I have just sped read the new book on the Trump presidency by Michael Wolff, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, (Little Brown, 2018). The Trump inner circle hates this book, but really as a critique of Trump, it falls very short.
This genre of investigative reporting aims to bring new insights via interviews about hot topics. While the book is an interesting read, and quite professionally written, indeed to the highest standard, it really does not measure up to the cut and thrust that I am used to in the wild world of the internet sites. Thus, while the book briefly deals with Trump’s womanising, it does not, unless I missed it in my haste, discuss the court cases against Trump on alleged sexual abuse issues. It does not relate this material to the ongoing moral panic of “zippergate,” the exposure of sexual misadventures of Hollywood movers and shakers, and other powerful men.
http://www.breitbart.com/video/2018/01/07/haley-michael-wolff-hit-new-low-lying-money-power/
What the book does succeed in doing though, is show, I think, how weak Trump is as a decision maker, lacking any real substance and philosophy. The author briefly writes about Trump being a persona, without a person inside, and I think that this is insightful. Thus, he takes the advice of his daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner, on a range of issues quite inconsistent with his stated policy during the election. He has failed build the wall, and will not do it in the future. In the end, he has simply joined the globalists and deep state.
Of course, it is most likely that Trump never seriously contemplated opposing the 1 percenters anyway, and the Steve Bannon-inspired ads during the election, were all sham. None of this is addressed in the Wolff book, which comes at this from a different political direction. Yet the insights given by Wolff about the fickleness of Trump clearly indicate to me, that America and the West has lost any hope of a simple democratic solution to any of its pressing existential problems. However, the claim made by Wolff that his book will show that Trump cannot do his job, and thus will end the Trump presidency, is just liberal delusion. Trump is following the orders of the Deep State close enough to ensure his survival until his replacement by the next robot model:
A better title for the book would have been to take the classic lines from Macbeth, “sound and fury,” for in the end the Trump presidency will “signify nothing.”
Macbeth Act 5, Scene 5:
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Shakespeare would have written such a tragedy about Donald Trump.