New York Magazine has printed an excerpt of Fire and Fury, Michael Wolff's book on the Trump White House, due to be released on January 9th. (UPDATE: the publisher is releasing the book today, 1/5/2018.)
I know that it is a blogger's job to provide analysis or commentary, but having read the excerpt and the picture it paints of the Trump White House, I can only say that words fail me. Read it, and weep for our grandchildren's future.
Hmm, well. Wolff certainly knows how to write a page turner in hard-boiled noir style, and he's going to make a lot of cha-ching, but this book is nothing but a big damn distraction of questionable value. And this is one reason why the Right can cry foul on the media. It will clinch Trump haters in their dislike and make Trump lovers feel more marginalized and angry. Just what we need!
ReplyDeleteThere is no attribution of value in the entire excerpt. We don't know if Wolff witnessed these scenes or was told what happened by someone else, and how many times removed that source was from the actual event. Even when he uses direct quotes, it is unclear if these are words he heard first hand or was told second-hand.
Characterizations are manipulated to make clear distinctions between the good and bad guys. Katie Walsh, for instance, is portrayed as a "Republican ideal: clean, brisk, orderly, efficient. A righteous bureaucrat with a permanently grim expression, she was a fine example of the many political professionals in whom competence and organizational skills transcend ideology." And Katie Walsh may be all of those things, but this glowing description is designed to contrast frighteningly with Wolff's image of an administration in chaos.
Wolff's thesis seems to be "your worst fears about Trump cannot begin to approximate just how bad it really is." It's fear-mongering. To wit, the reliance on emotionally verbiage. Check out the purple prose in this paragraph (CAPS mine for emphasis):
From the moment of victory, the Trump administration became a LOOKING-GLASS presidency: EVERY inverse assumption about how to assemble and run a White House was enacted and compounded, MANY TIMES OVER. The decisions that Trump and his top advisers made in those first few months — from the SLAPDASH transition to the DISARRAY in the West Wing — set the stage for the CHAOS and DYSFUNCTION that have PERSISTED throughout his first year in office. This was a REAL-LIFE VERSION OF MEL BROOKS'S The Producers, where the MISTAKEN OUTCOME trusted by everyone in Trump’s inner circle — that they would lose the election — wound up EXPOSING them for WHO THEY REALLY WERE.
Jean - giving the mortar fire the Trump White House is now raining down upon Steve Bannon, I take it they assume that Bannon is one of Wolff's primary sources.
DeleteAnd given how Katie Walsh is portrayed, my guess is that she's another source.
Yes, of course, but this is not careful reportage or investigative journalism.
DeleteI'm guessing this book is going to be preaching to the choir. Would be nice if it woke some people up, but probably will just contribute to more polarization. Actually Trump's base are probably not going to read any farther than a Fox News review.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of Fox News, why do medical and dental offices always have it blaring full blast in the waiting room? That should be against the Geneva Convention.
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ReplyDeleteI wasn't planning to read the book. The pudgy guy with the cheap Chinese-made neckties is the sock puppet for the international crime syndicate that runs this country. I don't need to read a book to find that out. It is not by accident that Paul Manafort laundered his money through the Bank of Cyprus upon the board of which the siots current Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. You might not recognize the Bank of Cyprus if you were kidnapped and then released in its lobby, but all of the players in this administration would recognize that and other obscure playpens.
ReplyDeleteHere, however, is a less complex set of facts that similarly add up to All You Need to Know about Donald Trump:
1. The Town of Palm Beach had never allowed any of the rich people who live there -- most whom don't owe most of their wealth to DeutscheBank until they declare bankruptcy -- to have heliports on their property.
2. When Trump became president, it was suggested that flying from Palm Beach International Airport to Mar-a-Lago -- a distance of about three miles -- in a helicopter, would obviate the need for a 30-car motorcade to transport him that distance.
3. The Town permitted a heliport at Mar-a-Lago on the clear understanding it would be used by Marine One, the presidential chopper.
4. Marine One has never landed there. The big motorcades (for which the black SUVs have to be flown down here by the Air Force, along with the unused Marine One) continue unabated.
5. A helicopter with "TRUMP" emblazoned fore and aft was parked there during the president's most recent golf vacation. Who used it is a state secret. The president -- for whom the heliport was permitted -- could not use it because the Secret Service rules keep presidents off private helicopters, even "their" own. The Trump chopper seems to be owned, to the extent a Trump owns anything, by the boys.
The rules don't apply to him. His base adores him for that. When the bill comes due, his base will blame Obama or Crooked Hillary. His base will not read Wolff's book.
What boggles my mind is not that they expected to lose, nor that their campaign wasn't competent enough to do anything but lose, but that they *wanted* to lose.
ReplyDeleteTry to put yourself in a Republican's shoes. The guy they voted for, many of them holding their nose because the thought of voting for Hillary Clinton was too awful to be borne, voted for a guy whose grand plan was to sell their party down the river so he could start a television network.
And then they won anyway.
And how damning is that for the Clinton campaign?
Well, some seemingly disaffected people told Wolff Trump wanted to lose to further his media venture. But I don't think this is going to be the definitive book about Trump for serious people. There's so much horse**** floating around in the media stream right now that I hate to see even more of it muddying the waters.
DeleteIf it's true, of course, it is a measure of how badly people hated Hillary that a guy trying NOT to get elected beat her.
I don't understand hating Hillary. I don't particularly like her, but hate? Disdain? Respond with FOXY contempt? One would have to drink long and mindlessly at the springs of BenghaziBenghaziBenghazzzzi 13 times to achieve hatred for her. I mean, for Pete's sake, she knows how to wear a scarf and the alternative doesn't even know how to wear a cheap Chinese-made necktie.
DeleteAs far as I can tell, most people who hate Hillary (and Nancy Pelosi, who has received the same treatment from foe, faux friend and media alike) have been convinced they should but can't say why.
Tom, I have heard this argument a LOT of times: "Trump is a primo a$$hole and I don't like him, but at least he's not a baby killer and he's trying to defund Planned Parenthood." Don't get me wrong, I bear no love for PP. But one-issue voting is a big part of what got us here.
DeleteTom - I dunno. I suppose there are plenty of people who out-and-out hate her. I don't. But I admit I don't particularly like her. I find her sympathetic in some ways, and repulsive in some ways.
DeleteI didn't vote for her. Or Trump. I wrote in the name of some poor slob about whom I knew nothing and whose name I can barely remember.
People didn't have to hate her in order for her to lose. They just had to not like her enough to not vote for her.
Here is Jonah Goldberg of National Review on the subject of Hillary's role in rightwing nightmare propaganda, from his interview with Jeffrey Goldberg of Atlantic (to which Commonweal links in its weekly Friday email):
DeleteJonah: But what Trump doesn’t understand, what Steve Bannon doesn’t understand, is that Donald Trump’s mandate was: Don’t be Hillary Clinton. He accomplished that on Day One. Some part of his brain understands that, which is why I guarantee you that in the last 48 hours, Donald Trump has tweeted something about Hillary Clinton. Sean Hannity has done some raging scandal about Hillary Clinton. Psychologically, one of the things these guys have to do to justify their support for Trump is to remind people constantly, “You could have had Hillary.”
His next paragraph is even better. The whole chat, for that matter, is quite instructive.
Tom, that Goldberg/Goldberg interview may be an even better read than the Wolff excerpt. Here is the Goldberg squared article:
Deletehttps://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/01/trump-narnia-lizard-brain/549029/
I sent the link to some conservative friends, and it appears "raging sphincterless id" already is in the running for phrase (or moniker) of the year.
I'm not really sure what a "raging sphincterless id" is, but none of those three things is good on its own, so assume this is triply bad. Certainly, Trump's personality has reignited interest in psychology and colorful if puzzling metaphors and similes.
DeleteI've worked for a variety of CEOs, some of whom were beloved co-workers until they were promoted, at which point, they surrounded themselves with and/or became a magnet for the sadomasochistic toadies and scapegoats. Most of them became inordinately preoccupied with what kind of cars and clothes their underlings had. Heck, Henry Ford had a whole "sociology department" that would find scientific reasons for why the people he didn't like shouldn't get profit sharing checks. I heard that on NPR this morning.
This is one reason why the "run government like a business" idea strikes me as nutty. To conservatives it means "do more with less." To me it means "make sure your workforce is packed well-paid, useful stooges you can blame when something goes wrong."
Sorry. I should come with a warning label today: "I'm overcaffeinated and may break out into long free-associations and rants."
I did enjoy the Goldberg/Goldberg interview, though.
Kaherine, I can't believe that one-issue antiabortion voters -- and I know many -- carried the Electoral College. Trump got a boost from lot of free-floating hatred of Hillary from people who never give abortion a second thought.
ReplyDeleteI dislike the Clintons as neoliberal pseudo-Democrats. They didn't push back on Reaganism but merely extended it. But Hillary isn't cognitively and emotionally deficient. I voted for her because I'm not nuts.
ReplyDeletePretty much sums it up for me.
DeleteDitto.
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DeleteYea, verily!
DeleteWhile Bannon and Trump swap insults, and Trump's lawyer sends a cease-and-desist letter to Wolff's publisher (Give me a break; and open Trump up to be deposed?), EPA Administrator/Destroyer Scott Pruitt has named a guy who is totally unqualified to be head of the Superfund toxic cleanup program. How unqualified is Albert Kelly? He runs 200 head of cattle. He is from a Republican family. And he recently paid a $125,000 fine and was disqualified from banking FOR LIFE by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation for shenanigans with his family bank. Those are his "qualifications."
ReplyDeleteRemember the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico? We do. Trump has taken action that will eventually result in an oil spill that will make us forget Deep Horizon.
That is the sort of thing going on in the other world while we yokels enjoy the spectacle of a couple of crooks calling each other names. If only they could provide bread to go with the circus...
Yeah, and the new head of NOAA is the guy who runs AccuWeather.
DeleteThis all runs true to course for the Trumplethinskintinyhandserialadulterer "administration," doesn't it? Why is anyone surprised about this nonsense? Most certainly the RoypubliKKKlans members of the House and Senate aren't going to kvetch. They have an useful idiot who will sign their laws with his egotistical oversized signature, which he will then hold up while having a s*it-eating grin on his pancake made up face.
DeleteI tend to agree with Jean's assessment of the book. From the bits I've read in the news, it doesn't seem like there are really any bombshells of substance - not much that hasn't been previously reported by somebody,. somewhere.
ReplyDeleteBut it's a hit with the political class in DC. It's been uncommonly COLD for DC (no snide remarks from you tough guys in the upper midwest, please), yet people stood in line in single digit temps until midnight to buy the book at Kramer's. Kramer's is THE bookstore for the political types in DC, (formerly managed by Michael Sean Winters, now of NCRonline).
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/forget-harry-potter-in-dc-people-lined-up-at-midnight-for-michael-wolffs-trump-expose/2018/01/05/b38a8968-f226-11e7-b3bf-ab90a706e175_story.html?hpid=hp_rhp-top-table-main_furyscene-1246pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.9a2286e89fca
Maybe somebody could remind me AGAIN how to put in live links?
ReplyDeleteSeveral stories at Politico, but this one was especially amusing.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/01/04/donald-trump-michael-wolff-book-216245
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DeleteAnne, go to this post by David explaining how to do the live link. I tried to copy and paste the code into a comment but that didn't work for some reason.
DeleteJust spent a few minutes reading Trump's numerous tweets of the new year. If you want to know that the man is a self-involved knucklehead who doesn't read or listen to anything except what people are saying about him, read the tweets. He claims to be a genius, but can't punctuate a sentence or use capitalization properly. He resorts to not-very-creative name calling, has a limited vocabulary ("very," "big," "beautiful," fake," "good" and "bad" are his most commonly used modifiers), and I have yet to see him use a metaphor or simile.
ReplyDeleteThe 2018 tweets are a depressing string of accusations, bragging, and cryptic statements. Among the latter: A photo of a grieving widow stretched out on her husband's grave in Arlington is captioned Jan. 4, "So beautiful....Show this picture to the NFL players who still kneel!" which suggests he has no idea what the kneeling is about.
And then this odd statement Jan. 2, "We have taken Jerusalem, the toughest part of the negotiation, off the table, but Israel, for that, would have had to pay more."
You really don't need Wolff to tell you we're in trouble when our prez is doing such a good job of that himself.
I always like the constant bemused smile of Xi Jinping when he's with Trump. He knows he's with a funny guy, a useful idiot who can be handled. Agree that Wolff's book, whether accurate or not, merely dovetails with what is openly observable, an idiot publicly embarassing himself.
ReplyDelete"A useful idiot", doesn't that pretty well sum up why he has the support of a lot of Republicans who aren't part of his base? They perceive him as good for their agenda. And apparently are willing to gamble that his tendency to color outside the lines won't get them in trouble.
DeleteNo, we got him all wrong. Here is one of his tweets of today:
ReplyDelete"...to President of the United States (on my first try). I think that would qualify as not smart, but genius....and a very stable genius at that!"
So he is a very stable genius. Take it to the bank. (Maybe while you are picking up Mexico's payment for the Wall.)
Reading the responses to that tweet are fun. Lots of Wile E. Coyote gifs. Also, as one reader noted, Trump failed a run at the presidency in 2000. Not his first try. Stable genius with a big memory problem, apparently. What a maroon.
Deletehttp://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/donald-trump-tried-president-2000-11807012
This is getting to seem like a drinking game. Have you seen the latest? The Mueller investigation is "...making us look foolish. And that's not going to happen as long as I'm here."
DeleteI read a good response to one of these tweets: "After all these hissy fits, I never want to hear again that a woman is too emotionally unstable to be president." MAGA
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