Fire and Fury

Michael Wolff Fire and Fury (2018)
If, like me, you've ever wondered at the transmogrification of Trump from joke candidate, to whisperer for a disaffected demographic, to risible nominee, to rent-in-the-fabric-of-time president elect, then Michael Wolff's Fire and Fury is nothing if not a revelation. Wolff somehow managed to hang around in the White House for long enough to observe the real shit going down without himself becoming a target, and Fire and Fury seems to answer more or less any question you could have regarding the Trump administration.

The picture is shocking, and probably more shocking than you may have realised, amounting to an angry bear at large in the building with a team of handlers vainly striving to keep it happy without being eviscerated. The question of how he got there - as reiterated by all those memes based around a photograph of a turtle floundering on top of a fence post - seems to be that it couldn't have happened without Bannon; and even Trump had no illusions on that score, his campaign being an exercise in building the brand because he knew he had no chance of winning. This revelation additionally incorporates the suggestion - which I find convincing - that without Bannon, Trump's time in office would have been unremarkable at best, politically insensitive at worst, and without the taint of extreme right politics. So, amazing though it may seem, Fire and Fury actually left me feeling just a little bit sorry for Donald. I wouldn't say he's without blame, or even necessarily a nice guy, but he probably didn't quite deserve the shitshow with which his name is now synonymous.

The highly specific combination of factors contributing to Trump's election in 2016 described in this book would seem to make it unlikely he could make a comeback in 2024, but then I didn't think he stood a chance of winning in the first place. I guess we'll see.