Michael Wolff (1) (1953–)

While ostensibly about the battle for Donald Trump’s attention, Michael Wolff’s “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House” takes political gossip and character assassination to a whole new level. Much of the tale comes from the point of view of a Steve Bannon heroically engaged in keeping the “Trump revolution” from coming off the rails even before it gets started.

Bannon’s great skill, in this telling, is to throw a monkey wrench into everything that constitutes good government in the US capital. His principal antagonists are the President’s daughter, Ivanka, whom Bannon calls “dumb as a brick,” and son-in-law Jared Kushner whom he seems to feel is even dumber.

Javanka, as they are now called by pundits, appear to have a liberal, “globalist” agenda, the antithesis of what Bannon considers healthy medicine for the American people. To make America great again, Bannon sees something quite different and he includes in that a complete remaking of the Republican Party, a big-tent Republican Party that includes would-be legislators like Judge Roy Moore of Alabama, white nationalists, and, yes, neo Nazis.

All that is standing in his way according to this book, are principally the President’s children, occasionally the Majority Leader in the Senate Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan, and a less than assertive Chief of Staff Reince Priebus.

Not the Democrats. Certainly not the press. Not civil liberties lawyers flooding the courts with injunction requests against the Muslim travel ban. Nor the intransigent governors of blue states like New York or California.

In one of the more memorable scenes for a political biography, one that I probably will never forget, is that of a tearful, inconsolable Melania Trump who had been promised by her husband that he hadn’t a chance in hell of actually getting elected, being told that indeed he will become 45th President of the United States.

Hillary Clinton, no doubt, shed a tear at precisely the same evil moment in time but for a wholly different reason.

What we have learned since is that the American people are probably much safer and better off when Donald Trump is on the golf course only cheating on his golf buddies, not the electorate. When he is nominating caddies, not Supreme Court judges, and when he is plotting chip shots, not nuclear strikes against Kim Jong-un.

We can only hope that he limits his limited attention span to negotiating his friends’ wives into bed, not fanning the passions of Freedom Caucus members of The House of Representatives.

For all this mayhem, I have certainly come to the conclusion that Bannon, for all his warts, may have a point. When the American people poll favourably for health insurance, the Republicans give them higher military spending. When it is obvious that climate change is unravelling civilization, the Republican Party gives them Scott Pruitt. And finally, when the evidence is overwhelming that Americans have transferred untold wealth to the Chinese, Donald Trump pulls the US out of an agreement among China’s competitors to try to level the playing field.

Who are these imbeciles and why have they been inflicted on us all at this particular moment in time?

This week alone I am reading about salmon stocks in the Puget Sound area testing positive for cocaine, antibiotics, and anti-depressants. I am hearing on podcasts about dangerous levels of mercury arising from no longer perma frost, and declining ocean populations of phytoplankton, the organisms largely responsible for regenerating the oxygen we breath.

And the latest outrage: meaningless tax cuts when the US economy sports a tighter than your Auntie Sophie’s jumper labour market. Talk about throwing gas on the fire of inflation.

Come on, America! Your political leaders are feeding you so much that is BS.

You have a corrupt, self-serving administration in power. In power! Many of your electoral districts have been gerrymandered by algorithms wiser even than Facebook.

Vladimir Putin is not your greatest enemy. Not Bashar al Assad. Not ISIS. Or Turkish President Erdogan. Or that creepy, murderous 71-year-old Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. Yes. They’re bad.

Maybe Mexican drug cartels.

I digress.

And here is where Donald Trump comes into focus.

The American experiment in government one might say has come full circle. It started with “We, the People,” and concludes with “Me, me, me!”

Donald Trump has every reason to obsess with his celebrity. He is rewarded for it. He is not rewarded for being kind, or patient, or magnanimous. Hillary Clinton wasn’t. Nor, in fact, was Barak Obama.

Can anybody become President? We now have the answer to that question. It doesn’t have to be a Harvard graduate in constitutional law. It can be anybody and a nobody.

The American people have so many histrorical grievances still to address including the patrimony of slavery and the genocide of aboriginal peoples. And it has incredible challenges facing its future, maybe the biggest of which is environmental decline.

When you refocus your attention, you see dawn just over the horizon.… (more)

Fascinating if true; fascinating if not. Falls somewhere between rock solid and completely outrageous. The thing I found most believable is that the author claims to have just gone into the White House and sat down on a couch and stayed there, interviewing and writing, and no one challenged his presence. Given the obvious amateur-hour chaos of this administration, that rings truest of all. Finally, this book needed an editor as badly as any book I have ever read--and THAT is saying something (can someone count how many times the word "quite" appears?!). Shame on the publisher for that piece of cheapskate sloppiness.… (more)

Вот уже полтора года мир просыпается под твиты Д. Трампа и не перестает им удивляться. Неудивительно, что первая же книга, пролившая свет на происходящее в нынешнем Белом Доме и в голове нового президента США, стала глобальным бестселллером. Обольщаться, впрочем, не стоит, потому предсказывать его дальнейшие шаги это чтение не поможет. Члены администрации, инсайдеры, сами разводят руками, цитируя очередной неординарный поступок Трампа. Практически все, решившие войти в команду, столкнулись с тем, что он просто ничего не знает. Не было такой темы, кроме строительства, в которой бы он разбирался, а жизненный и профессиональный опыт его самых доверенных советников, 36-летней дочери Иванки и ее супруга-ровесника, увы, значительно скромнее их самомнения и амбиций. Описываемые очевидцами события вполне тянут на искрометный сериал, одна только его реакция на скандал с российским следом дорогого стоит, но стоит отложить книгу и вспомнить, что это реальность, как становится не до шуток.… (more)