We had eight years of Fox News and conservatives harping on about every little perceived Obama misstep, including weird-ass invented controversies like his birth certificate, Bill Ayers “ghost writing” his book, his cabinet being staffed my “Maoists”, etc.
But it’s patently obvious that Trump is part con-man part dim-wit part wanna-be dictator. It’ll get tiring for his fans to keep pretending otherwise. The more publicity this book gets the better, it’ll seep into the public consciousness, and the idea of Trump being a hapless crybaby grifter will ring true with every childish tweet.
We need the anti Trump who is tirelessly campaigning on anti-lies and anti-fabrications. “His birth certificate says New York, but damn that hospital closed two years before he was born!”.
Unfortunately, that’s the kind of mistake that can get you sued.
Professional fiction writers know this well. There is a reason characters (especially villains) or businesses have either very generic or very stupid names: because if a real person / business with the same name feels they’ve been unfairly associated with even a made-up story, it can be costly.
It seems harmless, but especially when dealing with real life events, it’s important to get “trivial” things like identity right. The paragaph in question goes out of its way to identify the particular individual – it’s not a typo but a full-on misidentification. What if he’d called in sick to work that day and then his boss read about him eating breakfast in the lap of luxury and Mike Berman the lobbyist wasn’t eager to admit it was him? What if he wasn’t a journalist, but someone charged with upholding a greater measure of the public trust? A story like that could easily be used to paint him as corrupt, and the damage can’t be undone now that the story is out: not many people remember a retraction, only the initial story.
Editors and publishers are supposed to do a better job than that. To me, errors like that are fundamental in my willingness to accept the rest wholesale. I absolutely would read it (if I were inclined to read trashy gossip tomes) with a critical and sceptical eye. The gist may be right, but I can’t trust the attention to detail.
This has the feel of a rush job. As if the publishers know it will be of less value in a few weeks. So I wonder what is coming, apart from the Bannon book.
I know this is terribly bad of me, but I’m feeling increasingly unconcerned whether the book’s entirely accurate or not. It’s still a huge middle finger in the face of Trump, and his behavior is making it look more and more accurate.
If the book were all fabrication, then surely Trump ought not to be lashing out at Bannon, since what the book claims Bannon said would be a fabrication as well. So therefore…
They voted for Trump knowing he was unstable and that they would suffer as a result, but did it anyway because liberals and socialists would suffer more than they did.
The republicans will sheild him while he signs off on finishing the remaining remnants of the New Deal. Then they will throw him under the justice or dementia bus, and put the blame on all the hugely unpopular legislation they just passed together on him while acting like they don’t know him. The real deep state is the monied interest that own both parties.
At some point, soon, Trump will switch gears from disparaging Wolff’s book… and start simultaneously claiming credit for and reaping praise for “making Wolff’s book a #1 bestseller” and “making Wolff a rich(er) man.” He just won’t be able to help himself from leeching onto “success.”
A detail I hope is true involves a purported insider description of Trump’s scalp by Ivanka:
“[It is] an absolutely clean pate — a contained island after scalp-reduction surgery — surrounded by a furry circle of hair around the sides and front, from which all ends are drawn up to meet in the center and then swept back and secured by a stiffening spray. The color, she would point out to comical effect, was from a product called Just for Men — the longer it was left on, the darker it got. Impatience resulted in Trump’s orange-blond hair color.”
And more seriously, he reads the book as indicative of a man so befuddled and distracted that he won’t be able to focus on anything long enough to carry out at least some of his bigger threats:
it’s hard to imagine Trump focusing long enough to enact a plan as destructive as, say, the invasion of Iraq. Moreover, his confederates – especially now that Steve Bannon is out – seem mostly concerned with keeping the boss away from the real power of his office, almost like parents trying to steer a two-year-old away from the gas range.
