US Politics January 2018: "You All Just Got A Lot Richer"

I have wondered to what extent his references to 'your favorite president (me)' are trolling vs. an expression of reality as filtered through the putrefying mass of gray matter sloshing around in his brainpan.

Goddammit, I'm gonna buy a book by Michael Wolff, aren't I? "She" in this passage is Ivanka:

She often described the mechanics behind it to friends: an absolutely clean pate—a contained island after scalp-reduction ­surgery—surrounded by a furry circle of hair around the sides and front, from which all ends are drawn up to meet in the center and then swept back and secured by a stiffening spray. The color, she would point out to comical effect, was from a product called Just for Men—the longer it was left on, the darker it got. Impatience resulted in Trump’s orange-blond hair color.

“How’s the kid?” asked Ailes, referring to Kushner.

“He’s my partner,” said Bannon, his tone suggesting that if he felt otherwise, he was nevertheless determined to stay on message.

“He’s had a lot of lunches with Rupert,” said a dubious Ailes.

“In fact,” said Bannon, “I could use your help here.” He then spent several minutes trying to recruit Ailes to help kneecap Murdoch. Since his ouster from Fox over allegations of sexual harassment, Ailes had become only more bitter toward Murdoch. Now Murdoch was frequently jawboning the president-elect and encouraging him toward Establishment moderation. Bannon wanted Ailes to suggest to Trump, a man whose many neuroses included a horror of senility, that Murdoch might be losing it.

“I’ll call him,” said Ailes. “But Trump would jump through hoops for Rupert. Like for Putin. Sucks up and shits down. I just worry about who’s jerking whose chain.”

“Nobody is apparently telling you this,” she told him. “But you can’t. You just can’t hire your children.”

How did Wolff source all of this?

they all are really as dumb as they seem

How did Wolff source all of this?

From the end of the article:

HOW HE GOT THE STORY

This story is adapted from Michael Wolff’s book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, to be published by Henry Holt & Co. on January 9. Wolff, who chronicles the administration from Election Day to this past October, conducted conversations and interviews over a period of 18 months with the president, most members of his senior staff, and many people to whom they in turn spoke. Shortly after Trump’s inauguration, Wolff says, he was able to take up “something like a semi-permanent seat on a couch in the West Wing” — an idea encouraged by the president himself. Because no one was in a position to either officially approve or formally deny such access, Wolff became “more a constant interloper than an invited guest.” There were no ground rules placed on his access, and he was required to make no promises about how he would report on what he witnessed.

Since then, he conducted more than 200 interviews. In true Trumpian fashion, the administration’s lack of experience and disdain for political norms made for a hodgepodge of journalistic challenges. Information would be provided off-the-record or on deep background, then casually put on the record. Sources would fail to set any parameters on the use of a conversation, or would provide accounts in confidence, only to subsequently share their views widely. And the president’s own views, private as well as public, were constantly shared by others. The adaptation presented here offers a front-row view of Trump’s presidency, from his improvised transition to his first months in the Oval Office.

So basically, they're all imbeciles who can't keep their fucking mouths shut, and nobody on the outside has the slightest bit of loyalty to any of them.

The headline on that excerpt pretty much underscores my own impression that Trump won counter to his own wishes and helps fuel the tiny sliver of schadenfreude I enjoy every time I think about this dumbfuck who could've been golfing every day of his golden years (instead of, y'know, 3 out of every 5 days) if he wasn't such a dumbfuck. Cold comfort, but I'll take it.

The first thing that pops up on google for "Scalp-Reduction Surgery": https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trumps-hair-mystery-solved-he-had-scalp-reduction_us_58966965e4b061551b3dff8a (not for those with weak stomachs)

his hair is like #3,067 on my list of horrible things about that person, but w/ev

Almost everybody on the Trump team, in fact, came with the kind of messy conflicts bound to bite a president once he was in office. Michael Flynn, the retired general who served as Trump’s opening act at campaign rallies, had been told by his friends that it had not been a good idea to take $45,000 from the Russians for a speech. “Well, it would only be a problem if we won,” ­Flynn assured them.

incredible

put it right into my veins:

He didn’t process information in any conventional sense. He didn’t read. He didn’t really even skim. Some believed that for all practical purposes he was no more than semi-­literate.

We will lose too many of them, and there will be too much avoidable suffering, before sanity returns.

sanity is not gonna return - the genie is out of the bottle and the america you grew up in is gone forever

The surgeon dropped a junior mint into the cavity

xposts

Those who had worked on the campaign noticed the sudden change. Within the first week, Bannon seemed to have put away the camaraderie of Trump Tower and become far more remote, if not unreachable. “What’s up with Steve?” Kushner began to ask. “I don’t understand. We were so close.” Now that Trump had been elected, Bannon was already focused on his next goal: capturing the soul of the Trump White House.

He began by going after his enemies. Few fueled his rancor toward the standard-issue Republican world as much as Rupert ­Murdoch — not least because Murdoch had Trump’s ear. It was one of the key elements of Bannon’s understanding of Trump: The last person the president spoke to ended up with enormous influence. Trump would brag that Murdoch was always calling him; Murdoch, for his part, would complain that he couldn’t get Trump off the phone.

amazing

Balancing risk against reward, both Jared and Ivanka decided to accept roles in the West Wing over the advice of almost everyone they knew. It was a joint decision by the couple, and, in some sense, a joint job. Between themselves, the two had made an earnest deal: If sometime in the future the opportunity arose, she’d be the one to run for president. The first woman president, Ivanka entertained, would not be Hillary Clinton; it would be Ivanka Trump.

jfc.

it can also never be pointed out too often how truly stupid Steve Bannon is. only next to Trump is he anything more than a complete fucking mouthbreather. even in the Guardian excerpt he says "plain as a hair on your face" which is not the actual idiom, numbnuts.

Congratulations mr Wolff on your upcoming dishonesty in media award (2017-2018 season)

I've assumed for a long time that Ivanka will eventually run so that tidbit isn't even slightly surprising.

After Jared and Ivanka joined them for lunch, Trump continued to cast for positive impressions of his first week. Scarborough praised the president for having invited leaders of the steel unions to the White House. At which point Jared interjected that reaching out to unions, a Democratic constituency, was Bannon’s doing, that this was “the Bannon way.”

“Bannon?” said the president, jumping on his son-in-law. “That wasn’t Bannon’s idea. That was my idea. It’s the Trump way, not the Bannon way.”

Kushner, going concave, retreated from the discussion.

Trump, changing the topic, said to Scarborough and Brzezinski, “So what about you guys? What’s going on?” He was referencing their not-so-secret secret relationship. The couple said it was still complicated, but good.

“You guys should just get married,” prodded Trump.

“I can marry you! I’m an internet Unitarian minister,” Kushner, otherwise an Orthodox Jew, said suddenly.

“What?” said the president. “What are you talking about? Why would they want you to marry them when I could marry them? When they could be married by the president! At Mar-a-Lago!”

lmao @ "plain as a hair on your face"

On the one hand, this book is exactly the kind of deep expose of this clusterfuck that I've been hoping for and I really really really want to read it. On the other, I don't know that I need another thing that makes me feel like lying down in the street and waiting for the sweet release of death.

his hair is like #3,067 on my list of horrible things about that person, but w/ev

It's not as much about his hair as what it was said he did because of it (which, according to the article I posted, was rape Ivana) that's upsetting.

i'd like to preemptively cut off any killjoys who are no doubt about to pop into this thread to opine at the likelihood of some-to-much of this reporting being bullshit. i think after last night's button tweet we all deserve a little fanfic.

well, it's wolff so the quotes are bullshit

"plain as the pustules on my face"

'Look, it's as highly-contagious as the seething bacteria farm that comprises what's left of my face.'

As Nate Silver points out, the excerpt never establishes that Trump didn't want to win, and also plays fast and loose with polls - only outlier polls showed Trump down 12, the worst average was 6-7, and that was after the convention bounce. Basically, it sounds about as believable picture of the Trump campaign as Shattered was of the Clinton campaign.

I'm still definitely reading it, though :)

fwiw

for no reason whatsoever, just remembered this passage from michelle cottle's profile of wolff in 2004 https://t.co/9JMwBbuYqT pic.twitter.com/D5GQw60AYH

— brad plumer (@bradplumer) January 3, 2018

Yeah. But come on, you're reading it as well, Simon :)

However fictional Wolff's specifics may be, an accidental Trump win has always made much more sense to me on many many levels. Trump may have convinced himself after the fact that this is what he wanted, but I very much doubt this was how he was planning to spend the next 4-??? years prior to election night.

I honestly don't find the inner workings of the Trump White House all that fascinating xp

xpost

i was about to say, certain parts like

“I’ll call him,” said Ailes. “But Trump would jump through hoops for Rupert. Like for Putin. Sucks up and shits down. I just worry about who’s jerking whose chain.”

sound like something written by robert reich

Old Lunch otm. It's hardly believable Trump willingly chose the route of having to divert and divest his own business emporium (unless, as stated, he was clueless yet again and didn't even know this was required). Not that he's really divesting or letting go but ykwim

I find it entirely believable however that they just let Wolff in one day, and he became the hobo-lives-in-airport-for-a-year, where he became one of the 'gang' with no one even questioning it.

yeah, this is why the russia stuff makes way more sense to me as a bunch of career grifters looking to cash in however they can before their meal ticket gets his ass handed to him rather than putin's grand masterplan to undermine american democracy (xp to old lunch)

JUST IN: President Trump statement on Steve Bannon: "When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind." pic.twitter.com/LxZoBI5Ng4

— NBC News (@NBCNews) January 3, 2018

putin's grand masterplan to undermine american democracy haha well he didn't have to exert much effort to do what he did , these guys were willing miscreants .

oh damn lol xp

Huh, didn't realize Bannon was responsible for making Sessions the AG, Mr. President.

What a bugfuck lunatic.

OK, so now we reverse engineer Trump's statement based on the "every word is an obvious lie and literally the opposite of the truth" theory that's served us so well the last 13 months and...

Can't wait to see how this low-rent Vader vs. Palpatine battle turns out. Hopefully very much like the original.

I'd put all of my worldly possessions in hock for front-row seats to watch Bannon throw Trump down a shaft just before croaking himself.

bannon already looks like vader when he takes his helmet off tbf

wowowow

Force-choke Trump with coke.

this white house had a lot of coffee boys didn't it?

i mean none of these people did anything , it was just Trump and his huge brain making it all happen

i'm still incredulous that there isn't anyone in the approval chain who just says "no"/gets fired over balls-out-bonkers statements like this one

whatever the truth, high five to Wolff for eliciting that response

Lol at that statement. Btw, they definitely called Trump for comments yesterday, and that's why he ranted even more than usual.