"You Can't Make This S--- Up": My Year Inside Trump's Insane White House

[demmiblue]

Source: Hollywood Reporter

I interviewed Donald Trump for The Hollywood Reporter in June 2016, and he seemed to have liked — or not disliked — the piece I wrote. "Great cover!" his press assistant, Hope Hicks, emailed me after it came out (it was a picture of a belligerent Trump in mirrored sunglasses). After the election, I proposed to him that I come to the White House and report an inside story for later publication — journalistically, as a fly on the wall — which he seemed to misconstrue as a request for a job. No, I said. I'd like to just watch and write a book. "A book?" he responded, losing interest. "I hear a lot of people want to write books," he added, clearly not understanding why anybody would. "Do you know Ed Klein?"— author of several virulently anti-Hillary books. "Great guy. I think he should write a book about me." But sure, Trump seemed to say, knock yourself out.

Since the new White House was often uncertain about what the president meant or did not mean in any given utterance, his non-disapproval became a kind of passport for me to hang around — checking in each week at the Hay-Adams hotel, making appointments with various senior staffers who put my name in the "system," and then wandering across the street to the White House and plunking myself down, day after day, on a West Wing couch.

The West Wing is configured in such a way that the anteroom is quite a thoroughfare — everybody passes by. Assistants — young women in the Trump uniform of short skirts, high boots, long and loose hair — as well as, in situation-comedy proximity, all the new stars of the show: Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway, Reince Priebus, Sean Spicer, Jared Kushner, Mike Pence, Gary Cohn, Michael Flynn (and after Flynn's abrupt departure less than a month into the job for his involvement in the Russia affair, his replacement, H.R. McMaster), all neatly accessible.

The nature of the comedy, it was soon clear, was that here was a group of ambitious men and women who had reached the pinnacle of power, a high-ranking White House appointment — with the punchline that Donald Trump was president. Their estimable accomplishment of getting to the West Wing risked at any moment becoming farce.

More: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/michael-wolff-my-insane-year-inside-trumps-white-house-1071504

Link to tweet

[demmiblue]

1. If interested, they are talking about these new reveals on CNN. n/t

[TreasonousBastard]

2. After reading that article, one wonders what kept the country from completely falling apart.

[underpants]

4. The Deep State

I'm kidding of course but the administration and apparatus of the Federal Government can function without leadership from the top. People go to work and do their jobs everyday.

That being said, holy smokes what a nuthouse.

[TreasonousBastard]

5. Of course. I work part-time for a federal agency, and there are always issues of funding...

no matter who's in the White house, but most of the time we just roll on. BTW, just about every one of us hates Trump with the fire of a thousand blazing suns, but that's just at parties. The job hadsn't changed. Other agencies may be feeling the hurt, and with the fleeing bureaucrats, err, professionals, from State, EPA, Justice... who knows how they will be damaged for the long term.

We did survive Harding and the horrorshow that happened during the two short years he had.

[NewJeffCT]

11. Yes, people go to work every day

but, if we can avoid a nuclear war, the real long-term damage of the Trump presidency will be all the positions not filled and all the smart, capable people that are resigning their long hold government positions.

[Johonny]

10. Obama

Obama left a well running machine. The more time passes from the Obama administration the more the wheels will come off. 2017 was the best of Trump, it's going to get worse, a lot worse.

[underpants]

3. Indeed, the plan was to have all interviewers going forward provide the questions.

Then the end of the piece



As the first year wound down, Trump finally got a bill to sign. The tax bill, his singular accomplishment, was, arguably, quite a reversal of his populist promises, and confirmation of what Mitch McConnell had seen early on as the silver Trump lining: "He'll sign anything we put in front of him." With new bravado, he was encouraging partisans like Fox News to pursue an anti-Mueller campaign on his behalf. Insiders believed that the only thing saving Mueller from being fired, and the government of the United States from unfathomable implosion, is Trump's inability to grasp how much Mueller had on him and his family.

Steve Bannon was openly handicapping a 33.3 percent chance of impeachment, a 33.3 percent chance of resignation in the shadow of the 25th amendment and a 33.3 percent chance that he might limp to the finish line on the strength of liberal arrogance and weakness.

Donald Trump's small staff of factotums, advisors and family began, on Jan. 20, 2017, an experience that none of them, by any right or logic, thought they would — or, in many cases, should — have, being part of a Trump presidency. Hoping for the best, with their personal futures as well as the country's future depending on it, my indelible impression of talking to them and observing them through much of the first year of his presidency, is that they all — 100 percent — came to believe he was incapable of functioning in his job.

At Mar-a-Lago, just before the new year, a heavily made-up Trump failed to recognize a succession of old friends.

Happy first anniversary of the Trump administration.

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. Repeating the same stories after 30 minutes at first, and then after 10 - this is dementia

I have a relative like this now. But she's over 90.

There was more: Everybody was painfully aware of the increasing pace of his repetitions. It used to be inside of 30 minutes he'd repeat, word-for-word and expression-for-expression, the same three stories — now it was within 10 minutes. Indeed, many of his tweets were the product of his repetitions — he just couldn't stop saying something.

[dalton99a]

7. Worst dementia ever in the White House

[L. Coyote]

8. Every day a bigger reveal, just watch! Meanwhile: #ReleaseTheTranscripts

Link to tweet

[L. Coyote]

9. Insiders: "they all 100 percent came to believe he was incapable of functioning in his job."

And yet, the world keeps spinning, albeit out of control.

Link to tweet

[malthaussen]

12. Definitely tempted to buy the book...

... however much truth is in it, it sounds like it will be pure comedy gold.

-- Mal