Internet meme circulated in late 2017

We finally have answers. Perhaps more importantly, something about the Trump Administration finally makes sense. Credit Michael Wolff, author of Fire and Fury, which is a peek under the short skirt of the Trump Administration (yes, I tweaked the metaphor on purpose). Wolff's work provided so many insights and answers to questions I can't be the only one asking.

Wolff has been doing the talk show circuit for at least a week now. I ordered my copy of the book based on Wolff's Today Show interview and a Newsweek article — a "top ten list" of topics covered in Fire and Fury's salacious 321 pages. ¹ 

Fire and Fury

Fire and Fury delivered for me the "ground zero" answer to all of my questions about the Trump Administration over the past year: Winning the race was never Donald Trump's intention.

With Wolff's help, I've been led to conclude, by piecing together content from the book with other news I'd picked up over the past year and a half, that the whole thing was about developing a message that Trump could later broadcast over a media company. In short, Trump's candidacy was step one of a two step program: (1) create a message (2) make a network to broadcast that message. The program was taken straight from the playbook of Roger Ailes, the disgraced former Chairman and CEO of Fox News who resigned in mid-2016 amid sexual harrassment allegations. Both Ailes and Rupert Murdoch, Wolff explains, are held in very high esteem at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue — though for Murdoch, the feeling was not entirely mutual.

Trump's longtime friend Roger Ailes liked to say that if you wanted a career in television, first run for president. Now Trump, encouraged by Ailes, was floating rumors about a Trump network. It was a great future.

He would come out of this campaign, Trump assured Ailes, with a far more powerful brand and untold opportunties. "This is bigger than I ever dreamed of," he told Ailes in a conversation a week before the election. "I don't think about losing because it isn't losing. We've totally won."

The answer to just about any question one might ask about the Trump Administration can be traced back to that paragraph. Example: Why, particularly early on, why did the Trump Administration appear to be in complete disarray? Because they made no plans for becoming an actual Administration. Team Trump planned to lose the election. Another example: Why did Candidate Trump refuse to release his tax returns to the public? Because Team Trump planned to lose the election. Then-candidate Trump knew the entire furor would become entirely moot after Election Day.

Fire and Fury does three things very well: It offers insight into our enigmatic 45th president (and how the White House staff learned to shape information for him); it offers insight into the events that shaped the first year of the Trump Administration, from catalysts to reactions; and, perhaps most importantly, it offers insight into different factions within the White House who were constantly fighting for the president's favor.

Three Factions

To the final point above: three parties with different interests were all working feverishly to further their own agendas through President Trump: Steve Bannon, who was advocating for the no-quarter nationalist approach (Wolff refers to this as "Trumpism-Bannonism": an "iron-fisted isolationism"); Reince Priebus, who was working to further the interests of the Republican Party; and Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, who were pushing hard against Bannon for moderation, pushing for causes Bannon considered "off-message," and to generally mold 45 into a more presidential image.

As the events of 2017 unfolded, Wolff gave us the three sides to every story — including how each side tailored their messages, and the players each recruited to bend the president's ear and hold his attention enough to communicate it (for example, Camp Kushner was using Joe Scarborough of Fox Network's Morning Joe, playing to the president's addiction to television). And it seems every topic was a battle; every day, a grueling war for virtual control of the United States and its place in the world.

Numerous newsworthy events were engineered by at least one of the three camps, Wolff explains. For example, the firing of FBI Director James Comey was engineered by Kushner, because Kushner's family business dealings were getting exposed as part of the Russia investigation. (Interestingly, Bannon urged against firing Comey because news coverage of the investigation would instantly become front-page material — but also perhaps partly because he'd had his fill of Kushner.) Kushner then went to great lengths to deny any involvement in the decision.

Wolff walks us through many such events — using the introduction of each actor and how they came to participate to set the stage, followed by the event and the reactions by each camp. Many of these events involving a given camp only became events because word was leaked by one of the other camps — for example, much of the trouble Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump were in was preceded by some action from an agent of either Bannon or Priebus — or both.

At times the book reads like the latest installment of the Star Wars saga (*cue John Williams*):

Pity the Fool

In truth, Fire and Fury has ultimately made me pity our president. I'm angry that he ran in the first place (because he had no intention of winning); he should have found some other way to craft a message without making a promise he never intended to keep. I'm angry about the things he did under Bannon's influence, and I'm angry about the hijinx the Republicans have been doing in Congress (like voting on important bills the Democrats had no chance to read). But ultimately, the book has shown that Mr. Trump has been a pawn the entire time. Everyone around him learned the one thing he craved most was adoration, and so all used flattery to their advantage to get him to do what they wanted.

Looking to the Future

Look where this could leave us. We have a president that entered the race for himself — not for the good of the country. All he wanted was a media presence. Now he's the Commander in Chief, and, as Wolff helps illustrate, the issues facing the country don't interest him. Hell, reading doesn't interest him. The ONE thing in those 321 pages he really seemed to give any kind of a damn about was the use of chemical weapons in Syria — and only because Ivanka was smart enough to put together a CARE-esque preso and made him watch it. ²  As was stated in the book, "He doesn't give a fuck." (That's a quote — not my words.) He doesn't care about you. Or your family. Or your health care. Or your taxes. He cares about himself, television, — his image on television — golf, and cheeseburgers. Everything else is a pain in his ass (which I think is also at least close to another quote from the book).

I encourage all Americans to read this book — but particularly those who voted for President Trump. Read it and really think about how our political process should function — and what you can do to prevent this from happening again in the future.

I believe we the people had become complacent.

We the people were not engaged enough.

And we the people are suffering the fruits of outsourcing our liberty.

We the people need representatives in the judiciary, in the legislature, and in the executive who will absolutely act in the best interests of we the people of the United States of America.