The planet’s current most famous author, Michael Wolff, published a piece in Hollywood Reporter early this morning with more information from the planet’s most anticipated forthcoming book: Fire and Fury, whose publication Trump’s new defamation lawyers are trying to block.
Caveat emptor: we know that none of the people Wolff interviewed during his White House sojourn are pillars of honesty. Still, when their observations match what is easily observable from the outside, one is tempted to be convinced.
Here are some highlights from the story:
Spicer couldn’t make this shit up
"You can't make this shit up," Sean Spicer, soon to be portrayed as the most hapless man in America, muttered to himself after his tortured press briefing on the first day of the new administration, when he was called to justify the president's inaugural crowd numbers — and soon enough, he adopted this as a personal mantra.
He couldn’t have made up being played—historically—by Melissa McCarthy on SNL, either. Oh, the shadenfreude.
Kellyanne despised Trump’s public statements in private
Kellyanne Conway, who would put a finger-gun to her head in private about Trump's public comments…
I get the impression Wolff witnessed this. He goes on to write that Kellyanne was pulled from the air by others in the White House, including Jarvanka, due to her “idiotic militancy.”
More opinions on Trump’s intelligence
Sam Nunberg: "He's just a fucking fool."
Gary Cohn: “dumb as shit.”
H.R. McMaster: “hopeless idiot.”
Steve Bannon: “lost his mind.” (Interesting that Trump threw precisely the same words back at Bannon yesterday.)
The Trump Uniform for Women
In a diary I wrote last January, I theorized that Trump, displaying the control-freak aspect of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, as well as its “preoccupation with perfect beauty,” forced a strict appearance code on women around him, including family, based on my observations. Wolff confirms this:
The West Wing is configured in such a way that the anteroom is quite a thoroughfare — everybody passes by. Assistants — young women in the Trump uniform of short skirts, high boots, long and loose hair…
(The guy is obsessed with hair.)
Internecine warfare
With no one quite sure what everyone else was doing and no one clearly in charge, Wolff writes, power-struggles were inevitable, and so was really nasty escalation.
By late spring, the larger political landscape seemed to become almost irrelevant, with everyone focused on the more lethal battles within the White House itself. This included screaming fights in the halls and in front of a bemused Trump in the Oval Office (when he was not the one screaming himself), together with leaks about what Russians your opponents might have been talking to.
Trump’s moods
About what I thought:
…veered between a kind of blissed-out pleasure of being in the Oval Office and a deep, childish frustration that he couldn't have what he wanted…
According to Wolfe, Trump would regularly declaim, "I want a win. I want a win. Where's my win?" (Insert “cookie” for “win” to get the full flavour of childishness. Reality check, because every now and then we need them these days: this is the most powerful human being in the world.) But notice also the sense of entitlement in the whine “Where’s my win?”, as if he already owns it and some cruel grown-up has taken it from him.
What we see didn’t escape WH staff. Emphasis added:
He was, in words used by almost every member of the senior staff on repeated occasions, "like a child."
Jarvanka willing to sell out dad
By July, Wolff writes, Jared and Ivanka were “engaged in a desperate dance to save themselves, which mostly involved blaming Trump himself,” specifically for firing James Comey. Interesting to speculate that they could turn state’s evidence. Or already have; they’ve been quiet for a while, haven’t they?
Cognitive deterioration
We aren’t imagining it, folks, if Wolff writes true. Emphasis added again:
Everybody was painfully aware of the increasing pace of his repetitions. It used to be inside of 30 minutes he'd repeat, word-for-word and expression-for-expression, the same three stories — now it was within 10 minutes.
…my indelible impression of talking to [WH staff] and observing them through much of the first year of his presidency, is that they all — 100 percent — came to believe he was incapable of functioning in his job.
Vacationing at Mar-a-lago for Christmas, Wolff writes, Trump failed to recognize many old friends.
The Russia investigation
No one on staff expected Trump to survive Mueller’s investigation, Wolff writes. Happy on having finally signed a bill (#TaxScam), he encouraged Fox to attack Mueller, possibly explaining why that particular smear campaign ramped up about them. Trump’s confidence was apparently false, though:
Insiders believed that the only thing saving Mueller from being fired, and the government of the United States from unfathomable implosion, is Trump's inability to grasp how much Mueller had on him and his family.
See this CNN story. This is what I’ve been thinking for a while: Trump is sheltering himself in a false narcissistic optimism based on the heartfelt conviction that he did nothing wrong, nothing he was not entitled to do. Probably Jared, Ivanka and Don Jr. are doing the same. (Family members support each other’s delusions.)
We want him to stay in that false confidence until it’s too late, if it isn’t already too late. I would bet the farm that Mueller realizes this also.
So, a prediction: the last indictments will come all at once.
There’s plenty more in the story.
Next excerpt from Fire and Fury is apparently coming today.
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