Fire and Fury – a Review
I finally slogged through to the end of this book. It took forever, as I found it sleazy and
grotesque and slimy. As I have mentioned elsewhere, each session with the text
left me needing a shower to clean off the muck.
On the other hand, much of it was seductive fun. Or would
have been if the author, Michael Wolff, had been more interested in facts than
fun. By his sloppy practices and
willingness to simply repeat what that crew of liars in the White House told
him, it’s really hard to discern what might have been real and what was spin,
either by Wolff or the various warring factions in the West Wing. Here’s an
example. I’d like to know if it’s actually true:
“Trump didn’t read. He didn’t really even skim…Some thought him dyslexic; certainly his comprehension was limited. Others concluded that he didn’t read because he just didn’t have to…He was post-literate – total television.”
That said, I found some insights that were backed up by events
that played themselves out in public. The steady turnover in top personnel, for
example, seems reflective of chaos behind the scenes. The lack of any
legislative or political experience by those jockeying for power as reported by
Wolff (with apologies to real reporters) manifested itself in poorly written
and poorly thought out executive orders.
Here Wolff and I agree, though: Trump himself is to be held responsible for
much of this because he doesn’t know what he’s doing but thinks he’s really
great at it.
For me, the most interesting notion concerns Putin. If, as
Wolff and others have said, Trump never really expected to win the election,
why go to any particular trouble to collude with the Russians? The meeting
between them and Don Jr. was stupid, and the result of inexperience and general
ineptness. As was the meeting on the
plane in which Trump and the gang wrote up a fictitious explanation that the Don
Jr. meeting was just about adoptions.
And of course, firing Comey.
As Wolff sensibly notes (and as we remember from Kenneth
Starr and the Clintons), once you get one of these folks on your tail, they’ll
find something. And THAT, he suggests (and I believe), is what scares the White
House. Not Russia, but all those other
Trump dealings and business shenanigans and so on. Mueller brought on expert investigators in
those areas. That’ll be what possibly
brings this whole thing down.
“And, indeed, the worry in the White House was not about collusion – which seemed implausible if not farcical – but what, if the unraveling began, would likely lead to the messy Trump (and Kushner) business dealings. On this subject every member of the senior staff shrugged helplessly, covering eyes, ears, and mouth.
“This was the peculiar and haunting consensus – not that Trump was guilty of all that he was accused of, but that he was guilty of so much else. It was all too possible that the hardly plausible would lead to the totally credible.”
From Wolff’s lips to god’s ears.
A side note about journalism by real journalists. Main stream reporters are held to high
standards. When they have a source who wishes to remain anonymous, all the big
papers and other main stream media sources, from the left wing New York Times to the right wing Wall Street Journal and
all the other good media require at least TWO independent sources before they
go to press. And as they note, just because the source is nameless in the
story, the editors and reporters know who they are: they’re not anonymous to
the newsroom. Main stream media still sometimes get it wrong, but they do their
best to get it right. Wolff? Repeats
gossip and even gets simple stuff wrong.
That’s frustrating.
I’m waiting for the real story by someone who’s done the
homework. Until then, I’m done with Mr.
Wolff.
