Wolff in Sheep's Clothing

So... read any good books lately?

For the converted, Michael Wolff's tell-all Fire and Fury not only confirms their worst assumptions of the inner workings of the Trump White House, it exacerbates them. For the skeptics, Wolff is the next Kitty Kelley, a gossip-monger who wants to knock powerful people down a peg. The former seems more realistic than the latter; a gaffe involving a Beltway insider's name has been blown out of proportion. The inaccuracies are minor and arbitrary compared to the big picture: the president and his inner circle really don't know what they're doing.

Because the Trump administration continues to defy logic, the real loser of the story is Steve Bannon. A man who had the president's ear less than six months ago has been fired, vilified, and removed from the powerful media position on which he built his name. I almost want to take on him... I mean, if he wasn't the editor of a political news site that enabled anti-Semites.

If the first week of 2018 was dominated by a seemingly lurid tell-all, then the second week has been defined by an unexpected streak of profanity. President Trump is not going to apologize for his "shithole countries" remark; if anything, he'll inevitably say something worse to pander to his race-baiting base. Any notion that Trump wants to the unify the country went out the window with his tepid response to Charlottesville; this secures his lack of understanding.

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