The History Of The Mystery Track – Our Lady Peace, Ray Kurzweil & Molly

Mike Turner was looking for something to read. It was 1999 and his band, Our Lady Peace, were on an American tour in support of their third album, Happiness…Is Not A Fish You Can Catch. Riding long hours on a bus in between gigs can be tedious. So one day the guitarist stepped into a bookstore and found something that caught his eye.

The Age Of Spiritual Machines was written by Ray Kurzweil, an eccentric inventor, among other things, who firmly believes that death can be overcome once humanity fully merges with technology. Not an original idea by any means but few have taken the time to conceptualize such a radical line of thought outside the fantasy world of science fiction. Diagnosed with type 2 diabetes at age 35, there’s no question such a depressing diagnosis would profoundly motivate an already highly driven philosopher and computer scientist with considerable wealth to prolong his life by any means necessary.

As he read, Turner became mesmerized by Kurzweil’s often far-out ideas (“I picked it up, read it and went mental,” he told Chart Attack in 2000) and as soon as he finished the book, the lead guitarist passed it on to the band’s singer Raine Maida. He had the same reaction.

Despite the fact they had just made their third album, even before Turner bought The Age Of Spiritual Machines, the songwriting process for the next collection of songs had already begun.

“It ended up being a concept record,” bassist Duncan Coutts told the Pop Matters website in 2010, “but it certainly didn’t start that way.”

Just over a year after the release of Happiness…Is Not A Fish You Can Catch, Our Lady Peace unveiled Spiritual Machines. Hoping to get Kurzweil’s blessing for the project during its difficult production (the drummer got mugged while walking his dog and some of his parts had to be played by Pearl Jam’s Matt Cameron), not only was the author thrilled about the album, he also volunteered his services to help participate in the recording. He even gave the band one of his specially designed keyboards, the Kurzweil 350, which was implemented constantly.

Officially, Kurzweil appears on six tracks spread out throughout the record. With the exception of his voice buried so deep during an instrumental break on the single In Repair it’s basically indecipherable, the author is more clearly heard reading mostly word-for-word quotations from his book in brief snippets all set to moody electronic music and tucked away between proper songs.

But 12 minutes and 7 seconds after the final song, The Wonderful Future, concludes on track fifteen, there’s a seventh appearance, one of the weirdest mystery tracks of all time.

On page 37 of The Age Of Spiritual Machines, Kurzweil engages in a conversation with an unknown person about the future. Ten pages later, there’s another dialogue. These exchanges continue on at various points throughout the book, usually at the end of a subsequent chapter. Starting with Chapter 10, we jump ten years into the future, and then another ten years in 11 until the final engagement seven decades later in 12. We begin in 1999 and ultimately conclude a full century later.

It isn’t until the very beginning of Chapter 7 that we even learn this mysterious person’s name.

“I’M MOLLY.”

Molly is not real. She’s a fictional character Kurzweil created in order to fantasize about communicating with an immortal cybernetic being in his idealized future. He gives her a back story. She’s married with children but there’s complications. (Her husband, an inventor, uses virtual reality to cheat on her and see other women naked without their knowledge.) She’s an overachieving intellectual/artist who lets the author know how many of his theories and predictions, organized by decade, prove correct which feels more than a little self-serving. (And contrary to his later assertion that 86% of his guesses came true, he got a lot of shit wrong. His math is clearly off.)

Unlike most of the spoken word segments on Our Lady Peace’s Spiritual Machines which are all under a minute each, this unlisted piece buried at the end of track 15 goes on for roughly three and a half minutes.

What ensues, following the introduction of some simple, ongoing, echoey piano playing and what sounds like electronic reproductions of whales moaning, is a peculiar, somewhat awkward and cheesy imaginary conversation between Kurzweil and Molly. In fact, the track is appropriately entitled R.K. and Molly.

Before each line of dialogue, Kurzweil calls out the name of the communicator about to speak which is heard at a lower decibel. He plays himself, of course. And he plays Molly but with his voice artificially raised to a helium-like pitch. Put simply, it doesn’t sound right. She doesn’t sound hot.

Divided up into three separate speaking segments, with that mood music playing on uninterrupted during the slight silences, the first segment involves snippets taken from pages 235 and 241 of Chapter 12 entitled 2099. Instead of starting right from the beginning of what is the longest conversation from the book, he picks it up for the hidden track nine lines into it, jumping right back into his odd flirtation with a made-up android:

“Ray: Anyway, you do look amazing.

Molly: YOU SAY THAT EVERY TIME WE MEET.

Ray: I mean you look twenty again, only more beautiful than at the start of the book.

Molly: I KNEW THAT’S HOW YOU’D WANT ME.” (p. 235)

“Ray: Okay, you were an attractive woman when I first met you. And you still project yourself as a beautiful young woman. At least when I’m with you.

Molly: THANKS.

Ray: …are you saying that you’re a machine now?

Molly: A MACHINE? THAT’S REALLY NOT FOR ME TO SAY. IT’S LIKE ASKING ME IF I’M BRILLIANT OR INSPIRING.

Ray: I guess the word machine in 2099 doesn’t have quite the same connotations that it has here in 1999.

Molly: THAT’S HARD FOR ME TO RECALL NOW.” (p.241)

After a five-second break, with the piano and fake whale noises still going strong, the conversation continues as Molly talks about her kids and a project she’s working on. At the tail end of page 238 in the book, Kurzweil asks her “what else” is she up to as they catch up after a long break from communicating. She responds, “JUST FINISHING UP THIS SYMPHONY.”

He asks, “Is this a new interest?” Her response begins the second portion of R.K. and Molly on the Spiritual Machines CD and can be found at the start of page 239:

“Molly: I’M REALLY JUST DABBLING, BUT CREATING MUSIC IS A GREAT WAY FOR ME TO STAY CLOSE WITH JEREMY AND EMILY.

Ray: Creating music sounds like a good thing to do with your kids, even if they are almost ninety years old. So, can I hear it?

Molly: WELL, I’M AFRAID YOU WOULDN’T UNDERSTAND IT.

Ray: So it requires enhancement to understand?

Molly: YES, MOST ART DOES. FOR STARTERS, THIS SYMPHONY IS IN FREQUENCIES THAT A MOSH CAN’T HEAR, AND HAS MUCH TOO FAST A TEMPO. AND IT USES MUSICAL STRUCTURES THAT A MOSH COULD NEVER FOLLOW.

Ray: Can’t you create art for nonaugmented humans? I mean there’s still a lot of depth possible. Consider Beethoven–he wrote almost two centuries ago, and we still find his music exhilarating.

Molly: YES, THERE’S A GENRE OF MUSIC–ALL THE ARTS ACTUALLY–WHERE WE CREATE MUSIC AND ART THAT A MOSH IS CAPABLE OF UNDERSTANDING.

Ray: And then you play MOSH music for MOSHs?

Molly: NOW THERE’S AN INTERESTING IDEA. I SUPPOSE WE COULD TRY THAT, ALTHOUGH MOSHs ARE NOT THAT EASY TO FIND ANYMORE. IT’S REALLY NOT NECESSARY, THOUGH. WE CAN CERTAINLY UNDERSTAND WHAT A MOSH IS CAPABLE OF UNDERSTANDING. THE POINT, THOUGH, IS TO USE THE MOSH LIMITATIONS AS AN ADDED CONSTRAINT.

Ray: Sort of like composing new music for old instruments.

Molly: YEAH, NEW MUSIC FOR OLD MINDS.” (p. 239)

What in the hell is a MOSH? It’s an acronym Kurzweil made up to differentiate generic human beings from their technologically enhanced successors. As explained to him by the imaginary Molly on page 237, it stands for Mostly Original Substrate Humans. On page 306 of The Age Of Spiritual Machines, Kurzweil himself defines it thusly:

“In the last half of the twenty-first century, a human being still using native carbon-based neurons and unenhanced by neural implants is referred to as a MOSH. In 2099, Molly refers to the author as being a MOSH.”

A few seconds later, we come to the last segment. You’ll find the portion with Molly on page 252 which ends Chapter 12. The last section where Kurzweil loses contact with her is actually the opening lines of Epilogue: The Rest Of The Universe Revisited found on page 253:

“Ray: Maybe we should kiss goodbye?

Molly: JUST A KISS?

Ray: We’ll leave it at that for this book. I’ll reconsider the ending for the movie…

Molly: HERE’S MY KISS….NOW REMEMBER, I’M READY TO DO ANYTHING OR BE ANYTHING YOU WANT OR NEED.

Ray: I’ll keep that in mind.

Molly: …THAT’S WHERE YOU’LL FIND ME.

Ray: Too bad I have to wait a century to meet you.

Molly: OR TO BE ME.

Ray: Yes, that too.” (p.252)

“Ray: Actually, Molly, there are a few other questions that have occurred to me. What were those limitations that you referred to? What did you say you were anxious about? What are you afraid of? Do you feel pain? What about babies and children? Molly?…” (p.253)

The unorthodox backing track eventually grinds to a halt and slowly fades out as the CD shuts off.

The full final conversation between Kurzweil and his imaginary cybernetic plaything in Chapter 12 of The Age Of Spiritual Machines goes on for 18 pages, 19 if you count the start of the Epilogue. In some of the portions excised for the mystery track, Molly throws out random quotes from famous figures, there’s a brief discussion about government intrusions into privacy, human rights applying to humanoids, quantum computing, virtual food in place of the real thing, imagining your own body and bringing it to life, and of course, Kurzweil constantly hitting on a married robot. (In real life, he too is married with 2 kids.)

R.K. and Molly is also heard, but not in its complete form, on the credited enhanced portion of Spiritual Machines, a rare acknowledgement of a CD Extra on a Sony Records release. (In most cases, this is normally not indicated on the outside packaging.)

When you put the CD in the CD-ROM drive of your computer, the track starts playing as you watch a crude animation set in a hospital. At any time while R.K. and Molly plays, you can click that snail in the upper right hand corner which takes you to another screen. (If you let the animation play out, you’re taken there automatically.) It’s here you’re encouraged to create a login name in order to visit an Our Lady Peace “secret site”. (Unfortunately, it doesn’t exist anymore (it was discontinued by 2003) but cached portions have survived.)

Six years later, Our Lady Peace released their first compilation of hits entitled A Decade. The two popular singles from Spiritual Machines appear midway through the CD.

Before In Repair begins at the 15-second mark of track 10, against another sparse electronic mood arrangement, Kurzweil makes the following prediction:

“The year is 2029. The machines will convince us that they are conscious, that they have their own agenda where they have our respect. They’ll embody human qualities. They’ll claim to be human. And we’ll believe them.”

This quick clip, entitled R.K. 2029, is also from Spiritual Machines and unlike its secret placement on A Decade, it’s properly credited and given its own track number separate from In Repair on the earlier album. As before, it’s sequenced right before the song begins.

None of these specific lines appear in The Age Of Spiritual Machines, but similar sentiments are expressed in much longer form on page 153 in the following paragraph. The heart of the book’s premise, which feels heavily influenced by Blade Runner, is found in these words:

“Just being–experiencing, being conscious–is spiritual, and reflects the essence of spirituality. Machines, derived from human thinking and surpassing humans in their capacity for experience, will claim to be conscious, and thus to be spiritual. They will believe that they are conscious. They will believe that they have spiritual experiences. They will be convinced that these experiences are meaningful. And given the historical inclination of the human race to anthropomorphize the phenomena we encounter, and the persuasiveness of the machines, we’re likely to believe them when they tell us this.”

Just like the rebellious replicants who easily pass for human unless you test them for emotion.

A more succinct assertion awaits on page 280 of the Timeline section. At the very end of the summarized 2029 predictions, Kurzweil writes:

“Machines claim to be conscious. These claims are largely accepted.”

Right at the start of track 11, we don’t hear Life right away. Instead, with Turner gently noodling in the background, Kurzweil returns. Using another fictional character to illustrate the conviction of his basic theory that cybernetic humans are simply superior versions to their mortal predecessors, he presents the following scenario in 19 seconds:

“Have we lost Jack somewhere along the line? Jack’s friends think not. Jack claims to be the same old guy, just newer. His vision, memory and reasoning ability have all been improved. But it’s still Jack.”

In Chapter 3, Of Minds And Machines, Kurzweil introduces a hypothetical situation involving the made-up example of the aforementioned Jack beginning on page 52. Near the start of paragraph three, he writes:

“Our friend Jack (circa some time in the twenty-first century) has been complaining of difficulty with his hearing. A diagnostic test indicates he needs more than a conventional hearing aid, so he gets a choclear implant…This routine surgical procedure is successful, and Jack is pleased with his improved hearing.

Is he still the same Jack?

Well, sure he is. People have cochlear implants circa 1999. We still regard them as the same person.”

After opting for “newly introduced image-processing implants”, having already acquired “permanently implanted retinal-imaging displays in his corneas to view virtual reality”, near the bottom of page 52, Kurzweil writes:

“Jack notices that his memory is not what it was, as he struggles to recall names, the names of earlier events, and so on. So he’s back for memory implants. These are amazing–memories that have grown fuzzy with time are now as clear as if they had just happened.” Even the bad ones.

“Still the same Jack?” Kurzweil asks at the top of page 53. He eventually answers, “yes, it’s still the same guy.”

And then, in paragraph four on that same page, you’ll read a slightly different version of what Kurzweil recites uncredited on A Decade. The first two lines of the mystery track are exactly the same. But starting with the third line, there are slight changes. (I’ve highlighted them in bold.)

“Jack also claims that he’s the same old guy, just newer. His hearing, vision, memory and reasoning ability have all improved, but it’s still the same Jack.”

In the book, following this passage, Kurzweil goes on and on about Jack, his enhancement possibilities and the constant questioning about whether “new Jack” can still creditably be seen as the “old Jack” despite seeing dramatic physical improvements that aren’t human, for another two pages in that chapter.

On page 126 of Chapter 6, Building New Brains…, he brings up Jack again, summarizing the ethical dilemma of whether a person who downloads themselves, or rather, gets “scanned” into a new and improved cybernetic body can still be the same human being they once were:

“Subjectively, the question is more subtle and profound. Is this the same consciousness as the person we just scanned?”

Kurzweil gives a conflicting answer:

“If he–Jack–is still around, he will convincingly claim to represent the continuity of his consciousness. He may not be satisfied to let his mental clone carry on in his stead.”

R.K. Jack is an uncredited, exclusive outtake since it did not appear on Spiritual Machines.

More than two decades after being wowed by Kurzweil’s thought provoking, yet now somewhat discredited and often overly rosy “futurism”, Our Lady Peace revisited the subject for an unexpected sequel.

In 2022, the band released Spiritual Machines 2 and launched an unusual tour to promote it. Once again, Kurzweil provided voiceover narrations, this time bragging about his supposedly accurate predictions from the previous century (something he also does in The Age Of Spiritual Machines when referring to the first book he wrote, The Age Of Intelligent Machines). He even offers new ones. Everything is properly listed and in the right order.

Mike Turner, the founding guitarist responsible for initiating the original project and who left the band after their 2002 American breakthrough Gravity, was brought back just to help spearhead the follow-up.

Molly, the fake humanoid Kurzweil lusted after in print and on record almost a quarter century ago, doesn’t appear on Spiritual Machines 2 but was brought back to life for The Wonderful Future Theatrical Experience, Our Lady Peace’s tour in support of the album, which also featured her creator in holographic form.

Five years after her first appearance in The Age Of Spiritual Machines, Molly was also revived in Kurzweil’s 2004 book, The Singularity Is Near. 15 years after their last fake conversation, not only does he talk to her from the year 2104, bizarrely he also converses with her 2004 version at the same time. In fact, the two Mollies talk to each other.

Although, there is an extensive conversation about the supposed future of virtual sex (which hasn’t really exploded yet, ahem), I’m happy to report Kurzweil no longer has a raging boner for Molly. It’s true what they say. We really do slow down when we’re older.

Molly, on the other hand…

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Friday, September 1, 2023
2:56 a.m.

Eye-Opening Quotes From Michael Wolff’s Siege: Trump White House (Part Four)

45. “It was a badly kept secret in foreign policy circles that Mohammed bin Salman–MBS–had a cocaine problem and could disappear for days or longer on benders, or on long and frightening (at least for other passengers) trips on his yacht.  He also spent hours every day planted in front of a screen playing video games.  Like Trump, he was often described as a petulant child.” (from Chapter Nineteen – Khashoggi, pg. 247)

46. “In frequent contact with the Crown Prince, Kushner effectively became a crisis manager for him.  To that end, he also bec[a]me the White House’s most prolific leaker of Saudi conspiracy theories and disinformation.

[snip]

Kushner, in an off-the-record conversation with a reporter, [falsely] argued the crux of the Saudi case: ‘This guy [Khashoggi] was the link between certain factions in the royal family and Osama [bin Laden].  We know that.  A journalist?  Come on.  This was a terrorist masquerading as a journalist.'” (pg. 248)

47. “…to one of his after-dinner callers [in a conversation regarding MBS’ possible involvement in Jamal Khashoggi’s assassination], [Trump] put it somewhat differently [from what he had been saying publicly]: ‘Of course he killed him–he probably had good reason.  Who gives a fuck?’ (pg. 252)

48. “Kushner suggested to the Crown Prince that he should order the arrest and quick execution of fifteen plotters involved in Khashoggi’s assassination.  He was considering that, said MBS.” (pg. 252)

49. “Trump, sick of the Khashoggi mess, was privately blaming Kushner for it.  ‘I told him to make peace,’ said Trump to a caller.  ‘Instead he makes friends with a murderer.  What can I do?'” (pg. 256)

50. “In the fall of 2017, Trump told multiple confidants that Haley had given him a blow job–his words…What was far from certain was that what he had said was true, and few around him gave it much credence.

Haley was enraged by reports of a relationship with Trump, adamantly denying that there was any truth whatsoever to this suggestion.”  (from Chapter 20 – October Surprises, pgs. 259-260)

51. “Trump, speaking about his choice of women, had once told Tucker Carlson that he liked a ‘little chocolate in his diet.’

Trump himself told a story about being ridiculed by friends for sleeping with a black woman.  But the morning after, he had looked at himself in the mirror and was reassured that nothing had changed–he was still the Trumpster.  He offered this anecdote to show that he was not a racist.” (pgs. 266-267)

52. “The president also talked confidently about Nancy Pelosi, the likely new Speaker of the House.  He told his friend he hoped she would make it and not ‘get voted out by the rebels.’  She was going on seventy-nine, he repeated several times.  She looked good, he noted, commenting that maintaining her appearance must take a lot of time.  Meanwhile, he said, they got along.  Got along fine.  They had always understood each other.  It would be great if she got to be Speaker again…he knew how to handle Nancy.  Not a problem.  He knew what she wanted.  She wanted to look good.  ‘I know how to set it up,’ said the president.

(from Chapter Twenty-Two – Shutdown, pgs. 282-283)

53. “…senior advisor and immigration hard-liner Stephen Miller, whom Trump described as ‘autistic’ and ‘sweaty.'”  (pg. 286)

54. “The president’s extreme mood swings were alarming for almost everyone.  His rages were now greater and his coherence more in question; Sean Hannity told Steve Bannon that Trump seemed ‘totally fucking crazy.'”

(pg. 287)

55. “New York’s Jerry Nadler–who Trump, during a fight over real estate development in New York in the 1990s, had called a ‘fat little Jew’–would lead the Judiciary Committee…” (pg. 289)

56. “Trump has long admired Ann Coulter’s ‘mouth,’, as well as–he always made sure to mention–her ‘hair and legs.’…Invited to Trump Tower during the transition, she had lectured the president-elect mercilessly, using frequent f-bombs; she was particularly scathing about his ‘fucking moron idea’ to hire his family.  And yet because of her sharp tongue, Trump admired her.  ‘She cuts people down–they don’t get up,’ he said about Coulter with awe.  ‘Great, great television.'” (pgs. 291-292)

57. “‘Honestly, his voice was breaking,’ said the friend.  ‘Ann really fucked him up.  The base, the base.  He was completely panicked.’

On Friday, December 21, responding directly to Coulter’s taunts, Trump abruptly reversed course and refused to accept any compromise on the budget bill because it contained no funding for the Wall.  At midnight, the government shut down [for 35 days].” (pg. 292)

58. “In the White House, the president, to general surprise, announced that he would not accompany his family to Mar-a-Lago over the holidays…

[snip]

“…the stay-behind president became obsessed with the Secret Service detail patrolling the White House grounds, finding them perched in trees in ‘blackface,’ he reported to callers, with their machine guns pointed at him.  He tried to catch their attention, waving from the windows, but they blanked him.  ‘Spooky,’ he said.  ‘Like I’m a prisoner.'” (p.293)

59. “In an empty White House, a young assistant brought his papers and call sheets from the West Wing up to the residence, finding him, she told friends, in his underwear.

[snip]

Trump, who had first taken notice of the woman during the transition, kept repeating, ‘She’s got a way about her,’ his signature, and creepy, stamp of approval for young women.  Now the president was telling friends that he wasn’t staying at the White House because of the shutdown–he was staying because he was ‘banging’ the young West Wing aide.” (pg. 294)

60. “…there was the RICO investigation in New York, which could easily bring about Trump’s personal financial destruction–all those loan applications, all that potential banking fraud.

‘This is where it isn’t a witch hunt–even for the hard core [Trump supporters], this is where he turns into just a crooked business guy, and one worth fifty million dollars instead of ten billion dollars,’ said Bannon, ever on the edge of disgust.  ‘Not the billionaire he said he was, just another scumbag.'” (pg. 299)

61. “…he delivered a scornful critique of Robert Mueller:  ‘What an asshole.'”

(from Epilogue – The Report, pg. 315)

62. “‘Am I safe?’ Trump persisted in asking the caller.  ‘Am I safe?’

He answered his own question:  ‘They are going to keep coming after me.'” (pg. 315)

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Wednesday, September 25, 2019
2:37 a.m.

Eye-Opening Quotes From Michael Wolff’s Siege: Trump White House (Part Three)

34. “Their interview proceeded in a flirty way–Trump playing hard to get and dismissive, Hannity excruciatingly unctuous.

Watching Hannity’s performance, Carlson’s executive producer said, ‘I’m gay and I’ve never hit on a man that hard.’

Trump began the interview with Hannity by needling him for incorrectly identifying the number of NATO nations in his first question (with everyone surprised that Trump in fact seemed to know the correct number).  ‘Tucker wouldn’t screw that up,’ Trump said to a stricken Hannity.  ‘He knows how many NATO countries there are.  You ever watch his show?  I watch it every night.  I’ll let you redo the question, go ahead.'” (pg. 178)

35. “Trump suddenly began screaming to aides about Mattis and his transgender tolerance.  ‘He wants to give trannies operations. ‘Learn to fire a gun and I’ll give you an operation,” Trump mimicked in his mincing voice.”

(pg. 181)

36. “The [National] Enquirer…had worked closely with the film producer Harvey Weinsten, who set up a production deal for American Media in return for its agreement not to publish stories about the cascading sexual harassment and abuse allegations that would eventually doom him.  AMI also joined with Arnold Schwarzenegger, the ex-bodybuilder, former governor of California, and repeat sexual harasser, who, in exchange for the magazine’s silence, used his influence to help the company buy a group of fitness magazines.”

(from Chapter Sixteen – Pecker, Cohen, Weisselberg, pgs. 210-211)

37. “Roger Ailes, the creator of Fox News, with whom Trump was actively discussing his media future in the fall of 2016, called [National Enquirer head David] Pecker ‘Trump’s water-boy idiot.’  Added Ailes: ‘An idiot needs an even bigger idiot to get his water.'” (pg. 211)

38. “…[Marc] Kasowitz, terrified that his offices would be raided like Cohen’s, defended himself to friends by enumerating how many women he had handled for Trump without a hiccup.” (pg. 215)

39. “On August 24, The Wall Street Journal reported that David Pecker had cut a deal to testify.  The same day, the Journal reported that Weisselberg had also accepted an immunity deal and had testified several weeks before.

‘The Jews always flip,’ said Trump.

[snip]

“He developed a riff on the horrors that an Orthodox Jew would probably encounter in jail, one that sketched a vivid picture of a tattooed Nazi cell mate.

[snip]

…Cohen was ‘the only stupid Jew,’ and Weisselberg was the financial adviser whose name, after more than forty years, Trump took delight in mangling (‘Weisselman,’ ‘Weisselstein,’ ‘Weisselwitz’).  Pecker was often mocked by Trump as ‘Little Pecker,’ and his mustache was the target of derisive and obscene remarks.  (Curiously, Pecker bore a resemblance to Trump’s father, who also wore a mustache.)” (pg. 217)

40. “…the special counsel’s budget request had been approved–they had survived that bureaucratic hurdle.  (Trump many not have ever understood that the budget process was a weapon that he could have used against the special counsel–it appeared that no one had told him.)…for all of Trump’s threats, he had made no real moves to interfere with the special counsel’s work and mission.” (pg. 219)

41. “…Trump started to focus on abortion.  Here he was on thin ice:  whenever the issue came up, after only a few sentences of discussion, he would often begin to waver.  His now-standard right-to-life view would revert to his previous, pro-choice view.  In late August, weeks after nominating Kavanaugh, Trump wanted to know:  Was this guy part of a Catholic plot to abolish abortion?

Suddenly alive to the reality of a no-Protestant Court, he continued needing reassurance that Brett Kavanaugh was not just out to make abortion illegal…Kavanaugh, he was told, was a ‘textualist’…Abortion was far from his number one issue.

…Trump felt like he wasn’t getting the full story.” (from Chapter Eighteen – Kavanaugh, pg. 235)

42. “Trump, it seemed, could not get enough of this story.  ‘He pushed her down on the bed and that’s it?’  How long had he held her down?  Trump wanted to know.  ‘Did he just fall on her and go in for a kiss?  Or was it humping?’

When Trump was told that Kavanaugh’s friend Mark Judge, who [Christine] Blasey Ford claimed was in the room, had written a book about his drunken exploits in high school, Trump whacked himself alongside the head.  ‘What kind of idiots did you get me here?’

[snip]

‘This is embarrassing…Catholic school boys.’

[snip]

As Blasey Ford’s story instantly came to dominate the news, Trump conceived quite a sudden level of dripping contempt for Kavanaugh.  ‘He seems weak.  Not strong.  He was probably molested by a priest.’

[snip]

The White House and the Kavanaugh team nixed a possible CBS interview, believing that the nominee couldn’t hold up under hostile questioning…the White House agreed to the promise of a soft interview at Fox, with the questions provided beforehand.

During this treacly sit-down on September 24, a defeated and self-pitying Kavanaugh said he was a virgin in high school and for a long time thereafter.  Trump could barely believe it.  ‘Stop!  Who would say that?  My virgin justice.  This man has no pride!  Man?  Did I say man?  I don’t think so.’

Trump seemed eager to cut his losses and move on.  Only several bracing warnings…prevented the president from sending out a tweet dumping his nominee.” (pg. 241)

43. “Trump’s ire rose yet further when he learned that George W. Bush–among the politicians that Trump scorned most–had come to Kavanaugh’s defense, and that many Republicans believed it was Bush who was keeping the nomination alive.

‘The drunks stick together,’ said Trump.  ‘If he’s a Bush guy, he’s not a Trump guy.  It’s bull that we can depend on him.  Virgin-man will sell me out.'” (pgs. 241-242)

44. “…Trump expressed further concern about whether Kavanaugh was capable of handling himself in a tense public situation.  He began to pass instructions and advice:  ‘Admit to nothing.  Zero!’  He wanted aggression.

[snip]

‘I don’t think he’s that tough,’ Trump would then conclude.

Through it all, there seemed to be an implicit recognition on the president’s part that what Blasey Ford had said was probably true.  ‘If it wasn’t true,’ he offered, ‘she would have claimed rape or something, not just a kiss.'”

…Trump watched Blasey Ford’s testimony in the residence before coming down to the West Wing.  He was on the phone with friends almost the entire time.  ‘She’s good,’ he kept saying.  He thought Kavanaugh was in ‘big trouble.’

That afternoon, watching Kavanaugh’s performance, he was deeply displeased.  He seemed personally offended that Kavanaugh had cried during this testimony.  ‘I wanted to slap him,’ he said afterward to a caller.  ‘Virgin crybaby.’

But he also claimed credit for the fact that Kavanaugh admitted to nothing.  ‘You can’t even admit to a handshake,’ he told the same caller.  He digressed to ‘my friend Leslie Moonves,’ the chairman of CBS, who had recently been under fire after a series of #MeToo accusations.  ‘Les admitted to a kiss.  He’s done.  Forget about it.  When I heard about the kiss, I thought, Done, finished.  The only person who has survived this stuff is me.  I knew you couldn’t admit to anything.  Try to explain, dead.  Apologize, dead.  If you admit to even knowing a broad, dead.’

…seeing the strong Kavanaugh reviews on Fox, Trump’s views seemed to shift.  ‘Every man in this country thinks this could happen to him,’ he told a friend.  ‘Thirty years ago you try to kiss a girl, thirty years later she’s back–boom.  And what kind of person remembers a kiss after forty years?  After forty years she’s still upset?  Give me a break.  Give.  Me.  A.  Break.'”

(pgs. 242-243)

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Wednesday, September 25, 2019
2:27 a.m.

Eye-Opening Quotes From Michael Wolff’s Siege: Trump White House (Part Two)

12. “‘If he was in a bad mood and we were going from office to boardroom–we had to go through the Trump Tower lobby–with these eastern European tourists looking at the waterfall–‘God’s urinal,’ he called it–I would scan for an attractive woman.  ‘Hey,’ I’d say, ‘at six o’clock.’

Girls were the constant.  ‘Erik [Whitestone], go get her, and bring her up.’  And so, me:  ‘Mr. Trump wants to know if you want to come up and see the boardroom.’  He’d hug them and grope them and send them on their way.’

Riding in the limo, ‘He’d just roll down the window and say, ‘What’s up?’ to the ladies.  ‘Hello, ladies…’ to two hot girls.  ‘That was fun,’ he’d say, ‘remind me to do that again.'” (pg. 81)

13. “Once, coming back from Chicago, a young woman, an attractive interior designer who was pitching Trump on a project, hitched a ride on Trump’s plane.  [Whitestone:] ‘He led her into the bedroom with a mirrored ceiling…She comes out, half an hour later, dress ripped off, staggering out, she sits in the seat…and then he comes out with his tie off, shirt untucked, and says, ‘Fellas…just got laid.'” (pg. 82)

14. There was always one or another of Trump’s assistants in the car with him.  [Whitestone:] ‘All his executive assistants were superhot.  ‘Come with us,’ he’d order one of them on the way out to the limo.  He and she sitting next to each other as he tries to grope her, with her blocking him like she’s done it a hundred times before.'”

(pg. 82)

15. “[Whitestone:] ‘…at the hospital, when his grandchild was born, Don Jr.’s kid, [Trump said], ‘Why the fuck do I have to go see this kid?  Don Jr. has too many fucking kids.'” (pg. 82)

16. “[Whitestone:] ‘He’s got a plan.  I’m going to do his campaign commercials: [Trump says:] ‘I want you to use our boardroom set and get a bunch of Arabs and all their Arab gear and we’ll put a sign on the table that says, ‘OPEC’ and we’ll have them going, ‘Hoooluuuuluuuhooo, hoooluuulyyhoood,’ and we’ll have this subtitle, ‘Death to the Americans,’ or ‘We’ll Screw the Americans,’ and then I’ll walk in and I’ll say a bunch of presidential bullshit…and then we’ll make it go viral.'” (pg. 83)

17. “As Whitestone knew, the unbound Trump, to which the insiders at The Apprentice were regularly exposed, was captured on thousands of hours of outtakes.  Those fabled tapes still exist, but they are not controlled by Burnett and MGM.  ‘Like the ark of the covenant in Raiders of the Lost Ark, [they are] somewhere on a pallet, wrapped in tape, in a desert outside of Los Angeles.  Eighteen cameras shooting almost twenty-four hours a day are saved on DVDs…We didn’t have hard drives.” (pg. 83)

18. “Whitestone remembered certain moments with particular clarity.

‘Someone said ‘cunt’ and someone else said, ‘You can’t say ‘cunt’ on TV,’ and Donald said, ‘Why can’t you say ‘cunt’?’ and said ‘Cunt, cunt, cunt, cunt.  There, I’ve said it on TV.  Now you can say it.’

And: ‘You’re very pretty, stand up, walk over here, turn around.’  [There was] constant dialogue about who has better tits and then bitter fights with producers about not using this.  ‘Why can’t we?’ he’d say.  ‘This is great.  This is great television.'” (pg. 83)

19. “[Whitestone:] ‘He was as incoherent then…no more, no less…as he is now, repeating thoughts and weird phrases…His weird sniffing thing (‘I have hay fever’)…” (pg. 83)

20. “Sam Nunberg, testifying before the Mueller grand jury, said that when he worked at Trump Tower in the years before the campaign, he saw [Trump’s fixer Michael] Cohen with bags of cash.  Cohen was, for Trump, literally a bag man, dealing with women and other off-the-books issues.” (pg. 84)

21. “…the Trumps had lived a don’t-ask-don’t-tell life…helped by the considerable distance between them allowed by their ample real estate, including at least one house near his golf club in the New York suburbs that Trump kept carefully hidden from his wife…” (from Chapter Seven – The Women, pg. 90)

22. “Melania sometimes spoke Slovenian with Barron, particularly when her parents were around–and they were frequently around–infuriating Trump and causing him to bolt from any room they were in.” (pg. 92)

23. “Even beyond their separate bedrooms in the White House–they were the first presidential couple since JFK and Jackie to room apart–much of Melania’s time was spent in a house in Maryland where she had installed her parents and established what was effectively a separate life for herself.

This was the arrangement.  For Trump, it was workable; for Melania, quite a bit less so.” (pgs. 92 & 93)

24. “Trump had a fetish about being the tallest person in the room; by 2018 Barron, after a sudden growth spurt, was already approaching six feet.  ‘How do I stunt his growth?’ became a chronic mean joke made by Trump about his son’s height.” (pg. 93)

25. “In the fall of 2017, as the New York Times and the New Yorker focused to devastating effect on Harvey Weinstein’s long history of sexual predation, Trump was busily defending him.  ‘Good guy,’ he would say about Weinstein, ‘good guy.’  He was sure that like the Russia investigation this, too, was a witch hunt.  What’s more, he knew Harvey, and Harvey would get away with it.  That was the thing with Harvey, said Trump–he always got away with it.  It was the casting couch, the casting couch!  For every girl who now had her panties in a twist, Trump claimed, there were fifty others, a hundred others, eager and willing.” (pgs. 93-94)

26. “Trump himself had not even an inkling of the new sensitivity regarding women and sex.  ‘I don’t need Viagra,’ he declared to everyone else’s general mortification at a dinner party in New York during the campaign.  ‘I need a pill to make my erection go down.'” (pg. 94)

27. “Nobody discounted the possibility, as a whole genre of stories and theories had it, that the rumoured elevator video of Trump striking Melania might in fact exist.  Inside the White House, the view was that if the video did exist, the incident had happened in Los Angeles, probably in 2014 after a meeting with lawyers that had been arranged precisely to negotiate a revision in their marital agreement.” (pg. 97)

28. “‘I only fuck beautiful girls–you can attest to that,’ he said to a Hollywood friend who visited the White House.  (He had once left a voice-mail message for Tucker Carlson, who had criticized Trump’s hair:  ‘It’s true you have better hair than I do, but I get more pussy that you do.’)” (pg. 97)

29. “Jared sought to have his father, Charlie Kushner, pardoned; that effort went nowhere (Trump wasn’t a fan of Charlie Kushner’s).” (from Chapter Eight – Michael Flynn, pg. 99)

30. “At [Fox founder Roger] Ailes’s funeral in Palm Beach in May 2017, [Fox broadcaster Sean] Hannity, who had flown a group of Ailes’s colleagues and friends down on his plane, found his plan to get back home for one of his children’s sports matches delayed by the collective length of the many encomiums at the funeral.  Stepping out to speak on the phone with his disappointed child, he said, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry.  But, hey, wait a minute.  Do you like your life?  Well, we owe that all to Mr. Ailes.  So I’m staying until his funeral is done.”

(from Chapter Eleven – Hannity, pg. 144)

31. “Trump, weary of immigration, was suddenly excited, on June 27, to be handed the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy from the Supreme Court, thus opening a seat for a new conservative judge.  Immigration became, overnight, a forgotten issue, and Hannity an annoyance.  ‘Wetbacks, wetbacks, wetbacks.  There’s more to the world,’ said the president in a complaint to an evening caller.  ‘Somebody should tell Sean.'” (pg. 155)

32. “…Trump continued to blame Bannon for getting him to support ‘the child molester’–Roy Moore in Alabama, the failed Senate candidate whom Bannon had backed.  (More precisely, in Trump’s locution, Bannon had persuaded him to support ‘the loser child molester.’)” (from Chapter Twelve – Trump Abroad, pg. 161)

33. “Melania–rarely approached and certainly never hugged by anyone on Trump’s staff or in his entourage–visibly recoiled from Hannity’s too-close embrace.” (from Chapter Thirteen – Trump and Putin, pgs. 177-178)

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Wednesday, September 25, 2019
2:19 a.m.

Eye-Opening Quotes From Michael Wolff’s Siege: Trump White House (Part One)

I know.  Michael Wolff is an unreliable narrator.  He’s not terribly transparent about his seriously flawed fact-gathering processes.  He relies on a lot of anonymous sources, many, if not all, of them motivated by vengeance which can sometimes put their credibility into question.  He gets basic details wrong that should’ve been caught before publication and he becomes very defensive when this is repeatedly pointed out to him.  Put bluntly, he’s more of a gossipy novelist than an insightful journalist.

That necessary caveat aside, surely some truths have still emerged from his two books about Donald Trump’s Presidency.  Last year, I focused on the first one, Fire And Fury.  And now, it’s on to his latest, Siege.

Once again, Wolff is way more interested in the ongoing soap opera in the West Wing than consistently deconstructing the extreme policies of an increasingly right-wing Republican Party.  Nevertheless, as before, there are citations that stand out, ones that may raise an eyebrow, drop a jaw or inspire a laugh.  Behold:

1. “Hicks –‘Hope-y,’ to Trump–was both the president’s gatekeeper and his comfort blanket.  She was also a frequent subject of his prurient interest:  Trump preferred business, even in the White House, to be personal.  ‘Who’s fucking Hope?’ he would demand to know.  The topic also interested his son Don Jr., who often professed his intention to ‘fuck Hope.'” (Chapter One – Bullseye, pg. 7)

2. “[Rob] Porter had, before the age of forty, two bitter ex-wives, at least one of whom he had beaten, and both of whom he had cheated on at talk-of-the-town levels.  During a stint as a Senate staffer, the married Porter had an affair with an intern, costing him his job.  His girlfriend Samantha Dravis had moved in with Porter in the summer of 2017, while, quite unbeknownst to her, he was seeing Hicks.  ‘I cheated on you because you’re not attractive enough,’ he later told Dravis.

In a potentially criminal break of protocol, Porter had gained access to his raw FBI clearance reports and seen the statements of his ex-wives…Concerned about the damaging impact his former wives could have on his security review, he recruited Dravis to help him smooth his relationship with both women.

[snip]

After finding Hicks’s number listed under a man’s name in Porter’s contacts, Dravis confronted Porter who promptly threw her out.  Moving back in with her parents, she began her own revenge campaign, openly talking about Porter’s security clearance issues, including to people inside the White House counsel’s office, saying he had protection at the highest levels in the White House…Dravis helped leak the details of the Hicks-Porter romance to the Daily Mail, which published a story about it on February 1.

But Dravis, joined by Porter’s former wives, decided that, outrageously, he had come out looking good…he was part of a glam power couple!  Porter called Dravis to taunt her:  ‘You thought you could get me!’  Dravis and his former wives all then publicly revealed their abuse at his hand.

[snip]

…his troubling gross-guy history…annoyed Trump–‘He stinks of bad press’…On February 7, after both of his former wives gave interviews to CNN, Porter resigned.”  (pgs. 8-9)

3. “In the high irony department, Jared Kushner, when he was in law school, and before he met Ivanka, identified, in a paper he wrote, possible claims of fraud against the Trump Organization in a particular real estate deal he was studying–a subject now of quite some amusement among his acquaintances at the time.” (pg. 13)

4. “…if [Jeffrey} Epstein knew some of Trump’s secrets, Trump knew some of Epstein’s.  Trump often saw the financier at Epstein’s current Palm Beach house, and Trump knew that Epstein was visited almost every day, and had been for many years, by girls he’d hired to give him massages that often had happy endings–girls recruited from local restaurants, strip clubs, and, also Trump’s own Mar-a-Lago.” (pg. 14)

5. “That Friday morning, he came down from the residence into the Oval Office in a full-on rage so violent that, for a moment, his hair came undone.  To the shock of the people with him, there stood an almost entirely bald Donald Trump.” (from Chapter Two – The Do-Over, pg. 28)

6. “…what he could not get enough of was Stormy Daniels’s new lawyer, Michael Avenatti.  The man was a killer.  As important, he was terrific on television.  Avenatti looked the part; he looked like he could play a lawyer on television.  This was the kind of lawyer he wanted.

‘He’s a star,’ Trump said.  That’s what he needed if he was going to face this kind of pressure and these kinds of attacks.  ‘Get me a star.'” (from Chapter Three – Lawyers, pg. 46)

7. “…Dershowitz was among the most brilliant and successful television lawyers in the country–and Trump, most of all, wanted someone who could play a lawyer on television.  Acting, in his view, was the greater and more important legal skill.

[snip]

…Dershowitz was invited to dinner at the White House to discuss representing the president.  He was just the kind of lawyer the president thought he needed: an aggressive advocate who could argue his case on television.

Over dinner, Dershowitz asked for a retainer of a million dollars.

Trump, ever believing that part of the legal game was not paying your lawyers, told Dershowitz he would get back to him.  But the conversation was over.  Never in a million years would he pay a lawyer a million bucks up front!” (pg. 47)

8. “Trump had never warmed to his vice president–indeed, Mike Pence had annoyed him from the first weeks of his administration…Trump demanded subservience, but when he got it he was suspicious of the person providing it.  The more Pence bowed, the more Trump tried to figure out his angle.

‘Why does he look at me like that?’ Trump asked about the way Pence seemed to stare at him near beatifically.  ‘He’s a religious nut,’ Trump concluded. ‘…they say he was the stupidest man in Congress.’

[snip]

Early in the administration, an article in Rolling Stone had quoted Pence referring to his wife as ‘Mother.’  The moniker stuck.  Since then, Mrs. [Karen] Pence has been known throughout the West Wing as Mother, and not with affection.  She was seen as the power behind the vice presidential throne–the canny, indefatigable, iron-willed strategist who propped up her hapless husband.

‘She really gives me the creeps,’ said Trump, who avoided Mrs. Pence.”

(from Chapter Four – Home Alone, pgs. 52-53)

9. “[Ronny] Jackson was a popular get-along figure, not least because he was casual about prescribing medication.  He kept the president stocked with Provigil, an upper, which Trump’s New York doctor has long prescribed for him.  For others, Jackson was regarded as a particularly easy Ambien touch.  He got along especially well with the men–an ‘old-fashioned sort of drinker,’ in one description.  He got along much less well with the women, accruing several complaints.” (pg.54)

10. “In the first week of [The Apprentice’s first season] production, [sound engineer Erik] Whitestone was assigned the job of putting the microphone up Trump’s shirt.  Given the physical proximity this task required–you had to reach under the jacket and shirt–everyone else on the production team had resisted it.  Trump, with his size, height, and glowering demeanor, was not only off-putting; for no clear reason, he would unzip his pants and pull them down part-way, exposing tighty-whities…

Not long after the show’s production got under way, Whitestone, now on permanent Trump-mic duty, took a day off and someone else, an African American sound technician, was given the assignment.  Trump flipped out.

A frantic Burnett found Whitestone at home.  Trump had barricaded himself in the bathroom.  ‘Donald won’t go on until you get here,’ said [Apprentice creator Mark] Burnett.  ‘So get here immediately!’

An hour later, Whitestone came rushing in to find Trump screaming from behind the bathroom door.  ‘Erik, what the fuck, they tried to fuck me up…They put dirty fingerprints on my collars, they tried to fuck up my tie.’

…every single morning of the shooting season, for the next fourteen years, Whitestone would show up at Trump’s apartment…” (from Chapter Six – Michael Cohen, pg. 80)

11. “‘He kept saying how much he wished he’d never given Don Jr. his name and wished he could take it back,’ recalled Whitestone.” (pg. 81)

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Wednesday, September 25, 2019
2:10 a.m.

Curious Moments From Fire And Fury: Trump In The White House (Part Four)

34. A proud Trump privately admitted to feeding the media false information.

“If you couldn’t get press directly for yourself, you became a leaker. There was no happenstance news, in Trump’s view. All news was manipulated and designed, planned and planted. All news was to some extent fake–he understood that very well, because he himself had faked it so many times in his career. This was why he had so naturally cottoned to the ‘fake news’ label. ‘I’ve made stuff up forever, and they always print it,’ he bragged.”

35. Trump took credit for MBS becoming the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia.

From Chapter 17:

“Within weeks of the trip, MBS, detaining MBN quite in the dead of night, would force him to relinquish the Crown Prince title, which MBS would then assume for himself. Trump would tell friends that he and Jared had engineered a Saudi coup: ‘We’ve put our man on top!'”

36. A lot of law firms don’t want to represent Trump.

Also from Chapter 17:

“…it certainly didn’t help that they were unable to hire a law firm with a top-notch white-collar government practice. By the time Bannon and Priebus were back in Washington, three blue-chip firms had said no. All of them were afraid they would face a rebellion among the younger staff if they represented Trump, afraid Trump would publicly humiliate them if the going got tough, and afraid Trump would stiff them for the bill.

In the end, nine top firms turned them down.”

37. Kushner & Ivanka retaliated against two frustrated, outgoing Trump lawyers by leaking dirt about them to the press.

As the media started successfully discrediting the original, false, then shifting assertions regarding the famous Trump Tower meeting that has been a focal point of the Mueller investigation, two of Trump’s attorneys saw the writing on the wall:

“Mark Corallo was instructed not to speak to the press, indeed not to even answer his phone. Later that week, Corallo, seeing no good outcome–and privately confiding that he believed the meeting on Air Force One represented a likely obstruction of justice–quit. (The Jarvanka side would put it out that Corallo was fired.)”

[snip]

“Likewise, the Trump family, no matter its legal exposure, was not going to be run by its lawyers. Jared and Ivanka helped to coordinate a set of lurid leaks–drinking, bad behavior, personal life in disarray–about Marc Kasowitz, who had advised the president to send the couple home. Shortly after the presidential party returned to Washington, Kasowitz was out.”

In Chapter 21, gelatinous salamander Steve Bannon offered his own view:

“Look, Kasowitz has known him for twenty-five years.  Kasowitz has gotten him out of all kinds of jams.  Kasowitz on the campaign–what did we have, a hundred women?  Kasowitz took care of all of them.  And now he lasts, what, four weeks?  He’s in the mumble tank. This is New York’s toughest lawyer, broken.  Mark Corallo, toughest motherfucker I ever met, just can’t do it.”

Wait, did Trump have one of his lawyers pay off “a hundred women” he had affairs with or is that number exaggerated?  Again, author Michael Wolff doesn’t follow up.

38. Anthony Scaramucci helped kill a damaging Kushner story so he could get a job in the White House.

From Chapter 20:

“Scaramucci called a reporter he knew to urge that an upcoming story about Kushner’s Russian contacts be spiked.  He followed up by having another mutual contact call the reporter to say that if the story was spiked it would help the Mooch get into the White House, whereupon the reporter would have special Mooch access.  The Mooch then assured Jared and Ivanka that he had, in this clever way, killed the story.”

39. Bannon’s theory on the true focus of the Mueller investigation:

From Chapter 21:

“This is all about money laundering…Their path to fucking Trump goes right through Paul Manafort, Don Jr., and Jared Kushner…It goes through Deutsche Bank and all the Kushner shit.  The Kushner shit is greasy.  They’re going to go right through that.  They’re going to roll those guys up and say play me or trade me.”

[snip]

“They’re going to crack Don Junior like an egg on National TV.  Michael Cohen, cracked like an egg.”

40. Bannon doesn’t think Trump will survive his Presidency.

Also from Chapter 21:

“I’m pretty good at coming up with solutions, I came up with a solution for his broke-dick campaign in about a day, but I don’t see this.  I don’t see a plan for getting through.  Now, I gave him a plan…seal the Oval Office…send [Jared & Ivanka] home…get rid of Hope [Hicks], all these deadbeats…You listen to your [lawyers] and never talk about this stuff again, you just conduct yourself as commander in chief and then you can be president for eight years.  If you don’t, you’re not, simple.  But he’s the president…and he’s clearly choosing to go down another path…you can’t stop him.  The guy is going to call his own plays.  He’s Trump…”

41. Bannon knew Anthony Scaramucci wouldn’t last very long as communications director.

“He’ll be on that podium for two days and he’ll be so chopped he’ll bleed out everywhere.  He’ll literally blow up in a week…Hiring Scaramucci?  He’s not qualified to do anything.  He runs a fund of funds.  Do you know what a fund of funds is?  It’s not a fund.”

42. Trump is in deep denial about the Ku Klux Klan.

From Chapter 22:

“Privately, he kept trying to rationalize why someone would be a member of the KKK–that, they might not actually believe what the KKK believed, and that the KKK probably does not believe what it used to believe, and, anyway, who really know what the KKK believes now?”

43. Maybe this is why Nikki Haley recently resigned as UN Ambassador.

From the Epilogue:

“Haley–‘as ambitious as Lucifer,’ in the characterization of one member of the senior staff–had concluded that Trump’s tenure would last, at best, a single term, and that she, with requisite submission, could be his heir apparent.”

[snip]

“The president had been spending a notable amount of private time with Haley on Air Force One and was seen to be grooming her for a national political future.”

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Wednesday, October 31, 2018
7:09 p.m.

Curious Moments From Fire And Fury: Inside The Trump White House (Part Three)

20. Trump has an unnamed source who dishes about the Department of Justice.

From Chapter Eleven:

“…Trump already had good reason to worry about the DOJ. The president had a private source, one of his frequent callers, who, he believed, was keeping him abreast of what was going on in the Justice Department…”

[snip]

“The source, a longtime friend with his own DOJ sources…fed the president a bleak picture of a Justice Department and an FBI run amok in its efforts to get him. ‘Treason’ was a word that was being used, the president was told.

‘The DOJ,’ the president’s source told him, ‘was filled with women who hated him.’…’They want to make Watergate look like Pissgate,’ the president was told. This comparison confused Trump; he thought his friend was making a reference to the Steele dossier and its tale of the golden showers.”

21. Tony Blair falsely claimed that the British were spying on Trump.

Also from Chapter Eleven:

“In February [2017], Blair visited Kushner in the White House.

On this trip, the now freelance diplomat, seeking to prove his usefulness to this new White House, imparted a juicy nugget of information. There was, he suggested, the possibility that the British had had the Trump campaign staff under surveillance, monitoring its telephone calls and other communications and possibly even Trump himself.

[snip]

It was unclear whether Blair’s information was rumor, informed conjecture, his own speculation, or solid stuff. But, as it churned and festered in the president’s mind, Kushner and Bannon went out to CIA headquarters in Langley to meet with Mike Pompeo and his deputy director Gina Haspel to check it out. A few days later, the CIA opaquely reported back that the information was not correct; it was a ‘miscommunication.'”

22. Trump doesn’t really care about abolishing the Affordable Care Act.

From Chapter Twelve:

“Trump had little or no interest in the central Republican goal of repealing Obamacare. An overweight seventy-year-old man with various physical phobias (for instance, he lied about his height to keep from having a body mass index that would label him as obese), he personally found health care and medical treatments of all kinds a distasteful subject. The details of the contested legislation were, to him, particularly boring. His attention would begin wandering from the first words of a policy discussion…he certainly could not make any kind of meaningful distinction, positive or negative, between the health care system before Obamacare and the one after.”

23. Jared Kushner privately supports the ACA and has a family member who benefits from it.

“Kushner…privately suggested that he was personally against both repeal alone and repeal and replace. He and his wife took a conventional Democratic view on Obamacare (it was better than the alternative; its problems could be fixed in the future)…(What’s more, Kushner’s brother Josh ran a health insurance company that depended on Obamacare.)”

24. Gary Cohn allegedly sent a scathing email that got forwarded throughout the Administration.

From Chapter Fourteen:

“In April, an email originally copied to more than a dozen people went into far wider circulation when it was forwarded and reforwarded. Purporting to represent the views of Gary Cohn [Trump’s Economic Advisor] and quite succinctly summarizing the appalled sense in much of the White House, the email read:

It’s worse than you can imagine. An idiot surrounded by clowns. Trump won’t read anything–not one-page memos, not the brief policy papers, nothing. He gets up halfway through meetings with world leaders because he is bored. And his staff is no better. Kushner is an entitled baby who knows nothing. Bannon is an arrogant prick who thinks he’s smarter than he is. Trump is less a person than a collection of terrible traits. No one will survive the first year but his family. I hate the work, but feel I need to stay because I’m the only person there with a clue what he’s doing. The reason so few jobs have been filled is that they only accept people who pass ridiculous purity tests, even for midlevel policy-making jobs where the people will never see the light of day. I am in a constant state of shock and horror.”

25. Steve Bannon was kicked off the National Security Council after being the only Trump official to oppose a military response against the Syrian government.

Also from Chapter Fourteen:

“By midmorning on April 4 [2017], a full briefing had been assembled at the White House for the president about the chemical attacks.”

[snip]

“Bannon, at perhaps his lowest moment of influence in the White House–many still felt that his departure was imminent–was the only voice arguing against a military response. It was a purist’s rationale: keep the United States out of intractable problems, and certainly don’t increase our involvement in them. He was holding the line against the rising business-as-usual faction, making decisions based on the same set of assumptions, Bannon believed, that has resulted in the Middle East quagmire.”

[snip]

“The president had already agreed to McMaster’s demand that Bannon be removed from the National Security Council, though the change wouldn’t be announced until the following day.”

[snip]

“The announcement of Bannon’s removal was made the day after the attack.”

26. Even Roger Ailes got fed up with Trump.

From Chapter Fifteen:

“In the past month, Ailes, a frequent Trump caller and after-dinner adviser, had all but stopped speaking to the president, piqued by the constant reports that Trump was bad-mouthing him as he praised a newly attentive [Rupert] Murdoch, who had, before the election, only ever ridiculed Trump.

‘Men who demand the most loyalty tend to be the least loyal pricks,’ noted a sardonic Ailes (a man who himself demanded lots of loyalty).”

[snip]

“…noted Ailes…’Donald and I were really quite good friends for more than 25 years, but he would have preferred to be friends with Murdoch, who thought he was a moron–at least until he became president.'”

27. Kellyanne Conway is more honest about Trump in private.

Also from Chapter Fifteen:

“In private…she seemed to regard Trump as a figure of exhausting exaggeration or even absurdity–or, at least, if you regarded him that way, she seemed to suggest that she might, too. She illustrated her opinion of her boss with a whole series of facial expressions: eyes rolling, mouth agape, head snapping back.”

28. Before he became an outspoken critic, Kellyanne’s husband George, originally an early Trump booster, nearly worked for him.

“After the election,” according to author Michael Wolff, there was “a scramble to get her husband an administration job…” What that job would’ve been is not divulged.

29. Even Trump government insiders, including his own daughter, thought Kellyanne’s “defend-at-all-costs shtick” was ridiculous.

“Loyalty was Trump’s most valued attribute, and in Conway’s view her kamikaze-like media defense of the president had earned her a position of utmost primacy in the White House. But in her public persona, she had pushed the boundaries of loyalty too far; she was so hyperbolic that even Trump loyalists found her behaviour extreme and were repelled. None were more put off than Jared and Ivanka…appalled at the shamelessness of her television appearances…”

They were so appalled, according to Wolff, they started leaking “about how she had been sidelined…reduced to second-rate media, to being a designated emissary to right-wing groups, and left out of any meaningful decision making.”

She almost resigned but Trump insisted she keep defending him on-air. (“You will always have a place in my administration…You will be here for eight years.”)

30. Before aligning with Trump, Hope Hicks once worked for the PR firm that protected Harvey Weinstein. So did Jared Kushner spokesman Josh Raffel.

“She first went to work for Matthew Hiltzik, who ran a small New York-based PR firm and was noted for his ability to work with high-maintenance clients, including the movie producer Harvey Weinstein (later pilloried for years of sexual harassment and abuse–accusations that Hiltzik and his staff had long helped protect him from)…”

[snip]

“Kushner’s Office of American Innovation employed, as its spokesperson, Josh Raffel, who, like Hicks, came out of Matthew Hiltzik’s PR shop.”

31. Trump didn’t understand why Hicks wanted to protect ex-boyfriend Corey Lewandowski from bad press after he was fired for “clashing with Trump family members.”

“…Hicks sat in Trump Tower with Trump and his sons, worrying about Lewandowski’s treatment in the press and wondering aloud how she might help him. Trump, who otherwise seemed to treat Hicks in a protective and even paternal way, looked up and said, ‘Why? You’ve already done enough for him. You’re the best piece of tail he’ll ever have,’ sending Hicks running from the room.

32. Why Trump thinks his son-in-law can solve the Middle East crisis.

From Chapter Sixteen:

“…the president had been gleefully telling multiple people that Jared could solve the Middle East problem because the Kushners knew all the crooks in [Apartheid] Israel…”

33. Trump despised Sally Yates.

Also from Chapter Sixteen:

“To Trump, he was just up against Sally Yates, who was, he steamed, ‘such a cunt.'”

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Wednesday, October 31, 2018
6:50 p.m.

Curious Moments From Fire And Fury: Inside The Trump White House (Part Two)

11. Supposed Trump critic Joe Scarborough keeps privately advising him over the phone.

One of Trump’s earliest public supporters was the host of MSNBC’s Morning Joe, one of the President’s must-see morning cable news shows, until he eventually and inevitably started to turn on him.  However, in chapter two, Scarborough “privately told Trump ‘Washington will go up in flames’ if Bannon became chief of staff, and beginning a running theme, publicly denigrated Bannon on the show.'”

In chapter three, he’s urged to call Trump by worried staffers wanting the former Republican Congressman and others, it should be noted, to “call him and say Simmer down,’ with regards to attacking his growing band of critics, a similar sentiment another Trump friend, radio broadcaster Howard Stern, expressed publicly recently on his Sirius/XM satellite radio program.

“‘Who do you have in there?’ said Joe Scarborough in a frantic call. ‘Who’s the person you trust?  Jared?  Who can talk you through this stuff before you decided to act on it?’

‘Well,’ said the president, ‘you won’t like the answer, but the answer is me.  Me.  I talk to myself.'”

12. There is nothing to like about Stephen Miller.

From Chapter Three:

“Bannon got Stephen Miller to write the immigration EO.  Miller, a fifty-five-year-old trapped in a thirty-two-year-old’s body, was a former Jeff Sessions staffer brought on to the Trump campaign for his political expertise.  Except, other than being a dedicated far-right conservative, it was unclear what particular abilities accompanied Miller’s political views.  He was supposed to be a speechwriter, but if so, he seemed restricted to bullet points and unable to construct sentences.  He was supposed to be a policy adviser but knew little about policy.  He was supposed to be the house intellectual but was militantly unread.  He was supposed to be a communications specialist, but he antagonized almost everyone.  Bannon, during the transition, sent him to the Internet to learn about and to try to draft the EO.”

13. Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski visited Trump in the White House shortly after he first attempted to ban Muslims in his infamous Executive Order.

From Chapter Five:

“On the Sunday after the immigration order was issued, Joe Scarborough and his cohost on the MSNBC show Morning Joe, Mika Brzezinski, came for lunch at the White House.

[snip]

“‘So how do you think the first week has gone?’ Trump asked the couple, in a buoyant mood, seeking flattery.

Scarborough, puzzled by Trump’s jauntiness in the face of the protests spreading across the nation, demurred and then said, ‘Well, I love what you did with U.S. Steel and that you had the union guys come into the Oval Office.’ Trump had pledged to use U.S.-made steel in U.S. pipelines…”

[snip]

Scarborough then ventured his opinion that the immigration order might have been handled better and that, all in all, it seemed like a rough period.”

After “plung[ing] into a long monologue about how well things had gone”, Trump told him, “I could have invited Hannity!”

“…Jared and Ivanka joined the president and Scarborough and Brzezinski.  Jared had become quite a Scarborough confidant and would continue to supply Scarborough with an inside view of the White House–that is, leaking to him.  Scarborough, in turn, would become a defender of Kushner’s White House position and view.

[snip]

“Trump continued to cast for positive impressions of his first week and Scarborough again reverted to his praise of Trump’s handling of the steel union leadership.”

14. Ivanka Trump wants to run for President.

Also from Chapter Five:

“Jared and Ivanka had made an earnest deal between themselves:  if sometime in the future the time came, she’d be the one to run for president (or the first one of them to take the shot).  The first woman president, Ivanka entertained, would not be Hillary Clinton, it would be Ivanka Trump.”

15. Is Ivanka an enabler of her father’s extramarital affairs?

“She was a helper not just in his business dealings, but in his marital realignments.  She facilitated entrances and exits.  If you have a douchebag dad, and if everyone is open about it, then maybe it becomes fun and life a romantic comedy–sort of.”

16. Trump is paranoid about being assassinated by germs.

From Chapter Six:

“…he imposed a set of new rules:  nobody touch anything, especially not his toothbrush.  (He had a longtime fear of being poisoned, one reason why he liked to eat a McDonald’s–nobody knew he was coming and the food was premade.)”

17. Rudy Guiliani was offered numerous jobs within the administration.  He wanted to be Secretary of State.  Trump staffers thought he would also hold out for a spot on the Supreme Court.

The longtime Trump apologist “was offered attorney general”, an undetermined job within the “Department of Homeland Security” (I’m presuming it was Director) “and director of national intelligence, but he turned them all down, continuing to hold out for State.  Or, in what staffers took to be the ultimate presumption, or grand triangulation, the Supreme Court.”

When Neil Gorsuch, Trump’s eventual first appointee for the highest bench in America, “took public exception to Trump’s disparagement of the courts”, Trump, “in a moment of pique, decided to pull his nomination and, during conversations with his after-dinner callers, went back to discussing how he should have given the nod to Rudy.  He was the only loyal guy.”  After much pushback from deteriorating skunk beetle Steve Bannon and then-Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, Trump ultimately relented and stuck with Gorsuch after all.  Wolff reports, “…Trump would shortly not remember when he had ever wanted anyone but Gorsuch.”

18. Michael Flynn initially denied any Russian collusion to a Washington Post reporter off the record.

February 8, 2017 would prove to be the beginning of the end for Donald Trump’s soon-to-be embattled National Security Advisor.  In “the same room where Japanese diplomats waited to meet with Secretary of State Cordell Hull as he learned of the attack on Pearl Harbor” in December 1941, Michael Flynn sat for an interview with Karen DeYoung of the Washington Post “in the most ornate room in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building…”

“To all outward appearances, it was an uneventful background interview, and DeYoung, Columbo-like in her affect, aroused no suspicions when she broached the de rigueur question:  ‘My colleagues asked me to ask you this:  Did you talk to the Russians about sanctions?'”

Flynn made an unequivocal denial twice (“no such conversations”, according to Wolff).

“But later that day, DeYoung called [National Security Council official and spokesman Michael] Anton” who attended the off-the-record interview to inquire “if she could use Flynn’s denial on the record.  Anton said he saw no problem–after all, the White House wanted Flynn’s denial to be clear–and notified Flynn.

Suddenly, Flynn had “some worries about the statement.”

After Anton asked him, “If you knew that there might be a tape of this conversation that could surface, would you still be a hundred percent sure?”, “Flynn equivocated, and Anton, suddenly concerned, advised him that if he couldn’t be sure they ought to ‘walk it back.'”

In the eventual WaPo article that “contained new leaked details of the [Russian Ambassador] Kislyak phone call…Flynn, through his spokesman, backed away from the denial.  The spokesman said Flynn ‘indicated that while he had no recollection of discussing sanctions, he couldn’t be certain that the topic never came up.'”

Trump refused to fire him “after just twenty-four days” on the job.  “And he was adamant about not wanting to blame Flynn for talking to the Russians, even about sanctions.  In Trump’s view, condemning his advisor would connect him to a plot where there was no plot.  His fury wasn’t directed toward Flynn but to the ‘incidental’ wiretap that had surveilled him.”

Trump finally agreed to dismiss him after he was convinced that Flynn shouldn’t have misled Vice President Pence even though, as Wolff notes, “Flynn did not report to Vice President Pence, and he was arguably a good deal more powerful than Pence.”

That said, Trump, to this day, still thinks Flynn got railroaded:

“…the president did not waiver in his belief in Flynn.  Rather, Flynn’s enemies were his enemies.  And Russia was a gun to his head.  He might, however ruefully, have had to fire Flynn, but Flynn was still his guy.”

19. Trump told friends in private, “rambling” phone conversations what he really thought of his underlings.

From Chapter Eight:

“In paranoid or sadistic fashion, he’d speculate on the flaws and weaknesses of each member of his staff.  Bannon was disloyal (not mention he always looks like shit)”, the origin of the eventual “Sloppy Steve” epithet.  “Priebus was weak (not to mention he was short–a midget).  Kushner” his own son-in-law “was a suck-up.  Spicer was stupid (and looks terrible too).  Conway was a crybaby.  Jared and Ivanka should never have come to Washington.”

In the Epilogue, “the president had also stopped defending his own family, wondering when they would ‘take the hint and go home.'”

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Wednesday, October 31, 2018
6:37 p.m.

Curious Moments From Fire And Fury: Inside The Trump White House (Part One)

In the first week of 2018, Michael Wolff released Fire And Fury: Inside The Trump White House.  Like Bob Woodward’s book, Fear: Trump In The White House, which came out eight months later, it’s far less interested in consistently reporting and analyzing the GOP’s destructive political policies that will have ramifications and deadly consequences for years to come and way more fascinated with the ongoing, less substantial topic of civil war happening within the administration’s executive branch.

Instead of focusing on Trump’s shameless attempts at destroying the environment, for instance, there’s way too much attention paid to living dead ghoul Steve Bannon’s ongoing feud with Jarvanka, the racist’s derisive amalgamated nickname for Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, and the well established idiocy of the commander in chief.

Wolff also uses the phrase “joie de guerre” way too many times but I digress.

That said, like the Woodword book, there are still numerous moments worth highlighting, some of which deserve greater, prolonged scrutiny.  Let’s go through them:

1. Did John Bolton sexually harass a woman in a hotel?

In the book’s prologue, Wolff recounts a conversation between decomposing Nazi Steve Bannon and now dead serial sexual harasser Roger Ailes, the former Fox News wunderkind, during a private dinner at Trump’s Mar-A-Logo resort in Florida on January 3, 2017.  During a discussion about who the President-elect should pick to become his National Security Advisor, John Bolton’s name comes up.

It’s well known that Trump didn’t like him because he hated his moustache.  “Trump doesn’t think he looks the part,” observes Bannon.  But after further asserting that he’s “an acquired taste”, Ailes responds thusly:

“Well, he got in trouble because he got in a fight one night and chased some woman.”

To which Bannon replies, “If I told Trump that, he might have the job.”

Although Trump selected H.R. McMaster as his NSA, the married Bolton would ultimately replace him, moustache and all, a year later.

So, who was the woman and what the hell happened?  Disappointingly, Wolff never follows up.

2. Bannon suggested illegally divvying up Occupied Palestine to other countries besides Apartheid Israel.

At that same dinner, after announcing to Ailes that the eventual decision to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv will happen on “[d]ay one” of Trump’s presidency (it actually took place in May of this year, fourteen months after the Mar-A-Lago dinner, to much international outrage), he also suggested that Palestine, illegally occupied by the white supremacist Apartheid Israel regime for decades, be split up thusly by other autocratic dictatorships:

“Let Jordan take the West Bank, let Egypt take Gaza.  Let them deal with it.  Or sink trying.”

3. Bannon compared Obama’s heartless drone wars to LBJ’s mishandling of The Vietnam War.

While conversing with Ailes at Mar-A-Lago, Trump’s then-chief campaign strategist got into a rant about Obama’s National Security Advisor Susan Rice.  In the midst of this, he commented on the way the Obama Administration conducted the war against ISIS:

“They’re picking the targets, she’s picking the drone strikes.  I mean, they’re running the war with just as much effectiveness as Johnson in sixty-eight.  The Pentagon is totally disengaged from the whole thing.  Intel services are disengaged from the whole thing.  The media has let Obama off the hook.  Take the ideology away from it, this is complete amateur hour.”

4. Kellyanne Conway was so certain Trump would lose the election she secretly courted TV news media to secure a future on-air gig.

From Chapter 1:

“Donald Trump would lose the election–of this she was sure–but he would quite possibly hold the defeat to under 6 points.

[snip]

Now she briefed some of the television producers and anchors with whom she’d built strong relationships–and with whom, actively interviewing in the last few weeks, she was hoping to land a permanent on-air job after the election.  She’d carefully courted many of them since joining the Trump campaign in mid-August…”

5. A revealing Trump anecdote that illustrates how he was able to connect with his supporters.

From Chapter Two:

“Trump’s understanding of his own essential nature was even more precise.  Once, coming back on his plane with a billionaire friend who had brought along a foreign model.  Trump, trying to move in on his friend’s date, urged a stop in Atlantic City.  He would provide a tour of his casino.  His friend assured the model that there was nothing to recommend Atlantic City.  It was a place run by white trash.

‘What is this ‘white trash’?’ asked the model.

‘They’re people just like me,’ said Trump, ‘only they’re poor.'”

6. Tom Barrack’s connection to Trump and other wealthy sex offenders.

“Barrack, the grandson of Lebanese immigrants, is a starstruck real estate investor of legendary acumen who owns Michael Jackson’s former oddball paradise, Neverland Ranch.  With Jeffrey Epstein–the New York financier who would become a tabloid regular after accusations of sex with underage girls and a guilty plea to one count of soliciting prostitution that sent him to jail in 2008 in Palm Beach for thirteen months–Trump and Barrack were a 1980s and ’90s set of nightlife Musketeers.”

7. Trump didn’t think Chris Christie’s shady closing of the George Washington Bridge was that big of a deal.

“Early in the campaign, Trump said he wouldn’t have run against Christie but for the Bridgegate scandal (which erupted when Christie’s associates closed traffic lanes on the George Washington Bridge to undermine the mayor of a nearby town who was a Christie opponent, and which Trump privately justified as ‘just New Jersey hardball’).”

8. Anna Wintour wanted Trump to name her UK ambassador since Obama passed and Hillary Clinton lost the election.

“Anna Wintour, the Vogue editor and fashion industry queen, had hoped to be named America’s ambassador to the UK under Obama and, when that didn’t happen, closely aligned herself with Hillary Clinton.  Now Wintour arrived at Trump Tower (but haughtily refused to do the perp walk) and, with quite some remarkable chutzpah, pitched herself to Trump to be his ambassador to the Court of St. James’s.  And Trump was inclined to entertain the idea.  (‘Fortunately,’ said Bannon, ‘there was no chemistry.’)”

9. Even Trump supporter Rupert Murdoch thinks lowly of Trump’s intelligence.

As Trump was transitioning from public citizen to President of the United States in late 2016, he entertained numerous high profile visitors.  In mid-December, he was visited by “a[n unnamed] high-level delegation from Silicon Valley…though Trump had repeatedly criticized the tech industry throughout the campaign.”

After the meeting, Trump called News Corporation head Rupert Murdoch who “asked him how the meeting had gone.”

“Oh, great, just great,’ said Trump. ‘Really, really good.  These guys really need my help.  Obama was not very favorable to them, too much regulation.  [What about their collusion in online mass surveillance?]  This is really an opportunity for me to help them.’

‘Donald,’ said Murdoch, ‘ for eight years these guys had Obama in their pocket.  They practically ran the administration.  They don’t need your help.’

‘Take this H-1B visa issue.  They really need these H-1B visas.'”

Murdoch suggested that taking a liberal approach to H-1B visas might be hard to square with his immigration promises.  But Trump seemed unconcerned, assuring Murdoch, ‘We’ll figure it out.’

‘What a fucking idiot,’ said Murdoch, shrugging, as he got off the phone.”

10. An unnamed Republican gave a prescient warning to Jared Kushner about Trump’s future.

From Chapter Three:

“‘Don’t let him piss off the press, don’t let him piss off the Republican Party, don’t threaten congressmen because they will fuck you if you do, and most of all don’t let him piss off the intel community,’ said one national Republican figure to Kushner.  ‘If you fuck with the intel community they will figure out a way to get back at you and you’ll have two or three years of a Russian investigation, and every day something else will leak out.'”

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Wednesday, October 31, 2018
3:36 a.m.

Revelations From Bob Woodward’s Donald Trump Book (Part Six)

41. Despite publicly predicting a future victory in Afghanistan, the Trump Administration’s private position is that it’s a lost cause.

From Chapter 31:

A “60-page strategy memo” was put together by the Defense Department in mid-August 2017.

“Buried in the 19-page section on integrated strategy was an admission:  ‘Stalemate likely to persist in Afghanistan’ and ‘Taliban likely to continue to gain ground.’

In the tradition of concealing the real story in a memo, ‘Win is unattainable’ was the conclusion signed by [National Security Advisor H.R.] McMaster.”

Then-CIA-chief Mike Pompeo:

“Are you going to take responsibility for Afghanistan?  Because we’re not going to win.  You understand we’re not going to win!”

From Chapter 27:

“‘Mr. President,’ [General] Dunford [Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman] said, very polite, very soft-spoken, ‘there’s not a mandate to win…’ Under Obama, who had pulled out most of the troops–down to 8,400, from a high of 100,000—the strategy was effectively to achieve a stalemate.”

42. The Secretary of State let slip the reality of Afghanistan during a press briefing.

From Chapter 31:

“…Tillerson found another way to declare that a win was not attainable.  He addressed the Taliban at a press briefing:  ‘You will not win a battlefield victory.  We may not win one, but neither will you.’

Stalemate.”

43. Trump didn’t believe the American car industry was doing well or that the US government won most of its trade disputes with the WTO even though Gary Cohn had data evidence.

From Chapter 33:

“Cohn assembled the best statistics that could be compiled.  Trump would not read, so Cohn brought charts to the Oval Office.  The numbers showed that the American auto industry was fine.  One big chart showed Detroit’s Big Three were producing 3.6 million fewer cars and light trucks since 1994, but the rest of the U.S., mostly in the Southeast, was up the same 3.6 millon.

The entire BMW 3 series in the world were made in South Carolina, Cohn said.  The Mercedes SUVs were all made in the United States.  The millions of auto jobs lost in Detroit had moved to South Carolina and North Carolina because of right-to-work laws.”

[snip]

“Cohn had put another document, ‘U.S. Record in WTO Disputes,’ in the daily book that [Staff Secretary Rob] Porter compiled for the president at night.”

Trump “rarely if ever cracked it open.”  He claimed, “The World Trade Organization is the worst organization every created!…We lose more cases than anything.”

According to the aforementioned daily book, “The document showed that the United States won 85.7 percent of its WTO cases, more than average.”

Trump’s response:  “This is bullshit…This is wrong.”

Cohen’s rebuttal:  “This is the factual data.  There’s no one that’s going to disagree with this data.  Data is data.”

44. Lindsey Graham wanted China to assassinate Kim Jong Un.

From Chapter 34:

“Graham made a dramatic proposal to [Chief of Staff John] Kelly and McMaster. ‘China needs to kill him and replace him with a North Korean general they control,’…China had at least enough control so the North would not attack.  ‘I think the Chinese are clearly the key here and they need to take him out.  Not us, them.  And control the nuclear inventory there.  And wind this thing down.  Or control him.”

45. Chief of Staff John Kelly threatened to quit on at least two occasions.

The first involved an argument with ICE union leader Chris Crane.   According to Woodward, they “had an intense dislike for each other” because Kelly “blocked ICE agents from a hard-line crackdown on some immigration violations.”

Trump was livid that Kelly, who developed a controversial internal reputation for keeping certain officials away from the President, would not let Crane visit him in the Oval Office.  Trump watched Crane complain about this on Fox News.

That led to a confrontation after Trump invited Crane over “without informing Kelly.”

“Kelly heard Crane was in the Oval Office and strode in.  Soon Crane and Kelly were cursing each other.

‘I can’t believe you’d let some fucking guy like this into the Oval Office,’ Kelly told Trump.  If this was the way it was going to work, he said, ‘then I quit!’  And he stormed out.

Trump later told others that he thought Kelly and Crane were going to get into a fistfight.”

When Kelly “urged the president to select Kirstjen Nielsen” to be the next Homeland Security Secretary, Trump complained, “She’s a Bushie.  Everybody hates her.”  As Kelly’s defense of her went nowhere, Trump threatened to cancel her nomination.  (She was eventually confirmed.)

“Kelly threw up his hands.  ‘Maybe I’m just going to have to resign.’  And he stormed out.”

The hotheaded Kelly remains Chief of Staff as of this writing.

46. Trump proposed a more honest name for his awful tax bill.

According to Woodward, he wanted to “[c]all it the ‘Cut, Cut, Cut Bill’.”  Congressional Republicans went with “The Tax Cut And Jobs Act”.  But curiously, in the end, “it was finalized as ‘An Act to Provide for Reconciliation Pursuant to Titles II and V of the Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2018.'”

Yeah, that’s much better.

47. Bannon understood Trump’s enormous vulnerability as a philandering, rapey misogynist.

From Chapter 36:

“The #TimesUp And #MeToo movements of women and feminists would create an alternative to end the male-dominated patriarchy, Bannon believed.

‘Trump is the perfect foil…He’s the bad father, the terrible first husband, the boyfriend that fucked you over and wasted all those years, and [you] gave up your youth for, and then dumped you.  And the terrible boss that grabbed you by the pussy all the time and demeaned you.”

48. Afghanistan may reach the point of no return sometime early next year.

From Chapter 38:

“The DNI intelligence expert briefed Trump on Afghanistan in early 2018:  No gains by the U.S. in territory.  Nothing clawed back.  No improvement from last year; actually, some areas were getting worse.”

[snip]

“The coalition probably only had until the spring of 2019 to keep the status quo [a stalemate with The Taliban].  The political fabric seemed to be coming apart.  A perfect storm was coming, and a practical problem like weather might be the tipping point…A drought was coming, and with it a crisis of food insecurity…Some two million [Afghani refugees] had lived in Pakistan in decades [after their families fled during the 1979 Soviet invasion], never in their native Afghanistan, but they would be coming.”

49. Despite his constant, incessant ass-kissing, Trump’s new golf buddy Lindsey Graham wasn’t loyal enough in the eyes of the President.

At the end of 2017, the shameless South Carolina Senator played a round of golf with Trump at his International Golf Club in Florida.

After calling Trump’s course “spectacular” and telling Trump, “You’re a very good commander in chief,” Graham continued to brown nose:

“You’re cleaning up the mess that Obama left you.  You’re doing a damn good job of cleaning it up.  You’re rebuilding the military.  You’re taking a wet blanket off the economy.  You’re really unshackling the military and the economy.  God bless you for undoing the damage done in the last eight years.”

But Trump wanted more loyalty:

“You’re a middle-of-the-road guy.  I want you to be 100 percent for Trump.”

“‘Okay, what’s the issue?’ Graham asked, ‘and I’ll tell you whether I’m 100 percent for you or not.'”

“You’re like 82 percent…”

“Well, some days I’m 100 percent.  Some days I may be zero.”

That wasn’t good enough:

“I want you to be a 100 percent guy.”

50. John Dowd quit representing Trump because he knows he’ll be a terrible witness for Mueller.  Once he resigned, Trump informed the press.

After realizing during a test run, a preview of a potential Q&A with Robert Mueller, that Trump would be an awful advocate for himself in the Russia investigation (he blew up, continually insisting he was innocent and the victim of a “hoax”), attorney John Dowd pleaded with his client to remain silent:

“Mr. President, that’s why you can’t testify…When you’re a fact witness, you try to provide facts.  If you don’t know the facts, I’d just prefer you to say, Bob [Mueller], I just don’t remember.  I got too much going on here.  Instead of sort of guessing and making all kinds of wild conclusions.”

In the final chapter of Fear: Trump In The White House, Dowd reached his breaking point:

“I’m not happy, Mr. President.  This is a goddamn heartbreak…I’ve failed as your lawyer.  I’ve been unable to persuade you to take my advice…I wish I could persuade you…Don’t testify.  It’s either that or an orange jump suit.  If it’s decision time, you’re going to go forward, I can’t be with you.”

As soon as Dowd resigned in a morning phone call, the attorney presumed Trump immediately called the press.  Because “[t]wo minutes later”, he got calls from the Washington Post and The New York Times asking for comment.

As Woodward notes, “Trump always liked to be the first to deliver the news.”

51. Another Trump attorney Ty Cobb could be called as a witness, if he hasn’t already.

Dowd deeply regretted pushing Trump to hire the mustachioed attorney who went out on TV insisting that the President “was not afraid to testify.”

“‘He should have declined.  He’s a government employee.  And by the way, they can call him as a witness.  He has no [attorney/client] privilege with you.’

‘Jesus,’ Trump said, sounding worried.  ‘I’ve talked a lot with him.”

52. Dowd doesn’t think Trump will be impeached.

From Chapter 42:

“They’re not going to impeach you.  Are you shitting me?  They’re a bunch of cowards, the whole town. The media, the Congress.  They’re gutless.  What’s the impeachment going to be, for exercising Article II [of the US Constitution]?  Huh?  Hello?  Hello, I want to hear Speaker Ryan take that one up before the Rules Committee and the Judiciary Committee…We ought to tell them to go fuck themselves.

According to Woodward, “Dowd remained convinced that Mueller never had a Russian case or an obstruction case.  He was looking for the perjury trap.”  Which is why Dowd was insistent that Trump not submit to questioning.

53. The newest member of the Supreme Court recommended another abusive misogynist to work in the White House.

In the footnotes for Chapter 17, Woodward reveals that one of the many people who recommended Staff Secretary Rob Porter, who eventually resigned after revelations that he abused women he was romantically involved with, was none other than Brett Kavanaugh, who has faced his own accusations of harassment and assault.

54. A letter sent to Robert Mueller claimed Trump could fire him.  It also claimed he could free his criminalized staffers nabbed by the investigation.

Shortly before he quit, Trump attorney John Dowd convinced Special Counsel Robert Mueller to send him a list of topics he was pursuing to give The President’s legal team a head’s up.  If Trump had to answer any questions at all, Dowd preferred it be done on paper, not in person.

“The subject read ‘Request for Testimony on Alleged Obstruction of Justice.’

A raw assertion of presidential power was printed in boldface:  ‘He could, if he wished, terminate the inquiry, or even exercise his power to pardon if he so desired.'”

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Sunday, October 7, 2018
8:37 p.m.