Not Buying It

All of this hysteria and hubris building up, about betrayal of trust.


The Republicans have their techniques honed down to a sharp points. The public was just stabbed with an animal tranquilizer dart. Something for everyone, in the shot.

The entity sitting in the Oval Office chair has lived his whole adult life, as part of a reality show. Ronald Reagan could not tell the difference between reality and
movie making. Ex-animatronic figure Ronald Reagan served the same purpose, as Trump is now serving. The star of a long running TV series. (All of the evil, harmful plans continue to be put into action, while we look the other way. There has been an obscene amount of money invested into farming a population that would buy into Trump. Every arm of the Republican machine put their power, influence, and network connections to achieve a majority. They are not letting this opportunity go to waste.


A whole mini-series built around Steve Bannon. FFS Bannon is a cartoon figure villain Trump is a victim, once more! Yet, again, another larger-than-life opponent for Trump to battle.

Comic book fiction.

I am not buying the scenario, that Bannon did this without permission, and approval. This scenario is one of the most effective distractions cooked up, so far.


Michael Wolff's book cannot put a dent in the teflon that surrounds Trump. Trump does not care. The Republicans in positions of power, influence, and authority, do not care. Everything about Trump, has already been revealed by Trump himself.

Who would believe that Michael Wolff would have access to the White House, if an agreement was not in place ? Trump has negotiated with the media outlets that cover him.

Every media outlet is gorging on the spectacle. There is nothing new! It is not news.


Meanwhile, Trump has been hiding out at Camp David. We had the strange Big Brother moment with Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Trump had his little remote viewing photo op. We had the usual Ronald Reagan-style helicopter moment. No answers given, just the quick news bite "speech," at the photo op.

We watch the wind-up mechanical mice scurry and twirl, while the cockroaches continue to sneak out of the crevices.

More erzatz outrage.



Bannon tried to make amends Sunday.

“I regret that my delay in responding to the inaccurate reporting regarding Don Jr has diverted attention from the president’s historical accomplishments in the first year of his presidency, ” he said in the statement to the news web site.

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/r...trump-family-new-book/Ztoad4avzmCzrKx90LoPyI/

Who is afraid of the big, bad Wolff ?

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...trump-book-life-career-work-bio-a8144141.html

https://www.thewrap.com/michael-wol...-are-so-many-leaks-in-this-white-house-video/

Michael Wolff told Stephen Colbert why he didn’t have much trouble finding sources for “Fire & Fury: Inside The Trump White House.”

“Everybody in the White House had their own press secretary,” Wolff said on the “Late Show,” adding: “So the president had his press secretary — not Sean Spicer but his private press secretary. Jared had a press secretary, Steve Bannon had a press secretary.”

So there are all these different press operations, and the answer to ‘why are there so many leaks in this White House?’ That’s what they did all day, that’s what the operation was,” he said.

“So everyone is spinning their own PR all the time?” Colbert said.

“Everybody,” Wolff said. “There are essentially different White Houses with these little staffs going out and talking to the press.”

Crying Wolff: Right Fights “Fire and Fury” With Fury, Fire

"...the book itself, however true and/or entertaining it may be, is politically unimportant, because 1) we already knew Trump was an asshole, and 2) for the 40 percent of Americans who approve of him, being an asshole is clearly a large part of his appeal."


On Sunday the White House sent dead-eyed adviser Stephen Miller on TV, where he answered Jake Tapper’s questions with insults and drones of devotion to Trump (“a man who is a political genius…in twenty minutes he would dictate ten paragraphs of new material…a self-made billionaire who revolutionized reality TV”) with such eerie disregard for context that Tapper basically threw him off the air. Miller was in turn defended on Twitter by numerous randos and President Trump.


I was stuck on Miller’s somnolent affect — even while yelling at Tapper, he looked as if he were under hypnosis. He reminded me of no one so much as Robert Owen, the similarly dazed-looking character who was called to testify at the Iran-Contra hearings in 1987 and ended his testimony with a bizarre hymn of praise to a then-unknown Oliver North — essentially laying palms in North’s path for his game-changing performance before the committee. Maybe Trump’s team thinks Miller is suitable to a similar purpose — except we all already know who and what Trump is. But who knows? Maybe Trump has a surprise for us. In any case, it seems increasingly likely he’ll eventually face a commitee.


https://www.villagevoice.com/2018/01/08/crying-wolff-right-fights-fire-and-fury-with-fury-fire/

Mentioned in the article-

Twitchy
Washington Examiner
PJ Media
Right Wing New
Daily Wire
Daily Caller

B-nnon has learned that you can't win against the cult of personality. B-nnon was an ideologue who had core beliefs, but went against an empty-minded President with no belief system and lost. Dim-minded voters will always side with the cult of personality and turn against a policy agenda.

I don't see the appeal of this pumpkin:

He's hideous
He's not smart
He's not charming

Most leaders with a strong cult following have at least one of these qualities.

The only reason his supporters love him is because they are extremely bitter and hateful that they can no longer rely on certain intrinsic things to get a job.


I hope B-nnon squeals to the FBI.

"The only philosophical approach for the reader to take is complete agnosticism, and the only judgment to make is that this really isn’t journalism. Call it the Michael Wolff way."

"The starkest sign of a rotten media ecosystem is that a book this flimsy and dubious could dominate the news cycle."

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2018/01/fire_and_fury_by_michael_wolff_reviewed.html


Given this level of sloppiness, Wolff’s constant, endless sniping about the media is surely the strangest part of the book. He is contemptuous of most of the reporting on Trump and Russia, mocks the press for its self-righteous outrage over Trump’s lies, and takes a few gratuitous, out-of-left-field swipes at the New Yorker. It’s not easy to decipher exactly what Wolff is so vexed about, but there is a clue in the author’s note about how he views the proper role of the press. “While the Trump administration has made hostility to the press a virtual policy,” he writes, “it has also been more open to the media than any White House in recent memory.


This is surely the Rosebud of Wolffism. In Wolff’s world, “openness to the media” means a willingness to blab to reporters—regardless of whether the blabbing is substantive or even true. It isn’t about, say, an honest or even partially honest accounting of government policy. Past administrations—especially the last two—had lamentable records in this area, but neither was anything like Trump’s. Wolff has written a whole book sourced from people who make a living lying to the press—which some of them are happy to admit to—and perceives it to be openness.



The best kind of palace-intrigue reporting comes from reliable reporters at reliable news organizations, where you can be certain (or at least optimistic) that they were pushed on the trustworthiness of their sources and forced to double-check things. None of this applies to Wolff.

Instead, at the precise moment that the press is under grotesque attack from people who care nothing about the truth and are doing their (admittedly incompetent) finest to discredit honest reporting, we get a book in which it is impossible to distinguish fact from fiction—and pointless to even try.