Book Review: Fire and Fury

By Michael Wolff

There is no better way to raise your public profile and celebrity than to run for president and narrowly loose. This will inevitably lead to enviable name recognition, increased value for your own personal brand and serve as a springboard for a future career in the media. This, according to Michael Wolff’s exposé Fire and Fury, was the goal of Donald Trump when he launched his presidential campaign in June 2015. Trump and his campaign team were prepared to lose with fire and fury, as most of the polls in the run up to November 8^th indicated they would. What they were completely unprepared for, however, was the eventuality that they might win the election.

Michael Wolff has written several acclaimed novels, and is also a contributor to numerous publications, such as British GQ and Vanity Fair. He has previously written a great deal about the media in Britain and the USA. Personally, I remember him best for several well written articles in GQ about the media moguls Sumner Redstone’s Viacom and Rupert Murdoch’s Fox. His ambition when approaching this latest project was simple: to be a fly on the wall during the Trump campaign and during the first 100 days of the administration. Knowing full well that the 45^th president of the United States is somewhat susceptible to flattery, Wolff wrote several admiring pieces about Trump, and so managed to gain access to the Trump campaign. Once that campaign moved into the West Wing, Wolff has in several television interviews recounted his amazement at the disorganized and ad-hoc state of affairs that enabled him to be a constant presence, even speaking to senior members of the administration, without anyone asking who he was and when he was leaving.

According to Wolff, much of the tumult and drama that the Trump White House has been plagued by is a direct result of the president’s own management style and character. An excellent example of this can be had by looking at the back of the book’s cover, where there is a picture of the president sitting behind the Resolute desk in the Oval Office, surrounded by members of his administration. The people standing next to the president’s desk are chief of staff Reince Priebus, chief strategist Steven Bannon, White House press secretary Sean Spicer, national security advisor Michael Flynn and vice president Michael Pence. As of this date, the only member of this group who hasn’t been fired or resigned voluntarily is vice president Pence. Turbulence of this magnitude is unheard of in any previous administration, but the current one seems to move from one scandal to another on an almost daily basis. Indeed, the new scandals that keep popping up divert attention from older ones in a most bizarre fashion.

Since day one, the Trump administration has had not one, but three simultaneous and conflicting agendas championed by different groups of people in the president’s orbit. Wolff recounts how former chief of staff Priebus carried water for the Republican establishment, represented by House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell. Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner, together with the director of the national economic council Gary Cohn, represented a centrist, business friendly agenda of the kind you might have found in a Clinton White House. Arrayed against these establishment forces was Steven Bannon, a self-proclaimed right-wing populist who championed aggressively nationalistic policies on trade and immigration. To say that these different agendas might have a hard time coexisting peacefully is somewhat of an understatement, and much of Fire and Fury concern the bitter infighting and strategic leaks of information to the press carried out by these factions as they vied for supremacy and the ear of the president.       

In regard to the man himself, Donald J. Trump, Wolff recounts how several of his longtime friends doubted his ability to carry out the duties of his new office “He can’t even read a balance sheet” is one memorable quote from the book that springs to mind. Even more alarmingly, Trump doesn’t seem to read much of anything, which has had the unfortunate effect that aides have a hard time briefing him on policy and he is unable to adequately inform himself of complex issues and developments.

Even though he has long been skeptical of trade deals such as NAFTA and many attributes the injection of Bannon’s populism as a reason Trump was able to win “rust-belt” voters in states like Pennsylvania and Ohio, Wolff paints a picture of a man more concerned with being accepted by the respectable establishment than being a populist in the mould of William Jennings Bryan. In Trump’s world there are only two kinds of people, winners and losers. The four-star generals and former Wall Street executives he has recruited to his administration are clearly seen as the former. Perhaps the institution that Trump is most concerned with is the media, whose favor and attention he has doggedly courted for the best part of his life. Getting good press and dominating the news cycle seems to be the overriding focus of Trump’s administration, no matter how he achieves that goal. Consequently, Trump has acted like an absolute monarch, aloof and surrounded by courtiers who constantly vie for his attention, distributing favor and influence as he sees fit. For said courtiers, this is a perilous existence, as Trump can at any time withdraw his favor and leave them out in the cold. For Trump, who subscribes to a zero-sum mentality, no one can be seen to profit at his expense, least of all those in his administration, and every slight, real or imagined, is brooded over until the perpetrator has been fired or ridiculed on Twitter, or both.       

Firing too many close aides will be dangerous in the long term, argues Wolff, because that will leave the president with fewer and fewer loyalists who can defend him against his numerous political enemies. Filling vacant positions is also becoming a serious problem for the administration. The respectable policy establishment is starting to sour on Trump despite the tax cuts and “light-touch” regulation policies of the administration. This was made painfully apparent in August last year, when Trump failed to strongly condemn Neo-nazis after a series of violent rallies had been held in Charlottesville, Virginia. One business leader after another abandoned Trump’s business advisory council in disgust at his behavior, until the president was forced to wind it down himself to save face. Meanwhile, the Neo-Nazi publication The Daily Stormer was delighted that Trump didn’t attack them, indeed he seemed to be quietly condoning their bigotry.

In terms of the investigation regarding possible collusion with Russia during the campaign, one gets the impression that if this is true it was probably more due to raw opportunism than any sinister agenda. The firing of FBI director James Comey in May 2017 was Trump’s own decision, but he had been encourage to do so by Jared and Ivanka, a decision Wolff notes everyone, including Trump, now view as a serious mistake. At this date, the ongoing investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election is carried out by special counsel Robert Mueller, whom Trump interviewed as a replacement for Comey but decided to turn down.  

In terms of his goals for writing Fire and Fury, Michael Wolff has made it clear where he stands “If it’s a book that brings down this presidency…I bow to the god of irony”, he told Bill Maher during an interview on his HBO show. Reading his book certainly doesn’t improve one’s opinion of the president, and I know that it isn’t intended to do so either. I would say that I very much enjoyed getting a glimpse into what truly goes on in the West Wing, as well as seeing how Trump’s cabinet and his administration view their role amidst all the turmoil and political intrigue.  

In regards to Trump’s  political fate it remains to be seen whether he is rendered a lame duck after democrats make big gains in the midterm election this November, or if he is reelected in 2020 on the back of a soaring economy, but the second year of this administration is unlikely to be any calmer or less controversial than the first one.