On “The Late Show” Wednesday night Stephen Colbert quipped that he finally had something in common with Melania Trump — the fact that they both broke down and wept on election night, 2016. The explosive new book by Michael Wolff “Fire And Fury” reveals the reason Trump ran for president and how everyone reacted that night and it is the stuff of soap opera. New York Magazine:
Once he lost, Trump would be both insanely famous and a martyr to Crooked Hillary. His daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared would be international celebrities. Steve Bannon would become the de facto head of the tea-party movement. Kellyanne Conway would be a cable-news star. Melania Trump, who had been assured by her husband that he wouldn’t become president, could return to inconspicuously lunching. Losing would work out for everybody. Losing was winning.
Shortly after 8 p.m. on Election Night, when the unexpected trend — Trump might actually win — seemed confirmed, Don Jr. told a friend that his father, or DJT, as he calls him, looked as if he had seen a ghost. Melania was in tears — and not of joy.
There was, in the space of little more than an hour, in Steve Bannon’s not unamused observation, a befuddled Trump morphing into a disbelieving Trump and then into a horrified Trump. But still to come was the final transformation: Suddenly, Donald Trump became a man who believed that he deserved to be, and was wholly capable of being, the president of the United States.
The chaos of the transition team was reminiscent of nothing so much as the Keystone Kops as surrogates ran afoul of strategists, who tripped over staffers and boxes as they fumbled through key concepts such as the fact that all of Obama’s people would be leaving January 21 and had to be replaced. For a time Trump seriously considered hiring son-in-law Jared Kushner to be his Chief of Staff, a position which many have likened to that of Prime Minister. Alt right author Ann Coulter finally took Trump aside and said, “Nobody is apparently telling you this. But you can’t. You just can’t hire your children.”
Bannon was curiously able to embrace Trump while at the same time suggesting he did not take him entirely seriously. Great numbers of people, he believed, were suddenly receptive to a new message — the world needs borders — and Trump had become the platform for that message.
“Does he get it?” asked Ailes suddenly, looking intently at Bannon. Did Trump get where history had put him?
Bannon took a sip of water. “He gets it,” he said, after hesitating for perhaps a beat too long. “Or he gets what he gets.”
Meanwhile, in Trump’s personal quarters at the White House, Trump quibbled with his own Secret Service, which, mesmerizingly, he wanted to lock out with the rest of the world. They said no.
Insinuating a bizarre night time ritual, Wolff said Trump demanded a key to his bedroom, locking his wife and the secret service out so he could binge on cheeseburgers while watching not one but THREE televisions.
Wolff also alleges Trump likes to head beneath the duvet at 6.30pm.
It is believed the President prefers McDonalds and other fast food joints because he lives in fear of being poisoned. Because fast food is already prepared he suspects it is a safer food source than other choices.
With a domestic situation like that, small wonder that Melania decided to remain in New York City until the summer, costing taxpayers an extra $1Million a day in security charges.
The Wolff book is the match on the pool of gasoline that is the Trump administration. It won’t be in release until January 9 and already Trump’s lawyers are talking about suing both Wolff and Steve Bannon, for libel and for breach of non disclosure agreement, respectively.
If Trump Russia is a shot of whiskey, “Fire And Fury” is the chaser. Cheers.