Book Review: Fire and Fury

So I finally got around to finishing Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House.  I wanted to finish this before I started Bob Woodward’s new book, Fear, and April Ryan’s Under Fire,  I purchased Fire and Fury when it came out in January, but it was hard to read because it seemed too real.  I had to put it down a few times because it was too depressing.  It also confirmed what I always thought: Donald Trump is utterly incompetent and way in over his head being president.

Of course, we are reminded of his incompetence every day, but here are some highlights I got out of the book that should scare everyone:

  • Roger Ailes is alleged to have said that Trump had “no political beliefs or backbone.”
    No one thought Trump had a chance of becoming president.  On election day, the Trump campaign was prepared to lose.Trump campaign worker Sam Nunberg had to explain the Constitution to Trump.
  • While on a plane ride, Trump said of himself when he asked about what white trash was: “They are people just like me, only they’re poor.”
  • Trump said life is worth living when you get your friend’s wife in bed.
  • A passage from the book: “He had somehow won the race for president, but his brain seems incapable of performing what would be essential tasks in his new job.  He had no ability to plan and organize and pay attention and switch focus; he had never been able to tailor his behavior to what the goals at hand reasonably required.  On the most basic level, he simply could not link cause and effect.” – No sh*t!
  • Another passage: “The new politics was not the art of the compromise but the art of conflict.”
  • Tillerson, Murdoch and pretty much the rest of the administration thinks he is a moron.

This is your president. I don’t know if I have the energy to read Bob Woodward’s new book, which is Fire and Fury Part 2.