Michael Wolff’s book on the
first year of the Trump presidency, Fire
and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, reals like a gossip-laden tell-all
book. There are no notes, no
documentation of sources or of people interviewed. Wolff recounts conversations verbatim, but
it’s often not clear how he came to possess verbatim records of
conversations. Was he present for some of
them? Sometimes he was, but he never makes that clear. Was he relying on second-hand accounts? It’s not
clear.
In a book such as this one,
which argues that the first year of Trump’s administration was a time of
extreme disorganization and chaos in the White House, of alternating periods of
disinterest and anger on the part of the President, which calls into question
the president’s competency and even his sanity, there is a need for a firm base
of credibility: of sources, interviews, and so on. It’s likely, of course, Wolff would never
have gotten many of his sources to talk to him on the record. My sense is that although many of the individuals
details in this book may be wrong, wholly or partially, its general outline of
the first year is basically correct.
Steve Bannon is clearly the
source for much of the book. He is
quoted throughout, and his growing dissatisfaction with the direction of the
Trump presidency, especially with Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump Kushner (who together
convinced the president to fire Bannon) motivated him to provide negative information
to Wolff about the Trump Presidency. Of
course, deep shadows were already in evidence.
In Wolff’s telling, internecine
rivalries, inexperience, jealousy, self-interest, and other factors led to
chaos in the Trump White House. Jared
and Ivanka (whom Wolff labels as refers to jointly as Jarvanka) contend against
Reince Priebus and Steve Bannon for the president’s ear and confidence. Because, according to Wolff, no one in the
Trump campaign expected him to win the election, no one prepared for the
transition. There had been little if any
vetting of people who might be appointed to the cabinet or other offices. Trump mainly thought in terms of appointing
friends or people he liked or who liked him.
He never understood, or maybe cared about, the lies told by Michael
Flynn that led to his dismissal.
Details, statistics, policy discussions bored him. He was inconsistent and often uncontrolled in
his public statements, whether they came in speeches or Twitter posts. Wolff quotes at length a speech Trump gave to the CIA early in his
presidency in which he departed from his prepared
remarks: it is the most incredibly incoherent, wild, and irrational statement by
any president I have ever read.
A book which calls into question
the legitimacy of an American president ought to be better documented and should not contribute to the epidemic
of fake news that has flooded the American consciousness.
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