The secret of being a bitch is telling the truth in the nastiest possible way

“The Democrats, the longer they talk about identity politics, I got ’em. I want them to talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats.” Steve Bannon 

President Trump, in a private conversation with congressmen, is said to have used an ugly word, 's-hole', to describe Haiti and African countries. 

A British diplomat seconded to the UN called Rupert Colville has denounced this as racist, which is piffle. 

The word the President should have used is hell-hole. No-one can doubt that Haiti and some countries in Africa are in a hellish state.  This is why their inhabitants want to leave. 

Donald Trump sees himself as a dealmaker in the mould of L.B.J. but politics, as Michael Wolff points out in his book, is now a zero sum game. The Democrats didn't want a deal, but to make political capital.

The best comment I have seen on the brouhaha is this:

Retweeted Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter):
Well, @realDonaldTrump, you offered to work with Dick Durbin and the Dems and they screwed you. No shock there.

I am sure it will win rather than lose the President support at home.


                                                           
One Sawsan Chebli, an Arab-German Berlin state legislator, is alarmed by anti-Semitism among new immigrants and has suggested that they be required to visit Nazi concentration camps. The World Jewish Congress agrees. But wouldn't it also be a good idea for Europe to stop taking in migrants from what Mr. Trump says are hell-hole countries, or words to that effect?

                             

Younger readers think, for reasons that I very easily understand, that Donald Trump is cartoonishly evil. I didn't think Margaret Thatcher was a bad person and I was always a Tory in a philosophical sense, but in my twenties I swallowed the line from the BBC that she did not care about the poor.


This is the left's spiel. Please don't take it seriously. They used always to say that the right was class prejudiced, uncaring and oppressing the working class. Now they are rather less concerned about the working class (whom they have done for) and more concerned about racism, homophobia and the rest. But they always say that the right is uncaring and cruel, whatever the facts.

Look at things objectively and remember that received opinion is almost always wrong. Never more so than with that very odd and in many ways repellent figure, Donald Trump.


I have just read Michael Wolff's astonishingly effective character assassination of President Trump. There were some things that he stretched but did he, like Huck Finn, mostly tell the truth?


It is a bundle of unsourced assertions based largely on the testimony of the late Roger Ailes, who somewhat conveniently is not here to comment, and the unwisely outspoken Steve Bannon who only denied that he said Donald Trump Junior's speaking to a Russian lawyer about Hillary Clinton, without informing the American authorities, was 'treasonable'. Which of course it wasn't.

Mr Bannon, in many ways, is the hero of the book and he was cast into outer darkness by President Trump because of it.


Is it true that neither Donald Trump nor his entourage expected or wanted to win? This is the damning allegation, that makes the American electorate look like fools.

No evidence is adduced. No-one is quoted as saying so. Michael Wolff himself says that Steve Bannon was always certain that Trump would win. 

Be sure that Kellyanne Conway and Ivanka Trump didn't share this with the author.

The man from Cambridge Analytica told Megyn Kelly shortly after the election that by the Saturday before the election he was certain Trump would win because of his campaign's use of data analytics. The Trump team knew this and came in to his office for reassurance.

Outrageously, Michael Wolff doesn't refer to this.


So, this is clever polemic and courtiers' gossip, with at least rather a large number of mistakes and ommissions. 

The author has a long history of being economical with the actualité. Michelle Cottle noted in a 2004 article in The New Republic,

Much to the annoyance of Wolff’s critics, the scenes in his columns aren’t recreated so much as created—springing from Wolff’s imagination rather than from actual knowledge of events. Even Wolff acknowledges that conventional reporting isn’t his bag. Rather, he absorbs the atmosphere and gossip swirling around him at cocktail parties, on the street, and especially during those long lunches at Michael’s.

On the other hand, there is clearly a fair amount of truth in the book. As a beautiful woman once told me, the secret of being a bitch is telling the truth in the nastiest possible way. Michael Wolffe is nothing if not a complete bitch.

I am sure the White House was utterly disorganised until General Kelly became Chief of Staff. It can only be much better now, I hope. 

I am sure that Steve Bannon is a hustler. It seems he hasn't made a fortune, despite the press stories he presumably inspired. He is nevertheless a force of nature who perhaps, as he maintains, won the election for Donald Trump.

Obviously, 'Jarvanka', Ivanka Trump and her smooth husband, are lightweights and Democrat lightweights at that - not Republicans and still less American nationalists. They should not have political jobs or influence.

I think that Donald Trump is a monstrous and absurd person, quite unprepared for the presidency, not very truthful or very moral, but then we all knew that all along, including the people who voted for him and still support him. 

Let's see if he has any substance and can make something of his presidency or if by failing he strengthens the forces of liberalism. 


The always cogent David Goldman (Spengler in Asia Times) has written an interesting riposte to Michael Wolff.