![]() Trump’s response came in the form of a long and furious statement that loosely translates into New Yorkese as “You’re dead to me” – which delighted establishment Republicans who have long seen Bannon as the enemy within. It was Bannon who told Wolff that Trump had “lost it”, and Bannon who described the meeting Donald Trump Jr had with a Russian lawyer – convened for the express purpose of receiving dirt on Hillary Clinton – as “treasonous”. What do they have to smile about? They’re pleased because they believe Fire and Fury marks the downfall of Steve Bannon, the former chief strategist to Trump and source of some of the book’s most scathing lines. And that smirk captured the mood of many of his colleagues. Instead, the official campaign account for Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, tweeted a gif of McConnell grinning mightily. In other words, the leaker Trump seeks is … himself.ĭonald Trump with Steve Bannon during a swearing-in ceremony for senior staff in January 2017. It turns out that the president rants endlessly on the phone to his billionaire friends, who feel no duty of confidentiality. And, perhaps most amusingly, we get an answer to the question that has long enraged Trump: the identity of the mystery leaker behind the stream of stories of White House chaos and fratricidal dysfunction that have appeared since he took office. We learn that Trump believes Saturday Night Live is damaging to the nation and that it is “fake comedy” that daughter Ivanka wants to be president herself and that privately she mocks her father’s nature-defying combover. If there are crumbs, the chambermaid can’t change the sheets: he insists that he strip the bed himself. He heads back under the covers as early as 6.30pm, munching a cheeseburger as he soaks up hours of Fox and CNN. He is weird, especially in the bedroom: having clashed with his secret service bodyguard over his insistence that he be able to lock himself into his quarters (Melania has separate accommodation), he demanded the installation of two extra TV sets, so he could watch three cable news channels at once. He is also loathsome: we read that a favourite sport of Trump’s was tricking friends’ wives to sleep with him. The Republicans have predicted many times that Trump would change. Some allies try to persuade Wolff that attention deficit disorder is part of Trump’s populist genius: he is “post-literate – total television”. He doesn’t read, or even skim, barely having the patience to take in a headline. ![]() The Trump depicted in the book is ignorant: the adviser who tried to teach him about the constitution could get no further than the fourth amendment before Trump’s eyes glazed over. ![]()
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