Every once in a great while a book comes along which puts to word such profound and great truths that the whole world cannot help but stop and take notice. The Bible, the Tao Te Ching, Plato’s Republic, Newton’s Principia, Darwin’s Origin of Species and now Wolff’s Fire and Fury, an instant classic concerning the origin of a curious species of orange humanoid currently infesting 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
With one fell swoop, Mr. Wolff surely has immortalized his name as a great thinker and philosopher of our age. But should you buy it? I don’t know. Should Americans try apple pie at least once in their lives? Is baseball a national treasure and/or painfully boring? Do humans need love? Is freedom a good thing? If you answered yes to any of those questions, then yes, you should buy it. In fact, you should purchase multiple copies and donate the extras to your local library so that people of all walks of life may bask in its everlasting glory.
The mere fact that Trump is spitting out more furious, poorly written tweets than the girls of my local middle school is evidence enough that this book truly gets to the decaying, tumor-ridden heart of Trump’s “presidency” and makes it worth a read. But this is also the sort of work that is going to affect our nation’s collective consciousness for years to come and is worth reading simply as a cultural artifact. I’ll spare you getting into specific quotes since I’m sure if you’re interested in this book you’ve likely already seen dozens of them plastered all over the news. But suffice it to say it paints a picture of a ship without a captain, a chaotic maelstrom where the man in charge doesn’t have a clue what he’s doing, doesn’t know what he wants to accomplish and often doesn’t even care. Instead, he essentially smashed open the presidency like a piñata and let his many hangers on, yes men and family members scratch and claw at each other for the pieces of candy that fall to the floor.
It’s pretty telling that this book actually makes former right hand man and closet-Sith Lord Steve Bannon look pretty good by comparison. Fire and Fury will confirm a lot of what you’ve probably already suspected but didn’t have much concrete evidence for. Ivanka Trump is a apparently “dumb as a brick” and stupid enough to think she has what it takes be the first female president (although I suppose that’s not too crazy considering her father somehow did it). Jared Kushner has the business style of a used car salesman and the heart of a strip club owner. Trump has the attention span of an insect, has probably never read an entire book in his life and may actually be functionally illiterate. Most of Trump’s hired professional political staffers have spent his presidency just trying to get him to do basic, basic stuff that any career politician would have done months, if not years, before assuming office. For example, his deputy chief of staff said it was like pulling teeth just to get him to come up with three basic goals he wanted to accomplish. Despite his obvious ignorance and apathy towards the actual work of politics and government, he apparently doesn’t trust experts even slightly and will often make decisions regarding complex, highly difficult topics no layman should dare attempt himself based on vague gut feelings, about like if some random passenger had to land a plane and told an actual pilot on the radio trying to help guide him to shut up, he knew what he was doing. And even if he agrees to listen to an expert brief him, it’s nearly impossible to hold his attention for more than a couple slides. Many people who’ve worked with him have likened it to working with a toddler. So yeah, if you want to know about the inner workings of our toddler in chief’s administration, here are all the gory details.
Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House," the controversial Michael Wolff book about President Donald Trump, is for sale today, four days earlier than previously announced.
There are several ways to grab a copy of the book. It's expected to be in high demand and hard copies may be difficult to come by but digital options are available for those who want to read today about the inner-workings of the Trump White House.
Amazon, Books-A-Million and Barnes & Noble are offering the book, though in some cases it's only available via audio CD. Amazon has copies available in three formats: traditional hardcover, audio CD and Kindle. Hard copies of the book won't be shipped for two to four weeks so those wanting to read immediately can do so via Kindle or the Audible audio book service.
Barnes & Noble is sold out of the book online but it is available in the Nook format.
Books-A-Million has hardback books and audio CDs available online.
Book retailers have been scrambling to make the book available after publisher Henry Holt moved its release date up after portions of the book were printed, setting off a firestorm of controversy. "Fire and Fury" was set to be released Jan. 9 but the date was changed due to "unprecedented demand," the publisher said.
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This book confirms what most of the country already knows. Not only is Donald Trump unfit to be Commander in Chief, Donald Trump is unraveling on a daily basis -- one need only go to Twitter to watch his meltdown in progress. Since the New Year, Trump has said that his "button" is bigger than lunatic dictator Kim Jung-Un's (nice way to avert war there, DJT), he is going to give awards to news organizations that he feels are fake (what award are you going to give yourself for retweeting a U.K. white nationalist groups tweet of Muslim's committing atrocities that were NOT Muslim's committing atrocities), and seeming to take credit for no domestic airline crashes in 2017 when there hasn't been one since 2009.
Having said that, Wolff lets us know that Trump never expected -- or really wanted -- to be president. Melania didn't want it. And to make matters worse, the people surrounding Trump didn't think he was fit for office. He didn't read, had no intellectual curiosity and apparently zoned out at the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution during a briefing.
Trump loved the crowds and the adulation of the people who thought he actually cared about the "forgotten man and woman" but this was a branding exercise. He and Roger Ailes would start a network, Javanka would be world famous (and maybe Ivanka would run for president), and Kellyanne Conway would get an important job at Fox.
And then the unthinkable happened. With a lot of help from Putin and the Russians (and quite a bit from James Comey who inexplicably opened up another e-mail investigation into Hillary ELEVEN days before the election), Trump won.
Michael Flynn didn't care that he hadn't revealed he was a foreign agent or the $45,000 that he received, Trump didn't care that his University or Foundation or taxes came under scrutiny, nobody cared that it was the most slapdash campaign in history. It can't be said often enough. They didn't expect to win.
But they did. And we have been living with the horror of that reality ever since. Trump still has about 35% of the country firmly on his side but the rest of us see him for what he is. An insecure narcissist (isn't that an oxymoron) with a seeming pride in his own ignorance. A snake oil salesman; these people have always been able to convince a certain segment of the population they're the real deal and Trump still just manages to do that. The cult of personality thrives....
What will the end game be? Nobody has written that book yet but let's hope it's a lot more Robert Mueller and a lot less North Korea.
Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House
