Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury chronicled the first chaotic year of the Trump Administration (you can read my review here). SIEGE:TRUMP UNDER FIRE shows how the second year of the Trump Administration was even more whacked-out than the first year. Wolff interviews dozens of former Trump Administration officials who were either fired or left their White House jobs because of Trump’s volcanic rages. The staff around Trump withhold information that they know will set off a Trump tirade. Trump is only given limited options because he hates anything that he has to read or anything too complicated.
Wolff explores the specter of the Mueller Report on Trump and his actions in Year Two. One by one, many of Trump’s confidants–Michael Cohen, Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort–face prison time. Trump was convinced the Republicans would hold the House in the 2018 elections and mocked any reports to the contrary. One of my favorite chapters concerned the hearings on Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court. Trump vacillated in support of Kavanaugh. That episode emboldened Trump to shut down the Government over The Wall funding.
Your head will literally be spinning by the end of SIEGE: TRUMP UNDER FIRE. What a tragic mess for our country! GRADE: B+
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Author’s Note xi
1 Bullseye 1
2 The Do-Over 21
3 Lawyers 38
4 Home Alone 50
5 Robert Mueller 60
6 Michael Cohen 75
7 The Women 88
8 Michael Flynn 99
9 Midterms 113
10 Kushner 125
11 Hannity 143
12 Trump Abroad 156
13 Trump and Putin 169
14 100 Days 185
15 Manafort 196
16 Pecker, Cohen, Weisselberg 209
17 McCain, Woodward, Anonymous 223
18 Kavanaugh 234
19 Khashoggi 246
20 October Surprises 257
21 November 6 268
22 Shutdown 282
23 The Wall 295
Epilogue: The Report 309
Acknowledgments 317
Index 319
george, you had me there for a moment!
Shouldn’t it be “SIEGE”? 🙂
You can delete this comment if you prefer …
Wolf, you’re right. But, once again, WORDPRESS’s quirky spellchecker didn’t catch it!
Most people here in Europe are looking at this with disbelief!
Just Donald’s tweets are an abomination – how can his advisors let him go there, ranting and making a fool of himself – and the whole USA?
I just commented somewhere else on the relationship between the USA and Great Britain:
It’s ok, Trump invited the Prince of Whales to a nice dinner of hamberders with a cowfefe dressing … 🙂
Wolf, as erratic as Trump and his Administration is, 44% of voters support Trump–no matter what he says or does!
His advisors are hand-picked to be yes men. He is the worst thing to happen in the 21st century. I can’t even listen to the news anymore.
We have a saying in Europe:
It has to get worse before it can get better.
We’ve also seen a lot of dictators but they usually tried to appear not too stupid while Trump doesn’t care?
A sane person would have realized that he’s wont to make stupid errors (like the latest about airports 200 years ago) so he’d rely more on hiss advisors – and try to also choose them wisely.
Wolf, Trump’s Administration has set records on the turnover of staff. No one stays for long. And, the best people don’t want to work for Trump. Our Government gets weaker and more dysfunctional every day!
Patti, Diane feels the same way. She used to watch MSNBC constantly, but now she’s switched to the HALLMARK CHANNEL. “I can’t take it anymore,” Diane says.
The 21st century is less than two decades old, Patti. I shudder to think what the future will hold when other authoritarian politicians taking a page out of Trump’s playbook.
Deb, you’re right. Trump is setting a lot of precedents (and the Supreme Court is supporting them) that will damage our system of Government for decades.
Still find President for All Intents and Purposes Cheney worse, but Trump has a more inept sort of similar criminal around him, and has time yet to do more to enrich himself further at the expense of children and others and start a fresh war while continuing the ongoing.
The Patriot Act and the “Nuclear Option” were already in place, and part of the reason, we ended up with Trump, after all…
Todd, I’m with you on Cheney. I’m watching THE LOUDEST VOICE on SHOWTIME about Fox News and Roger Ailes. Dick Cheney shows up from time to time to stir things up politically.
No, Wolf, he just doesn’t care. First, he doesn’t believe it. He thinks he is smart – brilliant, in fact – and anyone who says the contrary is “Fake News!” The worst isn’t Trump, to me. It’s the enablers who help him and “yes” his every command, and especially Mitch McConnell and the Senate Republicans who have sold – no, given away – their souls to the Devil, and for what? And the Evangelicals who support him (Franklin Graham, Jerry Falwell Jr.) are beneath contempt. Never again will their pronouncements ring of anything but hypocrisy.
No, I will NOT be reading this, any more than I read the first one.
Jeff, reading Michael Wolff’s books on Trump is a dispiriting experience. So much chaos, so much confusion, so much treachery! But, Trump supporters don’t care!
When did the likes of Graham and Falwell and their fathers not simply stand for hypocrisy?
I am a big fan of horror novels, George, but this reality horror is just TOO DAMNED MUCH!
Jerry, you’re right. This is a horror show! But…when will it end???
The tragic mess is that so many voted for him. Like Jeff I won’t be reading this, I’m bummed out enough as is.
Rick, most of us are bummed out. But the Democrats don’t seem to have an answer for Trump. Some shot themselves in the foot during the DEBATES by advocating “open borders” and elimination of private health insurance. Those positions will drive a lot of Independent voter right back to Trump and the Republicans in 2020.
They’ll be plenty more debates to firm up all those stances and weed out most of the contenders. It’s just the blind, unreasoning followers of the current person, despite all of the lies, mistakes and bad (for the general populace) decisions. I guess all those red state people love a bullshitter.
Rick, I’ve visited Red States and they dislike socialists and liberals. Trump claims he’s their champion when he’s really just helping the Rich.
Somehow it’s unbelievable, you probably need antidepressives after reading this book.
What I still don’t get:
All those willing supporters and helpers ( “Helfershelfer” as we say in German) – don’t they have difficulties with believing into Donald?
Are they doing it just for the money? Or what else is in it for them?
I’m sure that after Trump (luckily this can’t continue after 8 years) what will they do, how can they explain their activities?
Already several high ranking people have left or were thrown out of the Trump circle – how do they feel?
PS:
Of course I know that there are people even worse than Trump – Steve Bannon eg or Alex Jones and the breitfart people.
Bannon was active in Europe and had high hopes to unify the extreme alt right in athe EU countries – but at the EU parliamentary elections he must have been very disappointed, the right wing is irrelevant, even if they got almost 20% of the votes and the seats.
Those supporters of Trump are mostly people who want to believe their hatred of people less well-off than even they is justified, which Trump reassures them it is, and that the respect they’ve been taught all their lives for the wealthy and “successful” is justified, and if they weren’t being held back by corrupt bureaucrats taxing and giving away all their money to undeserving people, they, too would come closer to being wealthy, or at least less afraid of losing everything. He’s a fascist fan-boy, and they are all too willing to go along with that nonsense. Happily, they are a minority. I suspect that any decent Democrat (which leaves out Biden) will be able to beat him, if the Democratic Party hierarchy doesn’t undermine her or possibly him too much.
And taking an idiot like Chuck Todd to task for the poor quality of every aspect of the “debates” should be job one at those debates. Most of Europe and Canada have nationalized healthcare and private insurance available. Seems unlikely we can’t do the same here.
Clinton won. She campaigned incredibly poorly in nearly every way, and so managed to lose states in the Electoral College she shouldn’t’ve lost. I don’t think Trump is remotely invincible nor likely to win re-election, barring the flood. And floods do seem to keep coming. Which can also be used against him.
You’ll note that the second time Trump tried to throw a shutdown tantrum, the GOP Senate as well as the House shut his ass down and quickly. Trump has always been their tool, and for a minute they were afraid of him, but less so now. Certainly less so than they are afraid of getting in the way of their patrons’ business, as the shutdown did and the prospect of another would more so.
There’s been nothing too cheering about the almost unmitigated success of fascists and reactionaries coming to power and doing the kinds of stupid and evil things fasciest and reactionaries do around much of the world in the last decade, but at least I have a sense that more non-fankids of fascism are aware of how they need to be routed. Perhaps the European Unions elections are a hopeful sign thus, and the Democratic win in the House. I suspect as much. We will see.
Todd, the ELECTORAL COLLEGE was installed to defeat candidates like Hillary Clinton and Al Gore. Some of the Founding Fathers didn’t trust pure democracy.
No, it was installed so that pure democracy wouldn’t happen, even when only men with land could vote (those rabble!). It was more than ready to elect the Gores and Clintons (Sandra Day O’Connor cast the only vote that mattered in Gore’s case)…but didn’t because it’s remarkably stupid system that never has had a good reason to exist, and Democrats have Always been the ones who should’ve learned that less first, from Andrew Jackson (who got to be president anyway, even though he was a lunatic) through today. But they still, like the GOP, want to pretend there’s some reliable value in having “safe states”….
Todd, politics is always about power. The Founding Fathers set up a system to protect their class against “those rabble,” as you point out.
And, of course, he slave states wanted a system that would credit the slave population without actually treating them as even as human as poor people. Also more surviving native nations people, similarly more than disenfranchised, in the south…
Todd, you’re right again.