Donald Trump in Fire and Fury, by Michael Wolff
On Foreign Policy:
OpEd: Next drama always changed conversation: except Russia
In six months as president, failing to master almost any aspect of the bureaucratic process, [Trump] had, beyond placing his nominee on the Supreme Court, accomplished practically speaking, nothing. And yet, OMG!!! There almost was no other story in
America -- and in much of the world. That was the radical and transformational nature of the Trump presidency: it held everybody's attention.Whatever problems [Trump] might have caused in the past had reliably been supplanted by new events, giving
Nothing seemed to move on from those two events [referring to James Comey, the director of the FBI fired for allowing the Russia investigation; and Robert Mueller, Special Counsel investigating Russian collusion in the 2016 election].
Source: Fire & Fury, by Michael Wolff, pp.232&251
Jan 5, 2018
On Foreign Policy:
$350B of American arms to Saudis: jobs, jobs, jobs
On the empty roads of Riyadh, the presidential motorcade passed billboards with pictures of Trump and the Saudi King with the legend TOGETHER WE PREVAIL. The Saudis would immediately buy $110 billion's worth of American arms, and a total of
$350 billion over ten years. "Hundreds of billions of dollars of investments into the United States and jobs, jobs, jobs," declared the president. Plus, the Americans and the Saudis would together "counter violent extremist messaging, disrupt financing
of terrorism, and advance defense cooperation." And they would establish a center in Riyadh to fight extremism.
It was, in dramatic ways, a shift in foreign policy attitude and strategy--and its effects were almost immediate. The president, ignoring,
if not defying foreign policy advice, gave a nod to the Saudis' plan to bully Qatar. Trump's view was that Qatar was providing financial support to terror groups--pay no attention to a similar Saudi history.
Source: Fire and Fury, by Michael Wolff, p.230-1
Jan 5, 2018
On Health Care:
Why can't Medicare simply cover everybody?
All things considered, Trump probably preferred the notion of more people having health insurance than fewer people having it. He was even, when push came to shove, rather more for ObamaCare than for repealing ObamaCare. As well, he had made a set of
rash Obama-like promises, going so far as to say that under a forthcoming TrumpCare plan (he had to be strongly discouraged from using this kind of rebranding--political wise men told him that this was one instance where he might not want to claim
ownership with his name), no one would lose their health insurance, and that preexisting conditions would continue to be covered. In fact, he probably favored government-funded health care more than any other
Republican. "Why can't Medicare simply cover everybody?" he had impatiently wondered aloud during one discussion with aides, all of whom were careful not to react to this heresy.
Source: Fire And Fury, by Michael Wolff, p.p. 164-65
Jan 5, 2018
On Immigration:
H-1B visas help high-tech industry; we'll figure it out
On December 14, a high-level delegation from Silicon Valley came to Trump Tower to meet the president-elect, though Trump had repeatedly criticized the tech industry throughout the campaign. Later that afternoon, Trump called Rupert Murdoch,
who asked him how the meeting had gone. "Oh, great, just great," said Trump. "Really, really good. These guys really need my help. Obama was not very favorable to them, too much regulation. This is really an opportunity for me to help them."
"Donald," said Murdoch, "for eight years these guys had Obama in their pocket. They practically ran the administration. They don't need your help."
"Take this H-1B visa issue. They really need these H-1B visas."
Murdoch suggested that taking a liberal approach to H-1B visas might be hard to square with his immigration promises. But Trump seemed unconcerned, assuring Murdoch, "We'll figure it out."
Source: Fire and Fury, by Michael Wolff, p. 36
Jan 5, 2018
On Immigration:
OpEd: early signs by 2008 of immigration resentment
It was out of some instinctive or idiot-savant-like political understanding that Trump had made this issue his own, frequently observing, "Wasn't anybody an American anymore?" In some of his earliest political outings, even before Obama's election in
2008, Trump talked with bewilderment and resentment about strict quotas on European immigration and the deluge from "Asia and other places."
(This deluge, as liberals would be quick to fact-check, was, even as it had grown, still quite a modest stream.) His obsessive focus on
Obama's birth certificate was in part about the scourge of non-European foreignness--a certain race-baiting. "Who were these people? Why were they here?"
Source: Fire And Fury, by Michael Wolff, p. 62
Jan 5, 2018
On Immigration:
FactCheck: "Fire and Fury" ignored Trump's 2000 book
FactCheck on Michael Wolff's "Fire and Fury": There is such a political storm over this book that OnTheIssues must point out Wolff's shallowness on the issues. A prime example is Wolff's analysis of Trump's core immigration stance. On page 62, Wolff
asserts that Trump expressed "bewildered resentment" of immigrants "in some of his earliest political outings, even before 2008."Wolff evidently is unaware that Trump wrote a policy book in 2000, The America We
Deserve, in his run for the Reform Party presidential nomination. Trump fully laid out his immigration stance: America first; make legal immigration hard; control borders against illegal immigrants.
Trump has no bewilderment; you might disagree
with Trump's stances, but they have remained unchanged for 18 years now. Wolff is particularly wrong in characterizing Trump's "earliest political outings" as around 2008--Trump was fully engaged in 2000. But people like Wolff weren't listening then!
Source: OnTheIssues FactCheck on "Fire And Fury, by Michael Wolff"
Jan 5, 2018
On Principles & Values:
OpEd: Replaces art of the compromise with art of conflict
In most White Houses, policy and action flow down, with staff trying to implement what the president wants -- or, at the very least, what the chief of staff says the president wants.
In the Trump White House, policy making, from the very first instance of Bannon's immigration Executive Order, flowed up. It was a process of suggesting, in throw-it-against-the-wall style, what the president might want, and hoping he might then
think that he had thought of this himself (a result that was often helped along with the suggestion that he had in fact already had the thought).
[On Trump's staff,] you defined yourself by your enemy's reaction. Conflict was the media bait -- hence, now, the political chum. The new politics was not the art of the compromise but the art of conflict.
Source: Fire & Fury, by Michael Wolff, pp. 63 & 113
Jan 5, 2018
On Principles & Values:
OpEd: input on options from multiple advisers
As [White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Implementation Katie] Walsh saw it, Steve Bannon was running the Steve Bannon White House, Jared Kushner was running the Michael Bloomberg White House, and Reince Priebus was running the
Paul Ryan White House. It was a 1970s video game, the white ball pinging back and forth in the black triangle."
[Trump wanted all three options, and each appealed to Trump in their own way]: Bannon offered a rousing fxxx-you show of force;
Priebus offered flattery from the congressional leadership; Kushner offered the approval of blue-chip businessmen.
Source: Fire & Fury, by Michael Wolff, pp.117-120
Jan 5, 2018
On Principles & Values:
Fixated on personal dignity, uprightness, and respectability
The president and First Family are not subjected to [the typical] celebrity media unflattering photographs, or in endless speculation about their private lives. Even in the worst scandals, a businesslike suit-and-tie formality is still accorded the
president. Saturday Night Live presidential skits are funny in part because they play on our belief that in reality, presidents are quite contained and buttoned-down figures, and their families, trotting not far behind, colorless and obedient.
His is a 1950s businessman sort of ideal. Personal dignity--that is, apparent uprightness and respectability--is one of his fixations. Formality and convention--before he became president, almost everybody without high celebrity or a billion dollars
called him "Mr. Trump"--are a central part of his identity. Casualness is the enemy of pretense. And his pretense was that the Trump brand stood for power, wealth, arrival.
Source: Fire and Fury, by Michael Wolff, p. 89-90
Jan 5, 2018
On War & Peace:
Afghanistan is a military quagmire; no need to dwell further
General Petraeus and now General McMaster represented a kind of business-as-usual approach in Afghanistan and the Middle East. A stubborn McMaster kept proposing to the president new versions of the surge, but at each pitch Trump would wave him out of
the Oval Office and roll his eyes in despair and disbelief. The president's distaste and rancor for McMaster grew on pace with the approaching need to finally make a decision on Afghanistan, a decision he continued to put off.
His position on Afghanistan--a military quagmire he knew little about, other than that it was a quagmire--had always been a derisive and caustic kiss-off of the sixteen-year war. Having inherited it did not make his feelings warmer or inspire him to
want to dwell on it further. He knew the war was cursed and, knowing that, felt no need to know more. He put the responsibility for it on two of his favorite people to blame: Bush and Obama.
Source: Fire and Fury, by Michael Wolff, p.264
Jan 5, 2018
Page last updated: Dec 30, 2021