The final days of the Trump presidency revealed
You couldn’t make this up. Or could you? A rip-roaring tale of the final days of Donald Trump’s US presidency recounts events that are frankly gobsmacking.
Michael Wolff has written an amazing tale of political desperation and delusion in this, his third book on the Trump presidency. He takes us inside a madhouse, recounting events that are bewildering, breathtaking, jaw-dropping, gobsmacking, incredible and un-bloody-believable.
He does it in his trademark, tabloid, breathless style – digging deep into his thesaurus to present a rip-roaring tale of an out-of-control White House and a deluded, wounded, unhinged Donald Trump. Wolff’s version of events brings into question the processes of democracy, the checks and balances of the American electoral system and the mental capacities of the 74 million who voted for Trump last year.
But is it true? Should we take Wolff’s word for it? Or has he been gulled, duped, or fallen victim to Fake News?
Wolff entered Trumpworld with Fire and Fury, an account of Trump’s election in 2016, followed by Siege, which described Trump’s incoherent administration. Landslide: The Final Days of the Trump Presidencyfocuses on the 77 days between the 2020 election and the inauguration of Joe Biden.
Wolff doesn’t hold back. In this period, he says Donald Trump was abandoned by “his hapless band of co-conspirators” who were “too crazy or drunk or cynical to develop a credible strategy or execute one. It was all a shit show – ludicrous, inexplicable, cringe-worthy, nutso, even for the people who felt most loyal to him”.
Then: “Trump’s true assault on democratic norms was to have removed organisation, strategy, method, rationale and conscious decision from the highest level of government.”
And: “The fundamental modern assumption is that a crazy person cannot be elected president – a bad person, a corrupt person, an incompetent person, a mendacious person, a bigoted one, yes, but not someone who has completely departed reality.”
Wolff variously describes Trump as ignorant, corrupt, incompetent, unstable, deranged, disconnected, delusional and a cipher – a nobody or a nonentity, engrossed in his own world, to the exclusion of all else.
He tells the story of Sean Dollman, his campaign chief financial officer, who briefed Trump on fundraising efforts after the election.
Trump was impressed. He asked if Dollman could come and work for him. Dollman, bewildered, told Trump: “But I do.”
“Do what? What do you do?”
“I’m the CFO of the campaign.”
“Really? How long have you been in that job?”
“Since the beginning of the campaign.”
“Wow. What did you do before that?”
“I was CFO of the 2016 campaign.” (that got Trump elected.)
If Trump is the star of this travesty of democracy, he is backed up by some worthily insane co-stars. There’s Rudy Giuliani, the hero of New York’s 9/11 attacks, who Wolff describes as irrepressible, uncontrollable, reckless, runaway, daft – a gargoyle, given to constant farting and drinking himself insensate.
Then there is Sidney Powell, a right-wing lawyer described as crazier than Guiliani, who joined the “fraud and recount” team to contest the “stolen” election results.
She brought with her batshit crazy conspiracies involving secret algorithms inserted into vote-counting machines by the dead Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, in collusion with the Clinton Foundation and the Chinese, which Wolff labels “the tipping point into utter flapdoodleness”.
You couldn’t make this up. Or could you?
Wolff’s previous books on the Trump presidency have been met with extreme responses – some critics delighting in his writing style and verbal gymnastics (which I have to say are often entrancing; there’s no doubt he has a clever way with words) and others denouncing him as a fabulist and liar.
Rather like Trump, I suppose: You either believe him or not.
Wolff notes that Landslide is his third book on the Trump presidency – “a chronicle which has put me in close touch with … nearly every member of the revolving cast of characters around him. A great many of them … contributed to this account, including Donald Trump himself.
“His staff has either confirmed events, conversations and various details of Trump-world life as I have portrayed them or offered corrections. In the event that factual matters have been disputed, they have been included only if confirmed by multiple sources.”
But the book has no references, no footnotes, no endnotes; nothing that would put meat on the bones of credibility.
Wolff may claim he is a storyteller, not an historian, but throughout, Wolff’s thoughts, analyses and pop-psychology conclusions merge with purported facts, leaving the reader asking where facts and comment start and end.
For instance, Wolff writes that Karen Pence, wife of the intensely loyal vice-president Mike Pence, was revolted by Trump and his family. He says “Trumpworld was her Sodom and Gomorrah meets The Wolf of Wall Street” but does not explain whether that phrase was her invention, or his.
This merging and contorting of facts – alternative or otherwise – with opinion; a desire to seduce the reader into arriving at the conclusion you want, is at the heart of the Fake News imbroglio that confounds modern reporting and politics.
Bottom line is: If you hate Trump, you’ll love this book. The reverse is also true.
Landslide: The Final Days of the Trump Presidency
Bridge Street Press
336pp, $26
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