Friday 5 January 2018

Trump hit by insults

Poor Donald Trump. As more comes out from this new book about life in the White House, the president is being described as a child with tantrums who always wants his way but knows nothing. He never reads, apparently. I find this book disquieting, not because it's putting flesh on stories that have pretty well been aired in the newspapers for the last 12 months but because it is so totally rude about the president of the United States. There appears to be no balance whatsoever. It's a "literary" slanging match, a gutter view of Trump. No one seems to have a word of support for Trump, not even his daughter and son-in-law. I suppose I'm a bit old-fashioned, I think whoever is in the White House, whether Democrat or Republican, has earned at least a little more respect than Michael Wolff, the author, is prepared to show. Trump was bashed from the moment he started campaigning for the presidency, and since he entered the White House, his leadership has come in for scorn. I understand all the reasons for it and if I was an American citizen I would be truly worried about the man in the Oval Office. But this book, Fire and Fury, is like a machinegunfire of insults. Wolff claims he spoke to everyone who is anyone in the White House, including Trump himself and has clearly seized on every possible snippet that casts a poor light on the president. It is relentless. But did Wolff talk to General John Kelly, General James Mattis, Lieutenant-General HR McMaster, for example? Would they have talked to the author about how terrible and childlike Trump is? Surely not. That would be treasonable. I cannot believe these fine generals would talk about their commander-in-chief in this way. So where did Wolff get all his "facts"? The White House is always full of rumours and backbiting and frustration, that's not a new phenomenon just becasue someone like Trump is sitting in the chair. But this author clearly set out to destroy Trump, and his book and radio and television interviews to promote his work have done a comprehensive job on making the president sound like a pathetic, whining, incompetent fool. In Britain Wolff would be sent to the Tower of London!!!

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