THROWN TO THE WOLFF
Author’s new book on Trump reveals the fault-lines of the presidency.
The latest bombshell book about life and lunacy in U.S. President Donald Trump’s White House is overflowing with eye-popping, gossipy anecdotes, but it reveals much more.
Pushing the stench of money laundering to the fore, the book shows how the legal noose around Trump’s neck is inexorably tightening.
But, along the way, it certainly tells some great stories.
Imagine the leader of the free world lying in bed most evenings in his White House bedroom, munching on cheeseburgers as he watches TV and phones friends venting about “fake news.” Or his wife Melania bursting into tears — of horror — when they learn that Trump won the election. Or his daughter Ivanka vowing to become the first female president. Or countless stories about Trump’s closest associates describing their boss as an “idiot,” a “moron” or a “child.”
These are just some of the revelations contained in the explosive new book by journalist Michael Wolff, titled Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House. It is scheduled to be published next week but excerpts appeared this week in New York magazine and the Guardian.
The author was given extensive access to the White House and its staff over a period of 18 months and the book is based on more than 200 interviews. It provides a brutal portrait of a chaotic and dysfunctional White House, riven by backstabbing and division, in which both Trump and his family are described in withering terms.
A prominent voice in the book is Trump’s former chief strategist, Stephen Bannon. Trump was described by his press secretary as “furious and disgusted” at Bannon’s comments and he said his former aide had “lost his mind.”
In spite of the uproar, there are at least three major revelations from Wolff’s book that are worth noting. 1. The legal case against Trump is clearer In his comments to Wolff, Bannon was most damning about the ties between the Trump team and Russia. He predicted that the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller will focus on long-standing suspicions of money laundering between Russian billionaires and the Trump empire: “They’re going to crack Don Junior (Trump’s son) like an egg on national TV.” Bannon was particularly contemptuous about a June 2016 meeting involving Trump’s son, his son-in-law Jared Kushner and a Russian lawyer who had promised to bring documents to “incriminate” Trump’s rival, Hillary Clinton: “Even if you thought that this was not treasonous, or unpatriotic, or bad sh--, and I happen to think it’s all of that, you should have called the FBI immediately.” 2. Even Trump’s team regards him as unfit The book is full of stories about how frustrated Trump’s staff is with their boss. Trump is portrayed as an uninformed, lazy president, focused solely on his ego. It reports that at the outset of his 2016 campaign, an aide, Sam Nunberg, was asked to explain the U.S. Constitution to Trump: “I got as far as the Fourth Amendment before his finger is pulling down on his lip and his eyes are rolling back in his head.”
The book quotes an email that was said to reflect the views of Gary D. Cohn, Trump’s national economic adviser: “It’s worse than you can imagine. An idiot surrounded by clowns. Trump won’t read anything — not one-page memos, not the brief policy papers; nothing. He gets up halfway through meetings with world leaders because he is bored.” 3. Trump was certain he would lose U.S. election night in 2016 was not supposed to end like this. Not only did Hillary Clinton’s camp expect a Clinton victory, so did Trump and his team. They saw the campaign as leverage for careers in television and politics. Trump was described as completely comfortable with the idea of losing to Clinton. As the book outlined: “Once he lost, Trump would be both insanely famous and a martyr to Crooked Hillary . . . Melania Trump, who had been assured by her husband that he wouldn’t become president, could return to inconspicuously lunching. Losing would work out for everybody. Losing was winning.”
But that night, once it became evident that Trump would win, the book reports that his son Donald Jr. said his father “looked as if he had seen a ghost. Melania was in tears — and not of joy.”
With Trump’s popularity still at an all-time low a year since that stunning upset, most Americans appear to share Melania’s tears. Tony Burman is former head of Al Jazeera English and CBC News. Reach him @TonyBurman or at tony.burman@gmail.com.