Trump image by Gage Skidmore.
“North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States. They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.” That’s what Donald Trump said on August 8—twenty days before North Korea lobbed a missile over Japan and into the sea.
It’s also the inspiration for the title of Fire and Fury, the book everyone’s talking about and the latest tidal wave to crash into the Trump presidency.
Trump tweeted that, like the “Fake News from the first day I announced,” this was a “Fake Book,” and that author Michael Wolff “made up stories” and was “untruthful” in writing his “work of fiction.”
But, despite claims by Steve Bannon and others that they were misquoted, Wolff says he has “dozens” of hours of tapes to back his reporting up. Moreover, much of the book’s key allegations, or at least the spirit of them, have been corroborated by none other Donald Trump himself.
Consider this: Donald Trump once snuck-up behind a reporter at a formal dinner and poured an entire bottle of red wine down the back of her gown as an act of vengeance for an unflattering story she wrote about him in Vanity Fair. This happened back in the 1990s and Donald Trump bragged about it several times, including in one of his books. He also bragged about doing it to at least one other woman.
Most would describe such behavior as, among other things, “like a child,” which is exactly how Wolff says most of Trump’s senior staffers characterized their boss.
Or what about the behind-the-scenes claims that Trump is an “idiot/”moron”/“f***ing fool”? He’s like that in front of the scenes! Politifact has rated a whopping 75 percent of Trump's statements as “mostly false,” “false,” or “Pants on Fire.” By comparison, only 26 percent of Obama’s statements received these embarrassing marks.
Doesn’t read anything, even one page memos? Trump told The Washington Post during the 2016 campaign that he doesn’t read because he doesn’t have the time, “I never have.” He also said he does not need to read extensively because he arrives at the right decisions “with very little knowledge other than the knowledge I [already] had, plus the words ‘common sense,’ because I have a lot of common sense and I have a lot of business ability.”
A few days ago, former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough wrote a column recalling a time when he became frustrated with Trump and asked, “Can you read? I’m serious, Donald. Do you read? If someone wrote you a one-page paper on a policy, could you read it?” Scarborough said Trump demurred and held up his mother’s Bible and joked that he read that all the time.
Humorously, Trump’s infamous Vanity Fair wine pouring incident was over revelations that he kept a book of Hitler speeches on his bedside table. Trump said, “If I had these speeches, and I am not saying that I do, I would never read them.” Who would have thought that all these years later Trump be would be kinda vindicated—we know now he doesn't read anything!
“Can you read? I’m serious, Donald. Do you read? If someone wrote you a one-page paper on a policy, could you read it?”
The claim that Trump spends hours every day watching TV? As Philip Bump pointed out, “Trump’s tweets give the game away.” Almost daily, Trump tweets about something that he clearly just saw on television. And Axios has reported that Trump has moved the start of his official day to 11 a.m. for more “Executive Time,” widely known in the White House as when Trump tweets and watches TV.
The salacious claim that Trump plays a creepy misogynist game where he tries to bed the wives of his “friends”? Trump admitted to as much in the infamous Access Hollywood tape, as well as a 1998 interview with the British program, Hardtalk.
Or that he eats at McDonald’s out of a fear of being poisoned? Trump has said in the past that he only eats at chains because of their quality control: “One bad hamburger, you can destroy McDonald’s. One bad hamburger and you take Wendy’s and all these other places and they’re out of business. I like cleanliness, and I think you’re better off going there than maybe some place that you have no idea where the food is coming from.”
Similarly, Trump once said he almost always drinks from a straw due to fear of his drink somehow getting contaminated. He said in a press conference in early 2017 that “I'm also very much of a germaphobe, by the way. Believe me.”
Oh, we believe you, Donald. We do.