Photo by Financial Times | CC BY 2.0
The real revelation in Michael Wolff’s new and successful book, Fire and Fury, is not that President Donald Trump acts like a child, suffers from psychopathologies like delusions of grandeur and paranoia, is an ignoramus who neither reads nor listens and, in short, is totally incapable of fulfilling the duties of his office.
It is not necessary to be a mental health professional to realize that Trump is an extremely dangerous character, a psychologically-distorted personality, a man with cognitive impairment, in complete denial, and with the unilateral power to initiate a nuclear holocaust that could destroy civilization. The Republican, right-wing and conservative project tries to erase the traces of the mid-20th century American Enlightenment and aims to make the United States once again great for religious fanatics, racists, xenophobes, misogynists, homophobes, plutocrats and the wildest capitalists.
To complete this project, the Republicans, despite their hypocrisy, have shown themselves ready and eager to sign a pact with the devil. They have done so with a political leader who is not satanic, but only a demagogue, serial liar, swindler and manipulator of the ethnic and economic fear of Americans. His goal is to fuel anger and hatred. He is a man lacking empathy, a sense of impartiality, history, appreciation and understanding for science and knowledge, and a man lacking in temperament and judgment to rule the world’s most powerful country.
The preceding paragraphs are the first of a very popular article published by the Progreso Semanal website, published in Florida, USA, about Wolf’s well-documented book that has been, as expected, a great publishing success in that country.
Anthony Zurcher, Washington correspondent for the British Crown Media Complex, the BBC, sums up in ten points what the media has been doing for the past ten years.
(1). Steven Bannon, the former chief strategist of Trump and his former trusted man, describes the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr. as “traitor” and “unpatriotic.
(2). Trump expressed astonishment and consternation after his victory in the November 2016 presidential elections. Donald Trump, Jr. revealed to a friend that his father was perplexed, transformed himself into an incredulous Trump and then into a horrified Trump. Then came his final transformation into a man who believed he deserved everything, capable of being the president of the United States.
(3). Trump did not enjoy his inauguration because of the event’s non-attendance by top-level personalities. He was dissatisfied with the White House lodging, and was seen fighting with his wife -who seemed to be on the verge of tears- in anger, with bent shoulders, swinging arms, eyebrows and wrinkled lips.
(4). Trump found the White House to be creepy. He asked for a lock on the door, which led to a confrontation with the Secret Service, which insisted on having access to the room.
(5). Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter, and her husband, Jared Kushner, allegedly reached an agreement for her to become the first woman president, Wolff said:
(6). Ivanka herself mocked her father’s so-called “scalp reduction surgery”, ironically, going as far as to mock her hair in front of others. She often described to her friends the mechanics of his hairstyle.
(7). Not even the most trusted White House staff are aware of management priorities.
(8). Trump’s admiration for media mogul Rupert Murdoch is evident in the book even though he had repeatedly spurned Murdoch as a charlatan and a fool.
(9). Murdoch thought that a liberal approach to granting H-1B visas to specialized foreign workers in desperate need would open the door to immigrants. And that it could be difficult to set up with the promise of building a wall with Mexico and closing the borders. Trump seemed indifferent, but immediately he said to Murdoch,”Let’s solve it! And soon after, Murdoch muttered: What a fucking idiot! and shrugging his shoulders, he hung up the phone.”
(10). Michael Flynn, the former National Security advisor had been warned by friends that it was not a good idea to accept $45,000 from the Russians for giving a speech. He later admitted that he had lied during the Justice Department’s investigation into alleged Russian interference in the presidential elections. According to the author of this selection of outstanding notes in the book, Anthony Zurcher: “Sometimes there has been a disconnect between Trump’s rhetoric and his actions. Maybe because the President reflects his sensitivity in business. Or simply because he was echoing the opinion of the last group of people he had met.
A CubaNews translation by Walter Lippmann.
