Open Thread Jan. 6: Trump Makes Wolff Rich
Michael Wolff might look like Dr. Evil, and “Fire and Fury” might be, in NYTimester Maggie Haberman’s words, “thin” and “light on fact-checking,” but that hasn’t stopped it from becoming the biggest story since the Space Shuttle blew apart (the first one, not the second one that nobody remembers). One writer put aside his jealousy — wish I had a dollar for every journalist who has pointed out that Wolff will make a lot of money — long enough to talk about how Wolff did it. The answer is simple: He got access and then burned his sources. The last high-profile case of this involved Gen. Stanley McChrystal, and that reporter was reviled, too. When he died not long after the outcry diminished, he went curiously unmourned by journalists. Wolff might keep that in mind and put aside some of that money for bodyguards.
Trump simply can’t stop himself from proving the premise of Wolff’s book with his every act and statement. He started off today by tweeting “Actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart. … I went from VERY successful businessman, to top T.V. Star to President of the United States (on my first try). I think that would qualify as not smart, but genius….and a very stable genius at that!” It’s the “like” that makes it, like, art.
There’s a simple solution to this: Ban him from Twitter. He violates its terms of agreement almost daily, but the company refuses to shut him down, for the obvious reason that they’re losing money as it is, so they’re not going to kick off their most famous customer. But the company’s lame excuse is “B-b-but he’s a world leader!” Yeah. So was Stalin. Would you give him an account too?
Jane Meyer, who wrote a whole book about the Mercers and their dark money, says a source told her the real reason they closed the money spigot on off Steve Bannon months ago: His proposal to pay for his “revolution” with a 44% top tax bracket for people making more than $5 million a year. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you…
Now that Al Franken’s replacement has been sworn in, we’re hearing more regrets from some of the mob of senators who surrounded him with long knives. There were plenty of them, but the public seems to have focused its ire on the one with the most blood on her toga, Kirsten Gillibrand. This Daily Beast story includes a metric showing a sharply negative public reaction to her handiwork, which already has triggered whining on the Aggrieved Left™.
How far from reality are most of those thousands of Republican hinterland office-holders? Well, ever heard of the Oort cloud? That far. This Nebraska whackadoo wants his state to auction off a law-free zone to a corporation so it can operate free of that meddling gummint that he’s been elected to run.
Here’s an interesting science story: Ornithologists have always classified falcons along with similar predators like hawks and eagles, based on the shared form. As has often been shown by biology, form follows function. Falcons, we’ve learned through DNA analysis, are more closely related to parrots than to their fellow raptors.
I heard on TV (but have not seen it printed yet) that Wolff got his access because he wrote an article for the Atlantic and the Trump campaign liked the cover that the Atlantic used on that issue.
The article was critical of Trump, but nobody bothered to read it. They thought the cover looked cool, so they thought Wolff was friendly to the administration.
There are plenty of high-level ex-employees of the Trump administration already. May Wolff’s success open the floodgates for Trump tell-all books.
“His proposal to pay for his “revolution” with a 44% top tax bracket for people making more than $5 million a year.
An actual populist idea forces its way up through the muck.
Gillibrand lost me when she invited rape hoaxer Mattress Girl to be her guest at the 2015 State of the Union. Leading the “Get Franken” mob was just the cherry on top. Gillibrand is much too gullible to be in politics.
You don’t have to believe Mattress Girl was a hoaxer to point out that it was grandstanding on Gillibrand’s part to invite her. She’s bending over backwards to shed that Down Home Girl image the NRA loved so well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fp2q3yK8Lrs
I’ve been laughing all day over that “genius” tweet. This is better than SNL!
When is someone going to write the book that shows how right wing economic and ideological interests stupifies the American public to such a degree that the exercise of their democratic rights creates considerable harm and idiocies like the election of a Donald Trump? That’s the book that needs to be written. Donald Trump is our fault.
Kirsten Gillibrand will very likely be the next Democratic presidential nominee. Mattress girl and Al Franken are just the excuse du jour to start whining about it. It all sounds objectionable, but there’s really nothing substantial there at all.
Nothing substantial about what? Her Hillary-lite approach to politics? “If you didn’t like Hillary, we’ve got someone even less principled for you” sounds like a perfect way to lose to whomever the Republicans run in 2020.
OTOH, if by “nothing substantial there” you mean Gillibrand herself, I couldn’t agree more.
I no longer vote for anyone who spent time as a Young Republican. That includes Chris Coons.
No to Gillibrand. She couldn’t win and shouldn’t be nominated (not that anything would stop her from trying). Guess I’m with Coons, though. There are so, so many others who would be worse.