as everyone knows, it didn’t end well.
Those early stages, though, are periods of time that Hutchinson looks upon in a mostly positive light. She spends a few chapters expanding upon her beginnings in Washington D.C. and mostly has glowing things to say about almost everyone she works with (except for, somewhat predictably, Texas Senator Ted Cruz). Hutchinson details her time working with Ben Williamson and future White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, and things proceeded to go well at first. Hutchinson was even promoted to be a high ranking staff member in the Chief of Staff’s Office, using her authority and influence with Meadows to get a sexist coworker ousted from his position with little to no proof of his misdeeds. But of course, once Trump lost the election, things began to go south.
“Enough” also details some of the witness tampering that occurred following the beginnings of the January 6 Hearings, with Hutchinson being offered financial stability via staying as quiet as possible. At the time, she took the deal. But eventually, her conscience won out. On the afternoon of June 28, 2022, she entered the history books forever by testifying as surprise witness in the January 6 Hearings, and this book reveals that Liz Cheney herself helped persuade Hutchinson to testify, going out of her way to make sure that Hutchinson was in a safe position to do so and even helping her find a new lawyer that would represent her pro bono, allowing her to ditch the Trump appointed one. The ethics of that can be debated, but the Hearings themselves were not a formal court of law, so there’s likely some legal wiggle room for Cheney’s intervention.
But for every regurgitation of events she testified about, including the infamous story of Trump throwing ketchup at the wall, there are new details that we learn that make her experience on January 6, 2021 even worse. Such as Rudy Giuliani attempting to grope her backstage at the infamous rally at the Ellipse, for example. Giuliani has denied that incident took place.
“Enough” though, isn’t all about Trump and his cronies. Instead, Hutchinson offers a look into her own personal story, and it’s absolutely not the story of a privileged person whatsoever. Instead, she talks at length about her upbringing, and her not so great relationship with the man who is her biological father. While she acknowledges him in the prologue, he also was pretty absent from their lives as Hutchinson grew older, and for whatever reason, is still immature and manipulative to this very day, not to mention completely and disheartenedly enamored with Donald Trump. Hutchinson says that she acknowledges another man as her chosen father, and speaks about “Paul” in glowing terms.
Where Hutchinson goes from here has yet to be determined. But while “Enough” will be analyzed and critiqued heavily for its political sections, it’s a lot more than that. Trump is present, and he’s a large part of the narrative. However, this isn’t so much a story about Trump himself. It’s, in essence, a story of a young woman coming to grips with how her past influenced her present. And while some may disagree with her, her bravery in coming forward is nothing short of astonishing to read.
