Donald Trump Didn’t Want to Be President....By Michael Wolff

[mystery-ak]

Donald Trump Didn’t Want to Be President

One year ago: the plan to lose, and the administration’s shocked first days.
By Michael Wolff

Election Night: It “looked as if he had seen a ghost.”
January 3, 2018 11:53 am

On the afternoon of November 8, 2016, Kellyanne Conway settled into her glass office at Trump Tower. Right up until the last weeks of the race, the campaign headquarters had remained a listless place. All that seemed to distinguish it from a corporate back office were a few posters with right-wing slogans.

Conway, the campaign’s manager, was in a remarkably buoyant mood, considering she was about to experience a resounding, if not cataclysmic, defeat. Donald Trump would lose the election — of this she was sure — but he would quite possibly hold the defeat to under six points. That was a substantial victory. As for the looming defeat itself, she shrugged it off: It was Reince Priebus’s fault, not hers.

She had spent a good part of the day calling friends and allies in the political world and blaming Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee. Now she briefed some of the television producers and anchors whom she had been carefully courting since joining the Trump campaign — and with whom she had been actively interviewing in the last few weeks, hoping to land a permanent on-air job after the election.

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[Frank Cannon]

We have direct quotes from dead people. Other quotes from people that don't make sense. This whole piece is Left wing masturbation. I don't buy any of this shit.

[RoosGirl]

Donald Trump Didn’t Want to Be President

What a coincidence.

[WingNot]

*Yawn*

[Concerned]

Some of the "wilder" parts of the book can be found in this CNBC summary:

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/03/the-wildest-claims-about-trump-from-michael-wolffs-fire-and-fury.html

Lots of quotes by name included.

[EasyAce]

We have direct quotes from dead people. Other quotes from people that don't make sense. This whole piece is Left wing masturbation. I don't buy any of this shit.

Apparently, there's at least one Washington Post writer who isn't buying it, either . . .

Michael Wolff’s unbelievable — sometimes literally — tell-all about the Trump administration

In some ways, this is the tell-all that Trump's post-truth presidency deserves. Trump's own version of the truth is often subject to his own fantastic impulses and changes at a moment's notice. The leaks from his administration have followed that pattern, often painting credulity-straining images of an American president. As the New York Times's Maggie Haberman notes, that makes claims in Wolff's book that would ordinarily seem implausible suddenly plausible.

But just because the administration doesn't seem to have much regard for the truth and because there are all kinds of insane things happening behind closed doors doesn't mean the truth isn't a goal worth attaining. And in an environment in which the press is widely distrusted by a large swath of the American people — and overwhelmingly by Trump's base — the onus is even more on accounts of his presidency to try to filter out the tabloid stuff.

. . . For whatever reason, Wolff seems to have arrived at a stunning amount of incredible conclusions that hundreds of dogged reporters from major newspapers haven't. Whether that's because he had unprecedented access — Wolff says he had “something like a semi-permanent seat on a couch in the West Wing” — or because his filter was just more relaxed than others, it's worth evaluating each claim individually and not just taking every salacious thing said about the White House as gospel.

Or, as Sonny Barger once said when complaining about the press the Hell's Angels received when they first busted into the national consciousness in the 1960s, There ain't much good you can write about us, but I don't see where that gives people the right to make stuff up. All that bullsh@t, hell, ain't the truth bad enough for 'em?

[GtHawk]

Donald Trump didn't want to be President?  Well he sure screwed up, all he had to do was ask Mitt for advice. Mitt didn't want to be President and he succeeded!

[Silver Pines]

I don’t know how truthful the book is, but I’m going to make it my first Kindle purchase and I’m going to read it with gleeful abandon as I remember the lies about Cruz’s mistresses and the slander of Heidi Cruz.

Karma sucks!

[RoosGirl]

I don’t know how truthful the book is, but I’m going to make it my first Kindle purchase and I’m going to read it with gleeful abandon as I remember the lies about Cruz’s mistresses and the slander of Heidi Cruz.

Karma sucks!

@CatherineofAragon I think in this case Karma is freakin hilarious.

[Right_in_Virginia]

Does this sound like a man planning to lose?

From the beginning of the campaign until Election Day, (Trump's) two pilots ... and our campaign team flew to 45 states, visiting 203 cities and flying 370,725 miles during 722 flight segments.  The 757 used 988,991 gallons of jet fuel.

Let Trump Be Trump
Corey R. Lewandowski and David N. Bossie
Page 118

[Silver Pines]

@CatherineofAragon I think in this case Karma is freakin hilarious.

@RoosGirl

Lol, it is!

I need a new avatar.

[Silver Pines]

Does this sound like a man planning to lose?

@Right_in_Virginia

“Planning” to lose and thinking you might are not quite the same thing.

No one has claimed Trump was trying to lose.  But if it comes up in the book, I’ll let you know.

[EasyAce]

@Right_in_Virginia

“Planning” to lose and thinking you might are not quite the same thing.

No one has claimed Trump was trying to lose.  But if it comes up in the book, I’ll let you know.

@CatherineofAragon
It's there, in the New York magazine excerpt . . .

As the campaign came to an end, Trump himself was sanguine. His ultimate goal, after all, had never been to win. “I can be the most famous man in the world,” he had told his aide Sam Nunberg at the outset of the race. His longtime friend Roger Ailes, the former head of Fox News, liked to say that if you want a career in television, first run for president. Now Trump, encouraged by Ailes, was floating rumors about a Trump network. It was a great future. He would come out of this campaign, Trump assured Ailes, with a far more powerful brand and untold opportunities.

“This is bigger than I ever dreamed of,” he told Ailes a week before the election. “I don’t think about losing, because it isn’t losing. We’ve totally won" . . .

. . . Most presidential candidates spend their entire careers, if not their lives from adolescence, preparing for the role. They rise up the ladder of elected offices, perfect a public face, and prepare themselves to win and to govern. The Trump calculation, quite a conscious one, was different. The candidate and his top lieutenants believed they could get all the benefits of almost becoming president without having to change their behavior or their worldview one whit. Almost everybody on the Trump team, in fact, came with the kind of messy conflicts bound to bite a president once he was in office.

Not only did Trump disregard the potential conflicts of his own business deals and real-estate holdings, he audaciously refused to release his tax returns. Why should he? Once he lost, Trump would be both insanely famous and a martyr to Crooked Hillary. His daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared would be international celebrities. Steve Bannon would become the de facto head of the tea-party movement. Kellyanne Conway would be a cable-news star. Melania Trump, who had been assured by her husband that he wouldn’t become president, could return to inconspicuously lunching. Losing would work out for everybody. Losing was winning.

Shortly after 8 p.m. on Election Night, when the unexpected trend — Trump might actually win — seemed confirmed, Don Jr. told a friend that his father, or DJT, as he calls him, looked as if he had seen a ghost. Melania was in tears — and not of joy.

There was, in the space of little more than an hour, in Steve Bannon’s not unamused observation, a befuddled Trump morphing into a disbelieving Trump and then into a horrified Trump. But still to come was the final transformation: Suddenly, Donald Trump became a man who believed that he deserved to be, and was wholly capable of being, the president of the United States.

(Emphases added.---EA.)

[Silver Pines]

@EasyAce

Thank you, that’s quite interesting. 

I really don’t think it’s very hard to believe.  Why would Trump want to leave the luxury of his gold-plated penthouse for the drafty old White House in need of renovation?  And Melania?  I don’t blame her; I would’ve cried, too. 

It’s not as though Trump was born to political ambition. 

[Concerned]

According to the book, Trump was interested in leveraging his run for President to be even more famous and in further expanding his brand.  This seems entirely plausible to me.  From the book:

"As the campaign came to an end, Trump himself was sanguine. His ultimate goal, after all, had never been to win. “I can be the most famous man in the world,” he had told his aide Sam Nunberg at the outset of the race. His longtime friend Roger Ailes, the former head of Fox News, liked to say that if you want a career in television, first run for president. Now Trump, encouraged by Ailes, was floating rumors about a Trump network. It was a great future. He would come out of this campaign, Trump assured Ailes, with a far more powerful brand and untold opportunities.

“This is bigger than I ever dreamed of,” he told Ailes a week before the election. “I don’t think about losing, because it isn’t losing. We’ve totally won.”

[RoosGirl]

Does this sound like a man planning to lose?

It was a publicity tour, you just have to make up your mind what the publicity was actually for.  And by "you" I mean in general; it's already clear what you believe.

[Silver Pines]

According to the book, Trump was interested in leveraging his run for President to be even more famous and in further expanding his brand.  This seems entirely plausible to me.  From the book:

"As the campaign came to an end, Trump himself was sanguine. His ultimate goal, after all, had never been to win. “I can be the most famous man in the world,” he had told his aide Sam Nunberg at the outset of the race. His longtime friend Roger Ailes, the former head of Fox News, liked to say that if you want a career in television, first run for president. Now Trump, encouraged by Ailes, was floating rumors about a Trump network. It was a great future. He would come out of this campaign, Trump assured Ailes, with a far more powerful brand and untold opportunities.

“This is bigger than I ever dreamed of,” he told Ailes a week before the election. “I don’t think about losing, because it isn’t losing. We’ve totally won.”

@Concerned

I agree.  IMO, it’s not plausible if you view Trump as a great patriot who was willing to sacrifice it all for the country.  Objectively, that’s just not who he is. 

[aligncare]

Donald Trump didn’t want to be president AND he colluded with Russia to steal the election. Truly an amazing and conflicted man, this Donald Trump.

[aligncare]

Donald Trump Didn’t Want to Be President

One year ago: the plan to lose, and the administration’s shocked first days.
By Michael Wolff

Election Night: It “looked as if he had seen a ghost.”
January 3, 2018 11:53 am

On the afternoon of November 8, 2016, Kellyanne Conway settled into her glass office at Trump Tower. Right up until the last weeks of the race, the campaign headquarters had remained a listless place. All that seemed to distinguish it from a corporate back office were a few posters with right-wing slogans.

Conway, the campaign’s manager, was in a remarkably buoyant mood, considering she was about to experience a resounding, if not cataclysmic, defeat. Donald Trump would lose the election — of this she was sure — but he would quite possibly hold the defeat to under six points. That was a substantial victory. As for the looming defeat itself, she shrugged it off: It was Reince Priebus’s fault, not hers.

She had spent a good part of the day calling friends and allies in the political world and blaming Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee. Now she briefed some of the television producers and anchors whom she had been carefully courting since joining the Trump campaign — and with whom she had been actively interviewing in the last few weeks, hoping to land a permanent on-air job after the election.

more
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/01/michael-wolff-fire-and-fury-book-donald-trump.html?utm_source=fb&utm_medium=s3&utm_campaign=sharebutton-t

In the Michael Wolff book there’s a report suggesting President Trump didn’t know who former House Speaker John Boehner was.

The only problem is Donald Trump has known John Boehner for years, having even played golf with him a number of times.

So, what else has Michael Wolff lied about?

If he wanted to pursue it, Donald Trump would have one hell of a lawsuit against this lying creep Michael Wolff.

[Silver Pines]

In the Michael Wolff book there’s a report suggesting President Trump didn’t know who former House Speaker John Boehner was.

The only problem is Donald Trump has known John Boehner for years, having even played golf with him a number of times.

So, what else has Michael Wolff lied about?

If he wanted to pursue it, Donald Trump would have one hell of a lawsuit against this lying creep Michael Wolff.

i

@aligncare

To be totally honest, I don’t think it’s completely out of the realm of possibility that Trump could be showing the first signs of dementia.  I read somewhere that he didn’t recognize some people he knew during a stay at Mar-A-Lago.

  I know some will yelp at that, but Trump is 71, and his father died of it.  Dementia has a strong genetic link; my husband’s grandmother and all of her sisters died from it.  I’m not saying it’s the case, but can it be dismissed?

Maybe it’s the reason for the Boehner lapse.  Or maybe Trump just wasn’t focusing.  Or, it might not be true.

If Trump has been defamed and if these standards are met, then yes, he should sue.

https://www.google.com/amp/amp.nationalreview.com/article/455143michael-wolff-donald-trump-defamed.

But I’m going to enjoy every minute of his fuming while I recall the slander of Ted and Heidi Cruz. 

[Sanguine]

Donald Trump didn’t want to be president AND he colluded with Russia to steal the election. Truly an amazing and conflicted man, this Donald Trump.

That's an interesting point.

[Restored]

Wolff is now saying that parts of the book might be true. Welcome to TDS.

http://www.businessinsider.com/michael-wolff-note-says-he-doesnt-know-if-trump-book-is-all-true-2018-1

[Silver Pines]

Wolff is now saying that parts of the book might be true. Welcome to TDS.

http://www.businessinsider.com/michael-wolff-note-says-he-doesnt-know-if-trump-book-is-all-true-2018-1

Yeah, I saw this yesterday or the day before.  Who knows what’s true and what isn’t?

Gonna be a fun read, anyway.

[EasyAce]

Yeah, I saw this yesterday or the day before.  Who knows what’s true and what isn’t?

Gonna be a fun read, anyway.

@CatherineofAragon

People familiar with author Michael Wolff know about his penchant for inflating events and making them out to be more dramatic. It’s fair to say that some of what Wolff writes in Fire and Fury should be taken with a grain of salt.

That said, the notion that everything Wolff wrote is false and that he had, according to Trump, “zero access” to him and White House staff is ridiculous.

Press Secretary Sarah Sanders decried the book as nothing but “tabloid gossip.” It’s the irony of all ironies. For decades, Donald Trump operated in and thrived in the world of tabloid gossip, doing whatever he could to gain the attention of The New York Post and Daily News, even going so far as playing the role of ‘John Miller,’ a publicist for Trump. Nothing made Trump happier than to find himself the center of attention on Page Six, so the idea that he’s suddenly outraged over being the subject of “tabloid gossip” is rather hilarious . . .

. . . Trump’s rage has more to do with the fact that he expected Wolff to write a suck-up book that would discuss his brilliance and wonderfulness above all else. Trump lives for praise, and it doesn’t matter who provides it. The problem for Trump (and those around him) is the press will discuss the book as though everything in it is true. They won’t question the contents of the book, and that will only enrage Trump further leading to more outbursts.

But that’s his fault. If he wanted to grant access to somebody that would provide a fair account of what happens in the White House, he should have chosen more wisely. He essentially chose a gossip columnist to do the work.

---Carl Arbogast, Red State.

Interesting and somewhat pungent take, no?

[WingNot]

Yeah, I saw this yesterday or the day before.  Who knows what’s true and what isn’t?

Gonna be a fun read, anyway.

"Alexa, Order @CathrineofAmagedon That new best selling book the Liberal and Never Trumpers want so they look well informed attending their bourgeois cocktail parties "