On The Inevitability Of A Trump Presidency (Fire & Fury Excerpts #1)

Everyone it seems is talking about the new Trump book by Michael Wolff: Fire and Fury. On the blogs and on MSNBC. It's entirely a work of fiction according to the subject of the book. Although they (the Trump administration) did give Mr. Wolff unfettered access to the White House. Thinking he'd write something flattering, apparently. Even though a previous tome on Rupert Murdoch was not.

Anyway, I recently acquired a digital copy and started reading yesterday (1/7/2017). What follows are some excerpts in which Wolff confirms that Trump never actually wanted to be elected president. I've heard a number of people suggest this previously. Notably Liberal Talk Radio show personality Thom Hartmann. Trump (as well as a number of the other Republican candidates for president) didn't want to be (or think they had a chance of being elected) president. They did it to raise the value of their brand.

Now, as opposed to being speculation, Wolff has confirmed that, yes, Trump's campaign was phony. In that he never wanted or expected to win the election.

Trump's longtime friend Roger Ailes like to say that if you wanted a career in television, first run for president. Now Trump, encouraged by Ailes, was floating rumors about a Trump network. It was a great future. He would come out of the campaign, Trump assured Ailes, with a far more powerful brand and untold opportunities. "This is bigger than I ever dreamed of", he told Ailes in a conversation a week before the election. "I don't think about losing because it isn't losing. We've totally won". What's more, he was already laying down his public response to losing the election: it was stolen! Donald Trump and his tiny band of campaign warriors were ready to lose with fire and fury. They were not ready to win. In politics somebody has to lose, but invariably everybody thinks they can win. And you probably can't win unless you believe that you will win - except in the Trump campaign. The leitmotif for Trump about his own campaign was how crappy it was and how everybody involved in it was a loser. He was equally convinced that the Clinton people were brilliant winners - "They've got the best and we've got the worst", he frequently said. ... "This thing", he told the Mercers, "is so fucked up". ... by every meaningful indicator, something greater than a sense of doom shadowed what Steve Bannon called "the broke-dick campaign". ...the prospect of her husband's actually becoming president was, for Melania, a horrifying one. He offered his wife a solenm guarantee: there was simply no way he would win. The Trump campaign had, perhaps less than inadvertently, replicated the scheme from Mel Brook's The Producers. (Source: Chapter 2, Trump Tower).

The chapter goes on with more about how Trump didn't want to be president and that it was all a scam. He wanted to start a TV network. Roger Ailes, interested in a comeback, had decided that he needed a Billion dollars. After the election, however, the narrative in the delusional Trump's addled brain changed. Instead of his election being something that had no chance at all of happening, now it was inevitable. A view his cult members have adopted. The people rejected "crooked Hillary".

This they believe even though, out of all the eligible voters, only around 58% bothered to vote (around half usually being the percentage). And I don't think you can say that, by not voting, these people were actually voicing their support for Trump (an argument I've heard). Given the fact that Hillary Clinton was expected to win, I'd say that of the non voters, many of them thought Hillary would be the winner (and might have voted for her if they had bothered to cast a ballot).

Trump, on the other hand, was expected to lose. People wanting Trump as president Trump had to get out and vote. Or accept the inevitability of a Hillary Clinton presidency. Indeed, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by 2.8 million votes.

However, as far as vote totals go, I don't put much stock in them as all. How many votes were thrown out by Trump ally Kris Kobach via his Interstate Crosscheck election fraud scheme? Enough to throw the electoral college "win" to Trump according to investigative journalist Greg Palast (AZ, MI and NC electoral votes would have gone to HRC if not for the huge number of voters purged from the rolls in those states due to Interstate Crosscheck/Republican voter disenfranchisement).

My point is that, while Trump may have intended to lose, he had people working on his behalf to steal the election from the rightful victor, Hillary Clinton (Vladimir Putin, James Comey and the aforementioned Kris Kobach).

Images: (L) Virtual placard found at the top of the Right-wing blog Who's Your Daddy declaring the trumper delusion of the liar-in-chief's inevitability/destiny to be potus. (R) Pushback in line with blotus lie that Wolff's book is a "work of fiction".

Note: Link to HuffPo article about the Mercers (Father Robert and Daughter Rebecka) in Fire and Fury excerpt inserted by me.

Update 1/14/2018: On the other hand, Bill Clinton did predict the presidency of a DJT-type candidate back in 1991. A candidate that presented himself as a champion of the working man via an opposition to job killing free trade deals. Deals like NAFTA (signed by Clinton) and the TPP (championed by Obama).

In that respect, Trump did "win" because the time and place was right. The "time" being after the endorsement of job killing free trade deals by two successive Democratic presidents. The place being the Rust Belt of the United States (where former Democratic voters went for Trump).

Steve Bannon, btw, was convinced that Trump would win (even if Trump was not). Because Trump had the support of the racist Whites (the base of the Republican Party) PLUS the White working class negatively affected by bad trade deals signed or championed by Democratic presidents (people who traditionally voted Democratic). See: SWTD #390.

SWTD #400