Fire and fury? This explosive book on Donald Trump will only galvanise his diehard supporters
ONLY 24 hours before this year’s publishing sensation hits the bookshops and then we can have all our worst fears about Emperor Baby Fists – aka Donald Trump – confirmed.
Michael Wolff’s Fire And Fury is a stiff enough price – €16.99 – given the rash of excerpts which show that, apart from the entertaining titbits about Ivanka’s mockery of her father’s bizarre coiffure or the hapless former White House press secretary Sean Spicer’s rueful acknowledgment that ‘you can’t make this s*** up’, it doesn’t really tell us much that we don’t already know.
It’s obvious the US president is far more unhinged today than in the Eighties when he was a brash young buck, running rings around the US regulatory authorities in order to build his empire of gaudy palaces and flashy casinos.
A combination of age and the White House goldfish bowl have amplified his shortcomings, turning him into a violently insecure and wilful diva, who can only be talked into seeing sense by the forces of flattery and self-interest.
The worst of Hollywood’s spoilt and stroppy superstars have nothing on him.
Steve Bannon’s co-operation with Fire And Fury is probably its unique selling point – that’s if you are interested in learning more about the poison between the US president Trump and his former closest adviser in matters of isolationism and white nationalism.
Echoing Bannon’s high regard for his former boss, Trump now says that Bannon has ‘lost his mind’.
But while making charges of insanity seem to be contagious among Trump and his inner circle, so too apparently is Trump’s grandiosity.
Wolff says that Trump ‘trumpifies’ everything he touches, meaning that everything becomes an opportunity for either self-promotion or thrashing the opposition, yet the extravagant claims Wolff makes for his book suggest that he, Wolff, too has caught the bug.
Asked about its impact, Wolff responded: ‘We will end this presidency now.’
He has courted the British book-buying public by darkly predicting how the death knell will sound for British-US relations if Mr Trump is not invited to Meghan Markle’s wedding to Prince Harry. As if. Being painted as an empty-headed, narcissistic and bullying loudmouth may be the kiss of death for every leader in the West, but Trump is not a conventional politician.
He’s now almost untouchable, beyond censure or scrutiny, because no-one expects presidential behaviour from him or normal standards of behaviour, or even a modicum of reserve or reflection.
Trump is free to throw his weight around however he likes. He can goad despots about the size of his nuclear button and talk about how his star power makes it easy to get ‘p***y’.
Short of shooting his chief of staff Reince Priebus in the Oval Office, there’s nothing he can do to shock us or cause us to blink.
He runs a Barnum & Bailey-style circus, with performing monkeys as spokespersons and political acrobats, walking a tightrope between keeping an erratic buffoon on side and serving public life.
For good measure he’s thrown in a carousel of sackings and resignations, and of explosive rows with an endless series of foreign leaders, colleagues, TV presenters and authors.
The result is more suspenseful and hideously compelling than his reality TV show.
Sideshow
It’s likely that for all Trump’s protestations about Michael Wolff’s fly-on-thewall book, he actually relishes it as another ratings-winning sideshow.
He reacted furiously to it of course, tweeting about fake news and decrying the author as a ‘total loser’, denying he ever met Wolff and predictably threatening to introduce draconian libel laws.
The escalating conflict keeps the masses entertained – which is Trump’s imperative.
It’s bread and circuses while the onepercenters enjoy the benefits of his tax package.
Wolff says he had unprecedented access to the White House, that he conducted interviews over a period of months with more than 200 people including Trump and his former chief strategist Steve Bannon.
Wolff says that Trump’s being ‘semi-literate’ and the claim that the President’s staff never read books made it easy for him to fly under the radar.
The writer just showed up every day, it seems, and was never asked to leave. It’s hard to imagine that Wolff enjoyed such access-all-areas without at least the president’s tacit approval.
Indeed it’s highly likely should Fire And Fury make publishing history, like Harry Potter, that Trump will be tweeting about it eventually, basking in the reflected glory. (It’s likely to go something like this: ‘The book on the first year of my Presidency has astonishing sales. Crooked Hillary’s book was a turkey! Sad!’)
There’s also the theory that the book is just another shrewd diversion from more serious matters, namely from special counsel Robert Mueller.
What scandals from money-laundering to improper contacts with foreign and hostile governments to obstruction of justice may he unearth to rouse the attention of the US senate?
But Mr Mueller may be forgiven for a certain degree of apprehension about his labours.
Even if he uncovers strong evidence and grounds for impeachment, he will have to tread carefully, or perhaps not at all.
A populist demagogue like Mr Trump who goes over the heads of the media and the political establishment to fight his corner on Twitter will not be as easy to take to task as Richard Nixon who, for all his flaws, actually played by the normal rules of engagement.
Donald Trump is a law unto himself so taking him on will be contentious and perhaps inflammatory. It might escalate the culture war that his election laid bare in the United States and catalyse civil strife. Mr Trump’s diehard supporters may decide to mobilise for him against the authorities and bring the country to the brink.
This dreadful scenario may seem alarmist but if the Trump presidency has shown us anything it’s that the unimaginable is entirely possible.
Ultimately what may bring the curtain down on the Trump administration is not doubts about his mental capacity or solid evidence of shady dealings either conducted by him or his entourage, but the next democratic election. That he will be ousted from office in the exact same manner as he assumed it.
Perhaps the only crumb of comfort from Mr Wolff’s grim recreation of the atmosphere of paranoia, discord and hatred in the White House was his confirmation of Mr Trump’s never wanting to win the 2016 election in the first place.
Mr Wolff confirms speculation that was rife during the presidential election that Mr Trump only ran in order to enhance his brand and to turn himself into a global figure, powerful enough to launch his own media empire.
As we enter the second year of the Trump era, let’s hope that the flame of that tantalising ambition stays so alive for the leader of the free world that it stops him even contemplating the possibility of a second term.