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Author Topic: Fire and Fury Is Much Ado about Nothing New  (Read 956 times)

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Offline EasyAce

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Fire and Fury Is Much Ado about Nothing New
« on: January 05, 2018, 06:15:33 pm »
If press reports are to be believed, Michael Wolff’s ballyhooed new book won’t tell us anything we didn’t already know about the Trump White House.
By Jonah Goldberg
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/455160/new-michael-wolff-trump-tell-all-book-less-revelatory-advertised

Quote
There are plenty of shocking bombshells in Michael Wolff’s new book, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, but is there anything actually new?

I haven’t read it yet, but I have been following the crowd-sourced effort by other journalists to recount every salacious tidbit. The quotes from staffers and cabinet secretaries are indeed shocking by the standards of your typical “inside account” of an administration’s first year. I don’t recall so many White House luminaries competing to out-insult the commander in chief before . . .

. . . Wolff describes the president as an easily bored narcissist with a hair-trigger attention span and a thin-skinned ego . . . Trump has benefitted from a tendency among both his biggest fans and his biggest foes to see more than meets the eye. For the true believers, there must be a method behind the madness. The Trump we see on Twitter and TV conceals a strategic thinker who keeps his enemies off balance by “controlling the narrative” or some such treacle . . .

. . . Trump’s biggest enemies have something of a mirror-image delusion. In order to justify perpetual “resistance,” they must believe that the president has some long-term evil scheme in mind for overthrowing the democratic order. It’s a cartoonish exaggeration of the hysteria some on the left once had with regard to George W. Bush. They simultaneously believed he was a criminal mastermind and a dunce. When you want to dedicate your life to opposing some villain, it’s only human to want to believe the villain is worth the effort.

The truth may not be as horrifying as Wolff and others describe, nor as terrifying as “the resistance” fears. All it takes is a willingness to see the obvious: The president is a man out of his depth, propped up by a staff and a party that needs to believe more than what the facts will support.
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Offline Frank Cannon

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Re: Fire and Fury Is Much Ado about Nothing New
« Reply #1 on: January 05, 2018, 06:21:00 pm »
Jonah Goldberg? Isn't this the perennial Trump hater who has been wrong about absolutely everything because he lives in the DC/NYC bubble?
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Offline anubias

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Re: Fire and Fury Is Much Ado about Nothing New
« Reply #2 on: January 05, 2018, 06:38:53 pm »
Quote from: Frank Cannon on January 05, 2018, 06:21:00 pm
Jonah Goldberg? Isn't this the perennial Trump hater who has been wrong about absolutely everything because he lives in the DC/NYC bubble?

Yep.  Poor Jonah has been struggling for quite a while to be somewhat relevant.  How long until his return to claiming that he was nominated for a Pulitzer twice? 
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Offline Jazzhead

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Re: Fire and Fury Is Much Ado about Nothing New
« Reply #3 on: January 05, 2018, 06:50:18 pm »
Why not respond to the message rather than attack the messenger?    Do you disagree with what Goldberg asserts is obvious:   "The president is a man out of his depth, propped up by a staff and a party that needs to believe more than what the facts will support."



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Offline anubias

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Re: Fire and Fury Is Much Ado about Nothing New
« Reply #4 on: January 05, 2018, 07:17:07 pm »
Quote from: Jazzhead on January 05, 2018, 06:50:18 pm
Why not respond to the message rather than attack the messenger?    Do you disagree with what Goldberg asserts is obvious:   "The president is a man out of his depth, propped up by a staff and a party that needs to believe more than what the facts will support."

No.  I have rarely agreed with Jonah about much of anything.  The fact that you obviously do speaks volumes.
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Offline Jazzhead

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Re: Fire and Fury Is Much Ado about Nothing New
« Reply #5 on: January 05, 2018, 08:42:34 pm »
Quote from: anubias on January 05, 2018, 07:17:07 pm
No.  I have rarely agreed with Jonah about much of anything.  The fact that you obviously do speaks volumes.

I first subscribed to National Review when I was in high school.  I'm sixty now.  I'm fully aware that my kind of old-school conservatism is on the outs these days,  but give me Goldberg, Krauthamer, Podoretz, Noonan, Lowry and good ol' NR any day of the week. 

I give Trump credit for governing as a fairly typical main street Republican businessman, notwithstanding some of those in his base that clamor for protectionism, isolationism, xenophobia, religious identity politics, infrastructure spending and raising taxes on the rich.   
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Offline Right_in_Virginia

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Re: Fire and Fury Is Much Ado about Nothing New
« Reply #6 on: January 05, 2018, 09:41:24 pm »
Quote from: Frank Cannon on January 05, 2018, 06:21:00 pm
Jonah Goldberg? Isn't this the perennial Trump hater who has been wrong about absolutely everything because he lives in the DC/NYC bubble?

Yup.  Here he is with his guru, Bill Kristol.

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Offline Right_in_Virginia

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Re: Fire and Fury Is Much Ado about Nothing New
« Reply #7 on: January 05, 2018, 09:43:13 pm »
Quote from: Jazzhead on January 05, 2018, 06:50:18 pm
Why not respond to the message rather than attack the messenger?   

Two birds, one stone.
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Offline goatprairie

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Re: Fire and Fury Is Much Ado about Nothing New
« Reply #8 on: January 05, 2018, 10:29:35 pm »
Quote from: anubias on January 05, 2018, 07:17:07 pm
No.  I have rarely agreed with Jonah about much of anything.  The fact that you obviously do speaks volumes.
"I have rarely agreed with Jonah about much of anything.'
Really? So you like big, central government, and dislike the rule of law? I'm being facetious, but I'll bet you and Jonah would agree on quite a few things.
You might want to read his book "Liberal Fascism." 
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Offline Jazzhead

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Re: Fire and Fury Is Much Ado about Nothing New
« Reply #9 on: January 06, 2018, 02:27:18 am »
Quote from: goatprairie on January 05, 2018, 10:29:35 pm
"I have rarely agreed with Jonah about much of anything.'
Really? So you like big, central government, and dislike the rule of law? I'm being facetious, but I'll bet you and Jonah would agree on quite a few things.
You might want to read his book "Liberal Fascism."

 888high58888
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