{"id":19554,"date":"2018-01-10T16:50:52","date_gmt":"2018-01-10T21:50:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=19554"},"modified":"2018-01-10T16:50:52","modified_gmt":"2018-01-10T21:50:52","slug":"politics-as-usual-fire-fury","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/politics-as-usual-fire-fury\/","title":{"rendered":"POLITICS AS USUAL: Fire & Fury"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Alison Collins Mrakas<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, just one week into the New Year and we are yet again inundated with hysterical headlines about the titular head of the home of our neighbours to the south.
\nFolks are running out of hyperbolic phrases to use when describing the antics of their dear leader. Fast on the heels of the mania about the whole \u201cI\u2019ve got a bigger button\u201d tweet (and I mean really, good god, this is what the leader of the free world feels is appropriate discourse? Schoolyard taunts about who\u2019s got the bigger\u2026whatever\u2026? To a nuclear weapon wielding maniac? ) came the release of the scorching \u201ctell all\u201d (and more on that in a minute) book \u201cFire and Fury\u201d by Michael Wolff.
\nIf you have been living under a rock somewhere, you may not have heard about this book. It\u2019s a supposed expose about the goings on in the Trump White House by a reporter who was given near unfettered access to staff of all levels in the nascent government; a curious decision by the Trumpian powers that be. Wolf is a reporter that even a 15 second Google search would reveal is quite famous for his scorched earth, scathing takedowns of his subjects.
\nEven if whatever Wolff says in the book is absolute garbage (and I think some of it definitely does not ring true), the one takeaway from the books is that the mere fact that he was allowed the incredible access to staff that he was given is evidence enough of the incredible ineptitude and poor judgment of the staff in Trump\u2019s office and indeed perhaps Trump himself.
\nThink about it in terms of your own self. Imagine yourself as Prime Minister. If someone you did not know, was sitting on a couch in the hallway near your office, with a notebook and tape recorder in hand, for literally months on end, talking to your staff \u2013 a staff that you suspect is leaking unfavourable stuff about your government \u2013 would you not say, \u201cwho the heck is this guy?\u201d Would a competent chief of staff not throw the guy out? For heaven\u2019s sake.
\nYes, I bought the book. And, at the time of writing this column, I have read about 2\/3 of it. It is an easy read. And I don\u2019t mean that as a complement. Woodward or Bernstein he is not. It reads more like Page Six than a serious New York Times Op-Ed. To be frank, it\u2019s kind of gossipy, full of tidbits of truly mortifying information about Trump, his inner circle and his flunkies.
\nYes, there is a lot on the record \u2013 and the on record comments are truly awful. But there is also a lot of stuff that has no discernible factual foundation \u2013 and that\u2019s what I have trouble with. I am not talking about background or even deep background, the journalistic practice of using anonymous informants for dirt. I am talking about third and fourth hand reports from unknown people that are ginned up to be more than they are.
\nI am no Trump fan, but I have to say that I don\u2019t think the use of \u2018feelings\u201d about \u201cwhat could have been said\u201d by folks is a fair way to paint a picture of him. Is this a fictional account or a factual account? It can\u2019t be both.
\nSuffice to say that Trump was not pleased by the book, so much so that he tried to stop its release; which, in crisis management terms was perhaps the worst move possible. The author positively clapped with glee upon receiving the cease and desist letter from Trumps lawyers as he knew \u2013 as frankly anyone with half a brain would know \u2013 that the controversy would drive sales. And it did. It\u2019s already a number one best seller on Amazon and it\u2019s sold out in bookstores.
\nThere\u2019s now a six week wait for hard copies.
\nLook, as many others have pointed out, if even a fraction of what is printed in this book is true, then Trump \u2013 and, frankly, the majority of those around him \u2013 is manifestly unfit to occupy the office of the President. The problem is the sizeable fraction that is either only kinda true or isn\u2019t true at all undercuts that message.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Alison Collins Mrakas Well, just one week into the New Year and we are yet again inundated with hysterical headlines about the titular head of the home of our neighbours to the south. Folks are running out of hyperbolic phrases to use when describing the antics of their dear leader. Fast on the heels […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[29,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-columns","category-opinion"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-55o","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-18 13:02:58","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19554\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}