Laura Ingraham

Previously published as Billionaire at the Barricades.

Americans didn't just go to the polls in 2016. They joined a movement that swept the unlikeliest of candidates, Donald Trump, into the Oval Office. Can he complete his agenda? Or will his opponents in the media, protestor class, and political establishment block his efforts and choke off the movement he represents?

In Busting the Barricades, Laura Ingraham gives readers a front row seat to the populist revolution as she witnessed it. She reveals the origins of this movement and its connection to the Trump presidency. She unmasks the opposition, forecasts the future of the Make America Great Again agenda and offers her own prescriptions for bringing real change to the swamp of Washington.

Unlike most of her media colleagues, Ingraham understood Trump's appeal and defied those who wrote his political obituary. Now she confronts the president's critics and responds to those who deny the importance of his America First agenda. With sharp humor and insight she traces the DNA of the populist movement: from Goldwater's 1964 campaign, to Nixon's Silent Majority, to Reagan's smashing electoral victories.

Populism fueled the insurgency campaigns of Buchanan and Perot, the election of George W. Bush, and the Tea Party rallies of the Obama presidency. But a political novice--a Manhattan billionaire--proved to be the movement's most vocal champion. This is the inside story of his victory and the fitful struggle to enact his agenda.

While Laura Ingraham was walking through a Northern Virginia shopping mall one Saturday afternoon, it all became clear to her. Everywhere she turned, she saw signs of the impending disaster: zombie teens texting each other across a café table; a man having his eyebrows threaded at a kiosk; a fiftyish woman shoe-horned into a tube top and skinny jeans; and a storefront ad featuring a Victoria’s Secret model spilling out of her push-up bra and into the faces of young passersby. Ingraham wondered to herself, “Is this it? Is this what our forefathers fought for? What my parents struggled for? I wonder if Victoria’s Secret is still having that two-for-one sale?” 

A menacing force surrounds us. We see it, we feel it, we know it. The country we love is in grave peril. While politicians and “experts” prattle on about the debt crisis at home, and terrorism abroad, a more insidious homegrown threat is emerging. It endangers our future and undermines our present. The uncomfortable truth is: We have become our own worst enemy. The culture we have created is now turning on us. We’re on the verge of drowning in our ignorance, arrogance, gluttony . . . can you believe there are only three shots of vanilla in a Caramel Macchiato?!?  
 
Now in an act of patriotic intervention the most-listened-to woman in talk radio casts her satirical eye upon all that ails American society. In this sharp-witted, comic romp, Laura Ingraham takes you on a guided tour through ten levels of our cultural hell. 

You know we’re in trouble when . . . 

• Airplane seats shrink—just as the passengers expand. 

• Celebrity baby names go from the peculiar (Apple, Stetson, and Daisy Boo) to the pathetic (Bamboo, Blanket, and Bronx). 

• People meticulously tend their virtual crops on Farmville, while their children eat takeout. 

• “Breaking News” usually means it happened yesterday. 

• The weddings last longer than the marriages. 

• Facebook has become a verb and reading has become an ancient art form. 

Of Thee I Zing is cultural commentary too funny to ignore, igniting a national conversation long past due. America, your cultural recovery begins here.