The last Nazi standing, Stephen Miller, was on CNN defending… something from The Book. It’s hard to tell from the ranting exactly what. Watch it yourself. But it’s a great interview by Jake Tapper, who might want to consider psychiatry as a second career. Flights of fancy and word salads are hard to follow, and Jake does a good job.
In any case, The Book is consuming D.C. The James Fallows tweet has a link to the entire 12 minute interview, the Yashir tweet to the ending.
Drew Magary/GQ:
Michael Wolff Did What Every Other White House Reporter Is Too Cowardly to Do
I’m gonna begin this post with the same disclaimer that needs to come with every post about Michael Wolff, which is that Wolff is a fart-sniffer whose credibility is often suspect and who represents the absolute worst of New York media-cocktail-circuit inbreeding. But in a way, it’s fitting that our least reliable president could finally find himself undone at the hands of one of our least reliable journalists.
CJR:
‘Every era gets the Boswell it deserves’
MICHAEL WOLFF’S BRAND OF JOURNALISM might be ugly—prioritizing access over accountability—but it’s the perfect match for the Trump era.
Often this year, The New York Times has faced backlash for being too nice. Critics picked apart White House reporter Michael Schmidt over the holidays for soft-balling an interview with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, trading the responsibility of pushing back for the privilege of access. The Washington Post’s MargaretSullivan accused the Times of going too far in making friends with Trump, and being too defensive when called on it. ...
The criticism faced by the Times and the praise and attention for Wolff’s work could be seen as hypocritical, but only if the criteria on which they are judged is the same. The sort of reporting practiced by Schmidt and his colleagues at the Timesand other outlets is, at its root, a slog: incremental beat reporting with little glamor. Access journalism, at its best, does not replace other forms of journalism—it augments it. And one could argue that Wolff never could have written his book without the hard work of journalists over the past year; the fire he catalogs was often fueled by stories from mainstream reporters.
Mark Salter is a former McCain advisor:
Hollywood Reporter on The Book:
But that was something you were criticized for in left-leaning media, and now with the book it seems you whiplashed the other way.
Again, I just wrote what I thought and what I heard. That's one thing about the book: There really aren't any politics in the book. I have no side here. I'm just interested in how people relate to one another, their ability to do their jobs and a much less abstract picture of this world than whatever the political thesis may or may not be.
So there was no long con here. You were just a neutral observer?
Completely. I would have been perfectly happy to have written a contrarian book about how interesting and potentially hopeful and novel Trump-as-president was. I would have written a positive Trump book. And I thought it would be a fun thing to do — an audacious way to look at the world. But then I got in there and I thought, "Oh my God." Day after day it just seemed that this guy was more dysfunctional. It wasn't even me seeing that. It was listening to the people around him.
What to you was the single most surprising thing about the president?
Almost every new thing you heard was astounding, from his John Dean obsession to the way he screamed at people to locking himself in his bedroom. Again and again and again and again it was something you thought, "This is not how it is supposed to be."
Also from Jared, this nice thread:
Two very good pieces on Trump’s mental health follow, one on standards for journalists the other on standards for the country.
David M. Perry/Pacific Standard:
STOP SPECULATING ABOUT TRUMP'S MENTAL HEALTH
Journalists should only consider writing about Trump's cognitive decline if they've experienced it in person
Make no mistake, Trump is certainly the least fit person to be president in the modern era; possibly, he is the least fit person to be president in this country's entire history. Still, that was knowable long before he started running for the presidency. He's been behaving basically the same way throughout the last five decades of his public life. He lies, boasts, exaggerates, grifts, swaggers, spreads hate and division, and does whatever he can to improve his own fortunes while concealing his vast incompetencies and bottomless ignorance. None of these characteristics requires a pathology to explain. Trump's complete lack of fitness as president has nothing to do with whether he has any diagnosable conditions. Suggesting otherwise, in fact, gives him and his enablers medical cover, right when the focus should be on their corruption, bigotry, and incompetence.
I'd like to propose a "Stahl Standard" for talking about Trump's cognitive capacity. I think that [Leslie] Stahl should have reported what she'd seen in her last meeting with Reagan, and then brought the power of her news organization to bear to ask how often such episodes were happening, who was running the country when they did, and what diagnostic steps were being taken. I understand why she chose not to speak then: It was an era when certain respectful norms of propriety still held sway. In the Age of Trump, though, the GOP and its leader have abandoned all oversight and all transparency. By his own admission, Trump's doctor wrote his medical assessment of the candidate in five minutes while a limo waited outside. Trump hasn't released his taxes. Congressional oversight seems non-existent. So if a journalist or a source close to Trump has a direct observation, let's report it. Otherwise, all such speculations should cease.
Is Something Neurologically Wrong With Donald Trump?
It is best not to diagnose the president from afar, which is why the federal government needs a system to evaluate him up close.
Though it is not possible to diagnose a person with dementia based on speech patterns alone, these are the sorts of changes that appear in early stages of Alzheimer’s. Trump has likened himself to Ronald Reagan, and the changes in Trump’s speech evoke those seen in the late president. Reagan announced his Alzheimer’s diagnosis in 1994, but there was evidence of linguistic change over the course of his presidency that experts have argued was indicative of early decline. His grammar worsened, and his sentences were more often incomplete. He came to rely ever more on vague and simple words: indefinite nouns and “low imageability” verbs like have, go, and get.
After Reagan’s diagnosis, former President Jimmy Carter sounded an alarm over the lack of a system to detect this sort of cognitive impairment earlier on. “Many people have called to my attention the continuing danger to our nation from the possibility of a U.S. president becoming disabled, particularly by a neurologic illness,” Carter wrote in 1994 in the Journal of the American Medical Association. “The great weakness of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment is its provision for determining disability in the event that the president is unable or unwilling to certify to impairment or disability.”
You can’t talk about Trump without talking about Reagan. Some of the reaction to Wolff’s book is “you didn’t tell us enough about Reagan, what else is going on that you’re not telling us?”
Paul Kane/WaPo:
President Trump huddled with congressional Republican leaders this weekend at Camp David, hoping to plot out the year ahead to give the GOP momentum as it heads into the winds of midterm elections.
For some, that means swinging for the fences with another attempt to fully replace the Affordable Care Act or a dramatic rewrite of entitlement laws. But any sober analysis will lead the group to conclude that, once Congress cleans up important must-pass items over the next eight weeks, it should be a relatively quiet legislative year.
That’s because the political dynamics on Capitol Hill are set against some overly ambitious House Republicans and more reality-driven Republicans in both chambers. Given how aggressive Republicans were in 2017, failing on health care and narrowly passing a tax overhaul, this is not the time for big initiatives that could blow up in their faces.
Republicans notched one big agenda item, and veteran lawmakers believe now is the time to sell those tax cuts rather than launch another high-risk bid.
AKA a prediction that not much will happen.
Well, that is still happening. Ignore the coffee enemas and get your flu shot.
And this:
Meanwhile, lowkell at Blue Virginia has details of a new PPP poll (done for the Democratic Party of VA):
In Swing Districts, Voters Strongly Support Governor-Elect Ralph Northam and the Democratic Agenda
Even in GOP-Leaning Areas, Voters Overwhelmingly Back Medicaid Expansion, Raising Teacher Pay, and Background Checks on Gun Sales
A strong majority of Virginians in swing districts view Northam favorably
“But what does the party stand for?” “And here’s what Northam is doing wrong, and why Gillespie will win...”
Yeah, yeah, I remember. But guess what? What people want is authentic candidates with fair-minded policies. It’s enough to win. They have to fit their districts and states, and it helps to not be the party of Trump. They don’t have to be anything but that.