Johnston sets out to shine a bright light on these termites. He finds an obvious one in Scott Pruitt, Trump’s man at the Environmental Protection Agency, whose “one-sided approach to E.P.A.’s mandate,” Johnston writes, favors the concerns of the industries it regulates at the expense of the public’s health. Of course, Pruitt has already received considerable media attention. But Johnston uncovers some less well-known termites as well.

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His chapter on the goings-on at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is a textbook example of the sort of green-eyeshade reportage on which he built his formidable reputation. First, Johnston explains how Trump’s decision to force out the chairman left the commission with only two members, short of the three required for a quorum, which meant it was unable to approve “$50 billion worth of energy projects” that would have benefited American workers and consumers. Next, Johnston reports that when Trump finally got around to filling out the agency, he didn’t pick anyone with a consumer-protection background, like the chairman he’d just sacked, instead nominating three new commissioners who all favored the utilities. “Congress created FERC … to protect families, small-business owners and industry from monopolists and pricing schemes that jack up prices while at the same time ensuring an abundant supply of electricity,” Johnston writes. Under Trump, that mission is being eaten away at.

But Johnston struggles to find other instances in which Trump is achieving the goal of creating a weak government — or at least one any weaker than those of his predecessors. Johnston blasts Trump for appointing political supporters rather than career diplomats as ambassadors to strategically important countries — mentioning, for example, William Francis Hagerty IV, a Tennessee private equity investor who was a Trump campaign fund-raiser and is now ambassador to Japan. But is Hagerty, who once worked as a business consultant in Asia and speaks Japanese, any less qualified for the Tokyo post than Caroline Kennedy, who held it under Obama?

Other times, Johnston seems out of his depth, particularly when he strays from domestic politics. He justifiably criticizes Trump for tilting American foreign policy toward Saudi Arabia in its dispute with its gulf neighbor Qatar. But then Johnston bungles the explanation for why Trump is doing this, suggesting it is because he shares the Saudis’ animus toward Al Jazeera, which broadcasts from Qatar, or because he’s angry that Qatar Airways once moved its New York offices out of Trump Tower. The most likely explanation, which Johnston fails to discuss, is that the Saudis convinced Trump that Qatar is too close to Iran.