Matt Taibbi: Why Michael Wolff's Book Is Good News

Most of the world seems to have concluded that the lunatic chaos described in Fire and Fury, the "bombshell" new book about the Trump White House by Michael Wolff, foretells the end of civilization.

The book certainly doesn't seem like good news. Wolff tells us our president is probably a neurotic illiterate, incapable of focus beyond a few seconds, and thought of as a deranged simpleton by even his most trusted advisors.

The excerpt in New York Magazine describes an idiot who didn't expect to win and spends his evenings locked in the White House bedroom wolfing down cheeseburgers – Trump reportedly has a Woody Allen-esque phobia about being poisoned and therefore loves the wholesome safety of premade McDonald's – while watching news about himself and descending into fugue states of rage and self-pity.

Pretty much any hack novelist writing an imagined account of what Trump's daily routine is like could have penned that exact same scene. (I might have put the cheeseburger in one hand and a hyper-smudged mobile device, for counter-tweeting purposes, in the other.)

The eerie literary accuracy of such accounts is probably why journalists spent much of Thursday debating the provenance of Wolff's information. Was it all true? Exaggerated? Stuff whispered in confidence?

Others questioned the validity of the account on the basis that the representation of Trump was so horrifically moronic, it couldn't possibly be real.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/taibbi-why-michael-wolffs-book-is-good-news-w515045?utm_source=rsnewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=daily&utm_campaign=010518_16