The speeded-up debut of "Fire and Fury," Michael Wolff's book about the first year of the Donald Trump presidency – and the doubts about his ability to handle the job among members of his staff – prompted overnight lines in D.C. bookstores.
Many of those readers will peruse the tell-all, which includes the indiscrete comments of former White House staffer Steve Bannon, in the standard fashion. Chapter One followed by Chapter Two and so on.
The Washington way to read a book is to flip to the index in the back, and quickly check the citations. This we have done for you. In summary:
-- Sally Yates really got under President Trump’s skin. She’s the most prevalent Georgia political figure in the tome.
-- Tom Price gets a single mere mention, a measure of the lack of personal connection between Price, who would become Trump’s secretary of health and human services, and the president himself.
-- And former House speaker Newt Gingrich is one of the many, many Washington insiders skewered by Bannon, whose divorce from President Trump looks like it has become official today.
We’ll begin by turning to Page 199 and the opening lines of Chapter 7, entitled “Russia.”
Writes Wolff: “Even before there was reason to suspect Sally Yates, they suspected her.”
The former federal prosecutor from Atlanta, who served as acting U.S. Attorney General in the first days of the Trump administration, was fired after delivering the news that national security advisor Michael Flynn, who has since been indicted for lying to the FBI, had lied to the FBI.
Yes, Trump allegedly used the c-word when fuming about her. More importantly, according to Wolff, became something of an anti-Trump prototype:
"[T]he certain kind of woman who would immediately rub Trump the wrong way – Obama women being a good tip-off. Hillary women another. Later this would be extended to 'DOJ' women."
After some stellar Yates testimony before a U.S. Senate committee last summer, Trump is alleged to have focused on celebrity rather than constitutionality: “Yates is only famous because of me…Otherwise, who is she? Nobody.”
Then we have Page 360, where Steve Bannon is in the midst of a diatribe on the fickleness of Washington’s elite. Writes Wolff:
"On the campaign trail, [Bannon] recalled, Newt Gingrich 'would come with all these dumb ideas. When we won he was my new best friend. Every day a hundred ideas. When' – by spring in the White House – 'I got cold, when I went through my Valley of Death, I saw him one day in the lobby and he looks down, avoiding my eyes with a kind of mumbled, "Hey, Steve.'""
Finally, we come to Page 336. Tom Price isn’t quoted – and in fact comes off as something of a wall flower. Wolffe describes a trip Price and U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan take to visit the new president at his Bedminster, N.J., estate. They outline their plans for repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act. Writes Wolffe:
"Here was a perfect example of an essential Trump paradigm: He acceded to anyone who seemed to know more about any issue he didn't care about, or simply one whose details he couldn't bring himself to focus on closely."
“On the spot,” reports Wolffe, Trump agreed to place repeal of Obamacare in Ryan’s hand – and give Price a prized spot in his Cabinet, in charge of implementing the repeal.
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