Despite Team Trump’s best efforts to blocks its release, Michael Wolff’s salacious tell-all, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, hit stores today — which paints a beautiful (to use the president’s own word) picture of a chaotic White House full of ambitious enablers who actually have little to no confidence in the competency of the commander-in-chief.
A New York Times review of the book mirrors much of what Wolff said himself about it on Today Friday morning — in that those closest to Trump believe that he’s a “child,” an “idiot,” and a “moron” — however one particularly disturbing detail stood out which hasn’t yet been covered in the extensive excerpts and quotes released leading up to the book’s publication. Namely, in Trump’s private response to the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville earlier this year which claimed the life of 32-year-old Heather Heyer.
There are lots of arresting details in the book. We learn that the administration holds special animus for what it calls “D.O.J. women,” or women who work in the Justice Department. Wolff writes that after the white supremacist mayhem in Charlottesville, Va., Trump privately rationalized “why someone would be a member of the K.K.K.” The book recounts that after the political purge in Saudi Arabia, Trump boasted that he and Kushner engineered a coup: “We’ve put our man on top!”
Should Wolff’s reporting be believed, this would hardly come as a shock. Aside from Trump’s lukewarm response to the tragedy faulting “many sides” for the violence, his tenuous relationship with the African American community is hardly a secret. From his various remarks about inner cities to obsession with athletes taking a knee, the very fact remains that Trump’s entire political career — both leading up to and after the presidency — has been fueled by a fervent need to delegitimize our first black president.
So no, it is not at all surprising that Trump would try to rationalize why someone would want to join the KKK. Actions speak the loudest.
(Via New York Times)