Okay. I've finished reading Michael Wolff's Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House.
https://www.amazon.ca/Fire-Fury-Inside-Trump-White-ebook/dp/B077F4WZZY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1515805136&sr=8-1&keywords=fire+and+fury
For full disclosure let me say that I come at this from a right of centre position with an equal distaste for Canadian Liberal Party and American Republican Party for clearly different reasons. Furthermore I have a longstanding disrespect for Trump which reaches back much further than his decision to get involved in politics. I'm somewhat predisposed to believing bad things about him so I won't dwell on particular anecdotes that reinforced my impression of him.
The book itself is generally well written and easy to read. It flows more or less chronologically and smoothly with the exceptions of two breaks in the flow where I had to check to see if my Kindle hadn't skipped a chapter.
It's very obvious that Wolff's primary source in this book is Steve Bannon. While it is also clear that there are other contributors to round out some events, most of the action takes place from a Bannon point of view and effectively sets him up as the hero of the tale. In that respect if your objective is to get Bannon's take on the President and on the internal fights between the three key White House power bases (Bannon; Chief of Staff Preibus; and Jared Kushner/Evanka Trump) then this is your book until he publishes his own.
One of the more interesting tidbits that comes out of this account is that the vast majority of the leaks coming out of the White House were from the three power blocks as they jostled for primacy and out of Trump himself. Apparently Trump spent most of his evening hours on the phone continuously talking to a wide selection of his billionaire friends seeking advice and validation during the course of which he held back very little. Much of that ended up in the press.
There is very little depth to the book perhaps because the White House that it represents has little depth to it and is portrayed as being run by amateurs. Bannon clearly sees himself as the only one there that had a political philosophy and political agenda (which he credits for the election win) and portrays himself as the only adult in the room. He does credit Trump with an innate sense of showmanship.
Surprisingly, quotes by some of the media notwithstanding, the book isn't as critical and condemning of Trump and his coterie as I thought it would be. It's more about chaos than stupidity. In places it seems critical of the way that the main stream media is handling the White House. Perhaps that's because much of the book is coming from Bannon, it isn't written from an extreme left wing/Democrat viewpoint but more from that of an insider with his own ax to grind. You end up taking the thing with more than a grain of salt but much of it sounds quite probable including some of the more salacious comments attributed in the book to Trump's staff and peers.
If there is anyone looking for the whole unvarnished truth about the Trump White House I expect that it will never be found. Ever. I doubt if one will ever find the truth in an organization where truth and facts and alternate facts are a word game to be played indiscriminately. Wolff himself admits that he did have trouble getting consistent viewpoints about events from the various players and therefore had to determine which were the more probable.
Is it a great book? Nope. A worthwhile read? Yup, and I would suggest for both sides of the aisle.
:cheers:
