Translated material
A book shocked the White House
The book of American journalist Michael Wolff “Fire and Fury: the White House of Trump from the inside” has not yet appeared on sale, has become the main political event of the New Year in Washington. The book tells about the first months of the presidency of Donald Trump, mainly on the basis of an interview with people from his environment. Sensational quotes from the book have already dispersed through the headings of numerous articles.
Trump's critics insist: this essay proves their allegations that the president does not correspond to his position. Trump supporters say that in this book there is nothing but rumors and speculation, and the lawyer of the head of the American state requires the publisher to delay the publication of this book, threatening the judicial persecution.
The cover of the book of Michael Wolff
If you believe Michael Wulff himself, the book was the result of his multi -month observation of the activities of the presidential administration. He received almost unlimited access to the White House, supposedly authorized by the president himself, and spent more than two hundred interviews with people from Donald Trump's entourage. However, who collaborated with Wolff from the immediate environment of the president is incomprehensible. It is only obvious that most of the sensational quotes belong to the former chief strategist of the Trump administration Stephen Bannon, who left the White House a few months ago. He does not refuse the authorship of the words attributed to him. Donald Trump himself calls the book of false, saying that he did not give her the author access to the White House:
I Authorized Zero Access to White House (Actually Turned Him Down Many Times) for Author of Phony Book! I Never Spoke to Him for Book. Full of Lies, MisrePreSentations and Sources that Don`t Exist. LOOK at This Guy's Past and Watch What Happens to Him and Sloppy Steve!
- Donald J. Trump (@realdonaldtrump) January 5, 2018
It is curious that Wulff himself makes an important reservation. He admits that often his sources gave conflicting information and he had to think out something, creating from the strokes the seeming of the correct picture of what was happening to him. And it turned out to be a portrait of the president, who actually did not count on victory in the election, came to the White House unprepared for the role of the head of the state machine, a portrait of a man whose personal qualities are strikingly different from his predecessors as president of the United States.
For example, in a successful one, according to Wolff himself, an endurance from the book published by New York Magazine, it is said that in fact, none of Trump’s closest assistants and the candidate himself believed in his victory literally until the last minute. Kelien Conway, the most noticeable representative of the candidate Trump for relations with the press in the election weeks, allegedly tried to use her contacts in information funds in order to get work in one of the television companies almost on the election day.
His own inauguration allegedly introduced the president into a depressive state, because it did not have stars of pop culture of the first magnitude on it
Donald Trump himself, Wulff claims, did not believe in victory, but proceeded from the fact that not quite devastating defeat in the presidential election would bring him fame, which costs a lot, which can be monetized. “I will be the most famous person in the world,” Donald Trump allegedly said to one of his assistants at the very beginning of the election campaign. Different interlocutors of the author of the book talk a lot about Trump's ignorant replicas, dislike for reading and love for talk show on cable television channels. His own inauguration allegedly introduced the president into a depressive state, because it did not have stars of pop culture of the first magnitude. His daughter Ivanka, according to Wulff and his sources, hatches the idea of the struggle for the presidency, believing that she has a chance to become the first woman-president.
The most serious attention against this quite scandalous background was attracted by the replica of Stephen Bannon, more precisely, his assessment of the behavior of the son of President Donald Trump, the youngest, who, during the election campaign, decided to meet with Russian lawyer Natalya Veselnitskaya, who promised him some compromising Hillary Clinton documents. Bannon called this meeting, in which the then head of Trump's campaign headquarters Paul Manafort and the son -in -law of Trump Jared Kushner, "treason" and "nonpatriotic", also participated. Such a proposal Veselnitskaya, he said, was supposed to provoke a call to the FBI.
Jared Kushner and Stephen Bennon. November 2016
The opponents of Donald Trump had already seized on these words of Bannon as confirming suspicions of the conspiracy of Trump people and representatives of the Kremlin. President Trump himself responded to this phrase with a remark that after Bannon left the White House, Bannon left his mind.
According to the American publicist, the author of several books by David Satter , this book deserves a critical attitude:
I would say that this work, rather, does not deserve confidence
- I read excerpts from this book, since the book has not yet been published, and I had a strong impression that, contrary to the claims of the author himself, he received information from the second and third hand. The author himself was not a participant in the events that he describes. And even if many of this information correspond to reality, which is not obvious, some people reject the phrases attributed to them. We cannot be sure that he correctly reflected the atmosphere of these events that he was aware of important details. For example, when he says that Trump was surprised at his victory in the presidential election, this does not mean that Trump began the campaign for defeat. And this is one of the most sensational, as I understand it, the discoveries of this book. I would say that this essay, rather, does not deserve confidence.
David Satter
- On the pages of this book, at least those that are available to us, the image of Donald Trump, a man who was by the will of circumstances, is given to us, which he, roughly speaking, does not correspond. At least, it is on this that numerous commentators are now focusing.
- There is a campaign in order to convince the country that it does not correspond to the presidential position, that it is mentally inferior. I personally believe that in his warehouse he does not fit well into the concepts of the president familiar to us, but I do not think that he does not correspond to this position. In my opinion, we witnessed the birth of an entire industry, which fulfills a request to a certain part of a society requiring journalists any negative information about Donald Trump. And it is difficult to expect from people involved in this campaign, special objectivity. In my opinion, they have not been objective so far.
It is very likely that the goal of people who provided him with information was to reduce their own accounts
Even large information funds such as the New York Times and CNN showed in some cases the neglect of journalistic standards when it came to the coverage of Trump's presidency. What can be expected in such a situation from Michael Wolff, an author with an ambiguous reputation? Moreover, it is very likely that the goal of people who provided him with information was to reduce their own accounts, especially in such a broken White House as the White House of Trump. It must also be taken into account when we are talking about this book.
- Nevertheless, the White House is concerned about the consequences of the publication of this book and even threatened the publisher by court persecution, demanding to abandon its publication. This is the venture, most likely, incomplete, right?
I doubt that Trump himself allowed a journalist to the White House
- As a rule, it is almost impossible to prevent the release of a book about a public figure, such as the president, unless her hero proves that the publication contains obviously false deliberate statements made to undermine his reputation. The level of evidence in such matters is raised very high. It can be assumed that by doing such a warning, Trump's lawyers believe that the book has an irrefutable lies, which may be the basis for a court claim for a ban on publication.
-A few paradoxically at the same time to hear that it was Trump who allegedly authorized the access of Wolff, who wrote a unflattering book about Rupert Murdok, to the White House, although now they say that someone in the White House considered that Trump wants Wulff to write such a book.
- All this looks strange. I doubt that Trump himself made a journalist in the White House. Most likely, someone from his environment did it with a very specific purpose.