Siege: Trump Under Fire

by Michael Wolff

My primary goal in Siege is to create a readable and intuitive narrative— that is its nature. Another goal is to write the near equivalent of a real-time history of this extraordinary moment, since understanding it well after the fact might be too late. A final goal is pure portraiture: Donald Trump as an extreme, almost hallucinatory, and certainly cautionary, American character.

So, basically, gossip

I have made every effort to confirm it with other sources or documents. In some cases, I have witnessed the events or conversations described herein. With regard to the Mueller investigation, the narrative I provide is based on internal documents given to me by sources close to the Office of the Special Counsel.

More anecdotal than actual evidence or research. But still juicy and fun to read.

for it requires depending on people who lie to also tell the truth—and who might later disavow the truth they have told. Indeed, the extraordinary nature of much

Reality show spectacle. Even though I despise Trump, this seems to be more manipulated drama than actual reporting. Still, fun.

“I have never met anyone crazier than Donald Trump”

Even Gary Busey? Trump is in fine company with the rest of Hollywood’s nutcases.

My strategy is to try to show and not tell, to describe the broadest context, to communicate the experience, to make it real enough for a reader to evaluate for him- or herself where Donald Trump falls on a vertiginous sliding scale of human behavior.

Yet, just paragraphs before, Wolff admits that most of his analysis comes from anecdotal stories and assumptions based on past staffers “truths” that could be lies but could be “truths.” I hate Trump. I think his behavior speaks for itself on displaying him as incompetent and insane. This is just tabloid journalism.

All three men understood that to be a successful lawyer for Donald Trump was to tell the client what he wanted to hear.

Later echoed by Giuliani infamous”truth isn’t truth” statement.

This was the constant Trump theme: beating the system. “I’m the guy who gets away with it,” he had often bragged to friends in New York.

And for some damn reason he *does* keep getting away with it.

“If I had good lawyers, I’d look guilty.”

And if the US had a functioning Democracy, Trump would be a nobody. A failed businessman and an example of how Capitalism does not work.

“Where,” he kept demanding to know, “is my fucking letter?”

He got it with Mueller placing the responsibility of bringing charges on the AG, who, of course, was loyal to Trump and issuing a highly redacted version of the report to Congress. Which, again, did nothing at all.

Trump did not want his administration to be staffed by professionals; he wanted it to be staffed by people who attended and catered to him.

As Comey says in his book, “Those who give complete loyalty.”

But Hicks, seeming to understand the insular nature of Trumpworld, dated exclusively inside the bubble, picking the baddest boys in it: campaign manager Corey Lewandowski during the campaign and presidential aide Rob Porter in the White House. As the relationship between Hicks and Porter unfolded in the fall of 2017, knowing about the affair became an emblem of Trump insiderness, with special care taken to keep this development from the proprietary president. Or not: other people, assuming that Porter’s involvement with Hicks would not at all please Trump, were less than discreet about it.

What does Hicks’ love life have to do with Trump’s ineptitude?! This is gossip and worse than anything in Cosmopolitan!

He was confident he could jawbone this “witch hunt”—often tweeted in all-caps—to at least a partisan draw.

I don’t think Trump is this smart. He literally saw the Mueller investigation as a “witch hunt” with no political subtext.

The Trumpers swept up by Mueller were all declared wannabe and marginal players.

Not Manafort. He was pretty powerful and important

What’s more, the Trump hangers-on were so demonstrably subpar players that stupidity could well be a reasonable defense against intent.

Stupidity is not absent of intent.

Real estate was the world’s favorite money-laundering currency, and Trump’s B-level real estate business—relentlessly marketed by Trump as triple A—was quite explicitly designed to appeal to money launderers.

That Friday morning, he came down from the residence into the Oval Office in a full-on rage so violent that, for a moment, his hair came undone. To the shock of the people with him, there stood an almost entirely bald Donald Trump.

He was psychologically incapable of not being the focus of all attention.

Fooling some of the people all of the time defined Trump’s hard-core base.

Trump saw the world through the filter of other people’s weaknesses. He saw people through their physical and intellectual shortcomings, or through oddities in the way they talked or dressed.

McConnell’s contempt for Trump was boundless. He was not just the stupidest president McConnell had ever dealt with, he was the stupidest person McConnell had ever met in politics—and that was saying something. He and his wife, Elaine Chao, the secretary of transportation, regularly mocked and mimicked Trump, a set piece they would perform for friends.

So he reverted to his basic approach: if maximum flattery doesn’t work, if you can’t get to a deal that way, then “shit on them.”

I go into this gazebo thing and they’re setting up and it’s a table like for six. So I’m really pissed. They’re putting hot dogs on the grill. It’s like a Jersey shore cookout. Hot dogs—and not good hot dogs.

Nixon, Trump announced, was the greatest president.

No doubt

Pelosi, the professional, was taking stock of the most ill-informed, ill-equipped, ill-prepared team ever to come into the White House. Bannon perceived that she had to exercise maximum restraint not to break down in open incredulity and hilarity. What she seemed to feel was less scorn, Bannon sensed, than pity. She saw the future.

😂😂😂

In his ever-reduced White House, his travel group consisted of people he regarded as assistants or lackeys or fools—sometimes all three.

Much like the Mafia, except incapable of anything remotely intelligent. A crime family composed of the stupidest among us.

French president Macron delivered what Trump took to be a personal dressing down. “Nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism,” said Macron in his speech. “By saying, ‘Our interests first, who cares about the others,’ we erase what a nation holds dearest, what gives it life, what makes it great and what is essential: its moral values.”

The conservative commentator and performer, with her politically incorrect zingers and signature straight blond hair, had, for more than twenty years, been a right-wing cable voice and bestselling author.

Coulter is a creature of a nonsensical political past where Conservatism was somehow taken seriously and her performance as a firebrand, along with Hannity and Limbaugh, were considered ”relevant” in creating a fictional balanced position. Compared to Trump, she's more like Alan Colmes--a hilarious attempt to provide ”balance” to a destructive political philosophy. Oh, when times were quaint.

He wanted what he wanted but lacked any clear understanding of how to get it.

When preparing for the State of the Union, the president’s staff farmed out much of the writing to Newt Gingrich and his people.