Fire and Fury (upcoming Trump book) - intend to read it?

[pulykamell]

@Dewey_Finn

In case anyone doubts that the gorilla channel story is plausible, here are the most recent three tweets from the man himself. How insecure do you have to be to proclaim your intelligence?

See, all that sounds plausible. Gorilla channel doesn’t. shrug

[Chefguy]

A stable genius? So he’s smarter than cows and jackasses?

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@pulykamell

See, all that sounds plausible. Gorilla channel doesn’t. shrug

I agree. The gorilla channel works pretty well as satire: monkeys* beating on each other is a great analogy for most cable news shows, and Trump’s fascination with cable news is well-known. But it’s not remotely plausible, and people taken in by it should have a moment of good-humored chagrin.

• Don’t think you can outpedant me on this one, mofos

[ThelmaLou]

@pulykamell

Yes, even in Trump’s case, it is.

Wrong.

[Uniqueorn]

@Chefguy

A stable genius? So he’s smarter than cows and jackasses?

Brilliant!

[pulykamell]

@ThelmaLou

Wrong.

shrug

[Sam_Lowry]

@Left_Hand_of_Dorkness

I agree. The gorilla channel works pretty well as satire: monkeys* beating on each other is a great analogy for most cable news shows, and Trump’s fascination with cable news is well-known. But it’s not remotely plausible, and people taken in by it should have a moment of good-humored chagrin.

• Don’t think you can outpedant me on this one, mofos

I’d say that him wanting to watch “The Gorilla Channel” is almost plausible, that he would watch it for 7 hours at a time, sit four inches from the screen, and say things to the gorillas and think that they could hear him is not at all plausible.

But it’s not like he has sophisticated TV or movie viewing habits:

We hadn’t been airborne long when Trump decided to watch a movie. He’d brought along “Michael,” a recent release, but twenty minutes after popping it into the VCR he got bored and switched to an old favorite, a Jean Claude Van Damme slugfest called “Bloodsport,” which he pronounced “an incredible, fantastic movie.” By assigning to his son the task of fast-forwarding through all the plot exposition—Trump’s goal being “to get this two-hour movie down to forty-five minutes”—he eliminated any lulls between the nose hammering, kidney tenderizing, and shin whacking. When a beefy bad guy who was about to squish a normal-sized good guy received a crippling blow to the scrotum, I laughed. “Admit it, you’re laughing!” Trump shouted. “You want to write that Donald Trump was loving this ridiculous Jean Claude Van Damme movie, but are you willing to put in there that you were loving it, too?”

To be honest though, him stopping Michael to watch the fighting parts of Bloodsport is the most relatable he’s been to me.

But I think the gorilla channel story also shows how Poe’s law applies to Trump; he has done so many crazy and outrageous stuff that it is harder to distinguish reality from parody. Him watching The Gorilla Channel for hours at a time isn’t plausible, but neither is it that he watches Fox News for hours a day and responds with tweets but that is something he actually does. He’s the president of the United States and can get full briefings of everything that is going on in the world by intelligent people, but instead he gets a lot of his news from Fox News.

[Cartooniverse]

ETA: Wont post complete reply.

[Biggirl]

@Dewey_Finn

In case anyone doubts that the gorilla channel story is plausible, here are the most recent three tweets from the man himself. How insecure do you have to be to proclaim your intelligence?

Edited to add, it sounds like what you’d expect the SNL parody of the man to say.

Wile E. Coyote-- Super Genius!

[Steve_MB]

@kittenblue

I’ve also had to look up about six words that I’ve never come across before

Are they in direct quotes from Orangeanus Deploricus, by any chance?

[Skywatcher]

@Left_Hand_of_Dorkness

It’s somewhere between a joke, a prank, and a hoax. The article I read explaining it pointed out how crazy things are today that people take the idea of a president wanting a Gorilla channel seriously.

@ThelmaLou

The thing is in thump’s case it’s NOT all that far-fetched.

@pulykamell

Yes, even in Trump’s case, it is.

The only far-fetched part is the transmitter that sends a signal to his bedroom and nowhere else.

[Velocity]

I’ll admit that I totally believed that the gorilla story was real. That being said, there was a hole in it, which was that if Trump came into the White House complaining that the White House’s TV lacked “the gorilla channel,” that would imply that Trump *had *seen such a gorilla channel before.

[El_Kabong]

@Chefguy

A stable genius? So he’s smarter than cows and jackasses?

I hereby proclaim that from this day forward, Mr. Trump shall be referred to in all communications as “President Very Stable Genius”.

[Siam_Sam]

President Chump’s so smart, his brain hurts.

[kayaker]

@Ann_Hedonia

I’m a little over halfway through the book and most of it is stuff I already knew. An anyone that claims it’s a pack of lies or total fiction just hasn’t read it, because most of what he talks about are incidents that were widely reported - he just adds some new details that explain some of the WTF. Buts it’s basically the story of the 3 factions - the Bannon Mercer white nationalists, the Priebus Ryan classic Tepublicans and the Kushner Cohn Wall St Democrats - their jockeying for power and their constant attempts at sabotaging each other
For example - I’m at the part now where they cover the Syrian bombing. And they talk about how no one could get Trump to care or focus on the details. Bannon wanted to do nothing. But the other two factions thought action was required. But no one could get Trump to pay attention because it involved battle plans and words and spreadsheets and numbers and stuff. Then Ivanka put together a presentation focusing on dying children foaming at the mouth.
None of it was surprising and it pretty much confirmed the speculation on what happened behind the scenes.

It pretty much what I expected, but I figured I would find out a couple of things I didn’t know. And I did. Wolff wrote about some of the undercurrents caused by Bannons anti-Semitism. He claims that assigning Jared to broker Mideast peace was sort of a dig at his religion as well as a passive-aggressive set-up for failure and an inside joke. And that Trump was in on it.

And from a factual POV, I didn’t know that Jared’s brother co-founded Oscar Insurance, using a lot of the family money. Oscar Insurance was founded in the wake of ObamaCare idealism and has taken a beating from the efforts to gut ObamaCare. I probably should’ve known this and I’m surprised I didn’t - but I didn’t.

I started reading last night and am about halfway through. Agree with every word above, excellent post.

[QuickSilver]

I want to read it but I feel like seeing all the tumpfuckery in print will make me furious to an unhealthy degree. I think I prefer to maintain a more healthy sardonic distance.

[hajaar]

I finished the book today. And then I reviewed it on my site. I hope plugging one’s review is not against the rules

digitalamrit.com

[ThelmaLou]

@hajaar

I finished the book today. And then I reviewed it on my site. I hope plugging one’s review is not against the rules

digitalamrit.com - This website is for sale! - digitalamrit Resources and Information.

Woo-hoo! Out of lurkage with some really good stuff. Let’s hear more from you.

You said: “I would have liked to hear more about Melania Trump and the rest of Trump’s family. Another big miss is the absence of details around Trump’s interactions with foreign leaders like Merkel, Makron, etc. I feel that these could have given us a lot more insight that just being internally focused.”

You’re right–it would have been good to know more detail about those things. Maybe Wolff felt it was prudent so steer clear of too much family stuff (especially about Melania) lest even the thump-hating public cry foul. WRT to foreign leaders, wasn’t Wolff stationed strictly in the White House? How would he know about thump and foreign leaders, unless it was stuff he overheard other people talking about?

I like your site. I’m going to dive in!

[DesertDog]

@Velocity

I’ll admit that I totally believed that the gorilla story was real. That being said, there was a hole in it, which was that if Trump came into the White House complaining that the White House’s TV lacked “the gorilla channel,” that would imply that Trump *had *seen such a gorilla channel before.

I find it believable. A gorilla’s penis typically is 3-cm when erect. Makes him feel all superior.

[John_Mace]

I was planning to read it, but decided to schedule a series of root canals instead. This dentist I go to is an older German guy who keeps asking me: Is it safe?