Daily Times

Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury has evoked shock and curiosity.It is quite ironic that a man who is commonly thought to be asinine and idiot has been depicted quite contrarily in the book.

Just a few chapters into it and I can safely say that Trump shares a lot with Bin Laden: the deep desire to be the center of attention, be famous, and at the same time be ridiculous. Wolff in the book reveals how Trump likes to speak of himself in the third person. Taliban’s founder Mullah Omar also used to refer to himself in the third person, as described by Steve Coll in Ghost Wars.

Shockingly and interestingly, Wolff, on the basis of interviews and conversations with many friends and officials from Trump administration, claims that Trump and his campaign team never believed that he would win the election. Wolff even goes further, sounding quite convincing that Trump’s strategy was actually to lose the election. Because he wanted to become the most famous man in the world who lost to the cunning games of the crooked Hillary. He planned to use that fame to start his own TV channel.

When it became clear that Trump would become the President, his son said he looked like he had seen a ghost

Even Michael Flynn, Trump’s future National Security Advisor, didn’t believe that his boss would win the election. When someone suggested to Flynn that it had not been a good idea to take $45,000 from the Russians for a speech, Flynn replied, “Well, it would only be a problem if we won.” Ivanka Trump in an interaction with her friends where she was ridiculing the future First Lady said, “ All you have to know about Melania is that she thinks if he runs he’ll certainly win.” Jared Kushner, Trump’s son in law and the de facto Chief of Staff and Middle Eastern policymaker or rather dealmaker, argued with Steve Bannon about arranging $25 million instead of Bannon’s original request of $50 million, only “if we can say victory is more than likely.” Donald Trump, the billionaire candidate himself loaned just $10 million to the campaign on the condition that he will get it back once enough money was raised.

On election night, when it became clear that Trump would be the president, Don Jr. described that his father looked like he had just seen a ghost. I shared Trump’s feeling that night when the entire American map displayed on TV was more red than blue. More than anyone, it was Trump himself and his campaign team who were flabbergasted at Trump’s victory. The presidency fell in his lap out of nowhere and he had no idea what to do with it.

This is reminiscent of a funny tale I picked up as a young kid. A nation of dumb people were upset with the condition of their roads, sanitation, electricity, water supply, and other basic services. They called for a meeting of their most intelligent dumb people and discussed the problems and brainstormed about their solution. A consensus was reached that since the United States of America was such a great country where roads, electricity, and so forth were almost non issues, we should have America fix our problems. The method chosen was to attack America and since America was such a mighty country, the dumb nation would be defeated, thereby, becoming an American colony. The new American colony would be developed just like any other American state. But before invasion strategies were finalised, an old respected sage who liked to think different, pointed out the possibility of actually defeating America in the battlefield, which would mean that the dumb nation would have to run such a behemoth country postwar. Nobody wanted this huge responsibility to fall in their lap. With this new possibility factored into, all war plans were cancelled.

Humanity was saved because a dumb action wasn’t taken owing to a dumb reason. The sad part in our world is that the outcome that Trump and the majority of the world had not wanted has actually happened. Not just the Americans, the entire world has to deal with this nightmare now. The book mentions Trump in his plane on a trip with his billionaire friend who had brought along a foreign model with him. Trump was trying to move in on his friend’s date. He made a stop in the Atlantic City and gave a tour of his Casino there. His friend told the model that Atlantic City wasn’t a good place and that it was overrun by white trash. The foreign model inquired what white trash meant. “They’re people just like me,” said Trump, “only they’re poor.” For once, I can’t agree more with Trump.

The author can be reached at imran.jan@gmail.com. He tweets at @Imran_Jan

Published in Daily Times, January 31^st 2018.