Michael Wolff: Fire and Fury Book Summary

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A small circle in his campaign didn’t think Trump would win the presidency, and they also sort of thought he probably shouldn’t
Trump himself wanted to become president to become the most famous man in the world, but was ambiguous whether not he wanted to be president
In their eyes, the publicity and media attention meant they’ve already won
A win or loss would strengthen his brand even more
At that point, they already crafted his losing message of how the campaign was stolen
Near the end of the campaign, Trump said everything was a shit show and everyone on his team was terrible. He thought it was a losing battle
Even after the Billy Bush interview incident, almost everyone believed there was no way he would become president
Trump and his top lieutenants believed they couldget all the benefits of almost become president without having to change their behavior or their fundamental worldview one bit
Usually, outsider candidates like governors may stand on the virtue of being an outsider, but they still relied on those within to counsel them
The Trump campaign and his advisers had zero experience in politics whatsoever

Readers note: This is very interesting. It seems like the principle that they followed was to becompletely authentic because they knew they would lose. But this served as their advantage because they didn’t hold back
Second, they didn’t follow the traditional norms of politics as none of the advisers even had any experience. Naturally, they would take a deviant course rather than the typical or expected. It makes sense that this cocktail with either burst in flamesor be a hit.
It was a well-known fact that Trump knew nothing about politicsor the basic intellectual foundations of the job. It was almost a comic understatement
No presidents before Trump and few politicians ever have come out of the real estate business, a lightly regulatedmarket based on substantial debt with exposure to frequent market fluctuations
It often depends on government favor and is a preferred exchange currency floor problem cash, money laundering
Trump’s psychic makeup made it impossible for him to take such a close look at himself
Nor could he tolerate knowing somebody else would know a lot about himand therefore have something over him
And also, why take a close look when there was no chance of winning?
Within an hour of winning, he became confused, bewildered, then horrified
And then he transformed into someone who believed he deserved to winand was capable of becoming a president
People who knew Trump had to re-evaluate how they saw him because he, for lack of a better word or phrase, pulled the sword from the stone
He was elected and he did it, so there has to be something validated
Even though before, most within those higher circles dismissed him as a “Clown Prince”
Trump looked for a license not to conform, not to be respectable

It was something of an outlaw prescription for winning, and winning, however you won, was what it was all about
Trump actually craved media approval
But since he could never get the facts right and would never admit it, he would never get media approval
In the words of Sean Spicer, “Trump didn’t give a fuck at all”
He knew what he knew, and if you said otherwise, he wouldn’t believe you
Trumps uncensored and spontaneous tweetswould be his fundamental innovation in governing
Regular, uncontrolled bursts of anger
The less likely a presidential candidateis, usually the less experienced and unlikely their aids are
The likely aids are usually attracted to the more likely candidates
One of Bannon’s former competitors while acknowledging his intelligence and ambition, also noted that he’s mean, dishonest, andincapable of caring about other people
Conservative mediawas a great fit for him not only his angry, contrarian, Roman Catholic side, but it also had low barriers to entry
Liberal mediaby contrast with its corporate hierarchies was much harder to break into
Conservative media is also a highly lucrative target market category, with books dominating best sellers list, and videos and other products through direct sales avenues
For Bannon and media, you defined yourself by your enemy’s reaction
Conflictwas the media bait, hence the political charm
The new politics was not the art of the compromise but the art of conflict
The real goal was to expose the liberal view
Trump had acquired almost no formal sort of social discipline

He could not even attempt to imitate decorum. He could not even converse in the sense of sharing informationor a balanced back and forth conversation
He never particularly listened to what was said to him, nor particularly considered what he said in response
This is one reason why he was so repetitive
Nor did he treat anyone with any sort of basic or reliable courtesy
One theory of Trump’s peculiar behavior within the first few weeks of the White House was that he was used to that standard of living
Another theory was that it was the opposite, he was not used to everythingand his entire world flipped upside down
Trump, an old man, and creature of habit, had his entire routine and daily life flipped over when he had to move into the White House and adapt to his new environment
Donald was very peculiar about his securityand the way he left things in his living area
He also prefers eating at McDonald’s because of his fear poisoning. He trusted it would be safe and premade since no one would know he was coming
For his nominations, he wanted to choosepeople he knew and particularly who was loyal and he owed
His staff tried to keep him in an ideal environment bubblewhere he was surrounded by people who were receptive to him
This would help him perform at his best

In his early days in the White House, he would make unsolicited phone calls to people complaining about his staff and the media and all of his grievances without any pretense of confidence
Hence, many of these contacts had no obligation to not leak this information
Trump would go on and on about how he’s the victim of all of this bad mediaand fake news and mean comedy
There were several theories about Trump’s collusion with Russia and possible connections, as well as the reasons why he held Putin and such high regard
What scared the White House staff the most was not the possibility of this collusion story, but what an investigation would uncover in regards to all of the other dealings that would be possible and damaging
There were a lot of good reasons to fire Flynn even though the president trusted him and Flynn had Donald Trump’s full confidence
The organizational chart in the White House was the same as in the Trump organization:
There was no real up or down structure, but merely a figure at the topand everyone else scrambling for his attention
It wasn’t task-based so much as it was response-oriented
Whatever captured the boss’s attention focused everyone’s attention
Good management reduces ego. But in the Trump White House, it would seem like nothing happened and really didn’t existif it did not happen in Trump’s presence
This made an upside-down kind of sense. If something was out of his view, he could care less
Usually, in organizations, things flow from the top down

In Trump’s White House, things flowed up giving him ideas and suggesting they were his own
But many cases, the president didn’t know what he wantedand had very contradicting ideas
It was his staff trying to interpret his wants and required a lot of guesswork
It was like trying to figure out what a child wants
Thecentral issue of the Trump presidency was that he didn’t process any information given to him at all
He didn’t really read or even skim. If it was in print, it might as well not exist.
Some believed that for all practical purposes,he was no more than semi-literate
Some concluded he was dyslexic, with limited comprehension
Others thought he didn’t read because he just didn’t have to. He was “post-literate”, total television
Not only didn’t he read, he didn’t listen

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He preferred to be the person talking
And he trusted his own expertiseno matter how more irrelevant than anyone else’s
And what’s more, he had an extremely short attention span, even when he thought you were worthy of attention
The central hypothesisof the senior staff was that Trump MUST know what he’s doing, and his intuition must be profound because he managed to become the president
It was transparent and obvious that the president just wanted everyone to like him, and couldn’t comprehend why they couldn’t get people to like him
News spread about the inner workings of the White House, but it was actually the discord within the president’s mind himself
It was Trump usually talking down onand complaining about his staff and how most of it made no sense or logic
It was a constant battle and war between the three “Chief of Staff” figures
This was mightily exacerbated by a running disinformation campaign about them that was being prosecuted by the president himself
A chronic naysayer, he viewed each member of his inner circle as a problem child whose fate he held his hand
Mike Pence was seen as an “empty suit”, not threatening to the president and mostly passive
Some say he was the worst and most passive VP in a long time
Useless in the daily effort to stabilize the president and bring order to the West Wing

With the Jeff Sessions and Russia scandal, Trump told people he was getting outside sourcesto feed him information about his own government and people
Politics had seemed to become, even before the age of Trump, a zero-sum game
Trump kept insisting that the media and everyone else was lined up to get him
That he was the martyr and was being treated more unfairly than any other president
Trump would have moments of irrationality. When that happened, he was alone in his angerand not approachable by anyone
His senior staff largely dealt with these dark hours by agreeing with him, no matter what he said
If some of them occasionally try to hedge, Hope Hicks did not and agreed with all of it
Trump made his famous tweets accusing Obama of wiretapping himduring the election. It left him dangling in ignorance and embarrassment
In the end, this was another and ultimate example of how difficult it was for the president to functionin a literal, definitional, lawyerly, cause and effect, political world
It was a turning point. For the most part, Trump’s inner circle was game to defend him. After this, everyone except maybe Hope Hicks moved into a state of queasy sheepishness, if not constant incredulity
Trump had little to no interestin the central Republican goal of repealing Obamacare
While conservative media saw Trump as a creature they created, Trump’s saw himself as a star that transcended liberal or conservative media
He didn’t understand that what conservative media held up is what liberal media would try and take down
If his staff was attacked with indignities by the media, he didn’t blame loyalty to him or the nature of liberal media, he blamed his staff and their inability to get good press
Trump thought emotionally, not strategically
The self-righteousness and contempt for Trump on the left produced a tsunami clicks in attention from the right
But the president did not get this memo or rather fail to comprehend it
He was looking for media love everywhere
Trump seemed quite profoundly unable to distinguish between political advantage and his personal need
He thought that being president made you famous, and fame was always venerated and adored by the media
Confusingly, Trump was president in large part because of his particular talents, conscious or reflexive, to alienate the media, which then turned him into a figure reviled by the media
This was not a dialectical space that was comfortable for an insecure man
To Trump, the media represented power, much more than politics. And he wanted the attention and respect of its most powerful men
Conway and Hicks stood on the idea that the media treated and portrayed Trump unfairly
They don’t give him the benefit of the doubt. He’s just not treated the way other presidents are treated
The burden for these two women is their understanding that the president did not see the media’s lack of regard for him as part of a political divide on which he stood on a particular side
Instead, he perceived it as a deep, personal attack on him
For entirely unfair reasons, the media just did not like him
He was a classical misogynist in a way that he saw women as confidants who understood him
Men, although more competent, we’re people to hold an arm’s length
He felt that women were more loyal and understood his needs better. They also had to look good
He understood that he needed extra special handling.
Women, he saw, generally got this more precisely than men. Especially those who could deal with or saw themselves as tolerant of his casual misogyny and constant sexual subtext
Hope seemed to play the role of Trump’s real daughter, and Ivanka his real wife
Hope was also the president’s chief media handler
There was a general agreement in the west wing that Donald Trump had one of the most dysfunctional communication operationsin modern White House history
Though the president could dish it out very harshly, nobody thought he could take it (in regards to the White House correspondents dinner)
Trump felt like everyone had a press strategyfor when they got their 15 minutes in the spotlight
And if you couldn’t get press directly for yourself, you were a leaker

There was no happenstance news for Trump. To him, all newswas manipulated and designed, planned and planted
All news, was to some extent, fake. He understood that very well because he himself faked it so many times in his career
This is why he gravitated toward the fake news label, for even bragged about making stuff up for foreverand they always print it
In presidential annals, thefiring of FBI director James Comey may be the most consequential move ever made by a modern president acting entirely on his own
The president went rogue outside of the knowledge of any of his staff
Another attribute of Trump was hisinability to see his actions the way most others saw them or to fully appreciate how people expected him to behave
Theirforeign policy was to question the methods and people who came before them and just do it differently or opposite from how it’s been done
One of trumps deficiencieswas his uncertain grasp of cause and effect
Whatever problems he might have caused in the past have been reliably supplanted by new events, giving him the confidence that one bad story can always be replaced by a better, more dramatic one
He can always change the conversation. His Saudi trip should have done that with the Comey story but it didn’t
Nobody within the staff saw firing Comey as a good idea
Trump had the tendency to make everything personal
The president believed he had more power and control than he really had

He believed his talentfor manipulating people, and bending and dominating them, was vastly greater than it was
Senior staff believed the president had a problem with reality. And reality was now overwhelming him
There was now an argument to the view that he was hopelessly prone to self-sabotaginghis ability to function in the job
Trump and Comey were contrasts. This was revealed in Comey’s testimony
He came across as precise, compartmentalized, scrupulousin his presentation of the details. He was as by the book as it gets
Trump in the way Comey described was shady, shoot from the hip, heedlessor even unaware of the rules, deceptive, and in it for himself
In Brannon’s view, this was a town of institutions, and Trump had attacked and revealed against the institutions from day 1
And now this was aclashing of Trump and the institutions, who are neither quick nor seemingly willing to change and adapt as quickly as the private sector to the markets, which is what Trump is used to
Many of his tweets were not spontaneous utterances, but constant ones
Trump had a lifelong sense that people were constantly taking unfair advantage of him
Probably came from his father’s lack of generosityor his own awareness of being a rich kid, and no doubt his insecurities about this
Or from his negotiator’s understanding thatit is never win-win

Trump could not abide the knowledge that someone was getting a leg up at his expense
The trump tweet dynamic follows as itunified liberal opinion against him, then unified the opposite for him
He was often never fully aware of the nature of what he had saidnor fully cognizant of why there should be such a passionate reaction to it
He would often question and ask people “what he said” when he got severe blowback
This verylack of calculation and inability to be political was part of his political charm
That is why the segment of diehard supporters would let him get away with something as extreme as shooting someone, and was largely unfazed and maybe inspired by every new expression of Trump
Trump had provided a new, novel, narrative, very fastand emotional, and dramatic story to news, media, government, the public sector
And this wasn’t because he was changing or upsetting the fundamentals of American Life
In six months as president,failing to master almost any aspect of the bureaucratic process, he had accomplished practically speaking nothing
There almost was no other story in America and in much of the world

That was the radicaland transformational nature of the Trump presidency. It held everybody’s attention
On the other hand, constant hysteria did have one unintended political virtue. If every new event cancelled out every other event, then you always survived another day
Not unusual for a family run company, Trump made everybody compete for his favor
The company was about him, it existed because of his name, personality, and charisma
So the highest standing in the company was reserved for those who could best serve him
The meeting with Commissioner and Don Jr. and the Russians was completely visible and total mess up
Bannon called them a “bunch of geniuses” for this poorly executed meeting

The president and his team communicated their official story (a cover-up essentially) that there was no collusion with Russia during the campaign
The Russian meeting became a bigger deal after more figures came into the mix and Trump and his family were panicking and running their own defence
Short term headlines were overwhelming any sort of long-term strategy
A member of the legal team said “the worst thing you can do is lie to a prosecutor “
Just when you felt on the top of the world in the Trump administration, you could probably count on being cut down
That was the price of one-man leadership, insecure man leadership.The other “biggest guy in the room” always had to be reduced in size
Trump was the one variable that, in management terms, simply could not be controlled
He was like a recalcitrant two-year-old, if you try to control him, it would only have the opposite effect
Trump was stubborn about condemning Neo-Nazis, the KKK, and white supremacists after the Charlottesville terrorist attack

The Trump White House tried to find any small reason to make an outing a work event rather than a vacation or trip or time off
In the wake of Trump’s defense for the Nazis in Charlottesville, it was clear and apparent to everyone that Trump could not control himself
Trump wanted to be like so badly that everything is a struggle for him
This translated into a need to constantly win something, anything
Equally important, it was essential that helooked like a winner
Of course, trying to win without consideration, plan, or clear goalshad in the course of the administration’s first nine months resulted in almost nothing but losses
At the same time, confounding all political logic, that lack of a plan and impulsivity had helped create the disruptivenessthat seemed to so joyously shatter the status quo for so many
But now, that noveltywas wearing off

By the first 3/4 of the first year, most if not all of the senior staff lost hope in this thing working
Now, there central call and aim was to prevent something worse from happening moving forward
Everyone on his staff struggled with expressing the extremely obvious factthat the president did not know enough, did not know what he didn’t know, did not particularly care, and to boot what is confident if not serene in his unquestioned certitudes
The constant legal danger formed part of the high barrierto getting people to come work in the west wing
Bannon claims there is a:
1/3 chance he will get impeached
1/3 chance he will resignin the wake of a threat by the cabinet to act on the 25th amendment
1/3 chance that he will limp to the end of his term
In any event, there will not be a second term, or even an attempt at one

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