Since I haven’t read the book, I couldn’t say how well it was handled or the extent.
[speculation] If the accounts were too widely divergent, he would leave in the separate accounts. If they agreed on general details, “condense” them into a shorter account.
There may have also been editorial considerations in not making the book longer than War and Peace or a Stephen King novel, [/speculation]
Several credible Dopers have read the book and have said that everything that’s in there has been in the news already. The new-ish stuff is background on what we’ve been reading in the news for the last year. IOW no new revelations and no surprises. So what’s the big deal??
My understanding is that he took two approaches to accounts he thought were untrue:
- Sometimes he quoted people and sourced them. In other words, he truthfully conveyed the fact that someone had told a lie, including the content of the lie. This is absolutely ethical journalism. If my daughter tells me that she’s a unicorn, and I tell you, “My daughter told me she’s a unicorn,” I haven’t lied to you. If a book about World War II includes quotes from Mussolini saying lies about Brits, that doesn’t mean the book is bullshit. This is pretty obvious.
- Sometimes he does his best to get at what he believes is the truth and reports that. In that case, he’s on shakier ground–but in no way is he “admitting” that he’s not telling the truth.
I can’t tell whether folks are actually confused about these points, or haven’t read the Washington Times skeptically (it’s much more accurate to call that linked article dishonest than it is to call Wolff dishonest), or are seeing something I’m genuinely not seeing.
To be fair, the piece from The Washington Times is labeled as opinion, not a news article.
I think you’re grossly misunderstanding. He said there are many versions of events being shared all the time, as is typical of a clusterfuck, and he had to pick and choose which ones to share to tell his story of what life is like inside the Trump White House. That’s a far cry from “the book is bullshit.”
If it is bullshit, why did Bannon just get kicked out of Breitbart? If he just gave Wolff a bunch of bullshit, you’d think he would be in line for a bonus, not soup.
I read the book and I understand what Wolff meant.
Bannon recounts conversations that he had, or claims he had. He may have actually had them or he may have not. For example, on the book Bannon blows up at Hope Hicks for continuing to enable Trumps self-destructive behavior. He told her she needed to wise up and lawyer up, and if she didn’t he was going to call her parents.Then he recounted other incidents
Now, maybe that happened Maybe it didn’t. Steve Bannon is the direct source. But I enjoyed that section of the book not because “Oh Wow - Steven Bannon yelled at Hope Hicks. He said it so it must be true!”
But because
“Steve Bannon thinks that Hope Hicks is an immature idiot. And he thinks she has done things that are highly legally legally questionable. He thinks the entire family has ignored his advice at their peril. Maybe the specific conversations happened, maybe not. But there’s no question that Bannon thinks that the whole gang is going to get in trouble because they’re being stupid. Not necessarily that there was collusion but because they will shoot themselves in the foot and get nailed for obstruction at minimum. Because they live in an alternate reality .”
Now it’s undeniable that Bannon said what I just summarized.And that he wants the world to know he said it.
Now THAT’S my takeaway. That why I enjoyed the book.
He only walked back a tiny bit of it, because he forgot that Donald Jr. is the boy band darling of the alt-right. Because he likes guns and loves dirt on Hillary. And he’s stupid. It’s an alt-right hat trick.
I have to say that the letter from Elizabeth McNamara, legal counsel to Michael Wolff and his publisher, in response to Trump’s lawyer’s demand that they cease-and-desist publication is a serious legal smackdown.
Not content with simply saying “No, we won’t cease-and-desist”, she goes on to demonstrate in detail that Charles Harder is rather deficient in his understanding of the law. She then takes what was a lengthy demand from Harder (seven pages? Really?) that Wolff and the publisher preserve all their documents (shades of Trump’s statement about Comey’s tapes?) and turns it around to remind Harder that they will need to keep all **their **documents too:
Now that’s how you deliver a legal threat.
I was wondering that. Over the weekend, Bannon apologized to Donald Trump Jr and the rest of the family and yesterday he lost his job.
That’s where all these Trump legal threats keep breaking down, isn’t it?
“We’re going to sue!”
“Ok, looking forward to the discovery phase”
“…” slinks away
There’s another great bit on page 2 of the letter:
[bolding substituted for her original italics]
“As you are no doubt aware” - snerk
Translation: “Wow, are you and Trump a couple of dumbasses.”
he still has his hundreds of millions of dollars that he made from producing Seinfeld, so, NO SOUP FOR YOU!
That is so cool! It reminds me of Bannon’s efforts to set up a separate office in the White House specifically to deal with everything coming out of the Mueller investigation, so the presidency would be isolated from it. They went to one of the top Washington law firms and asked them to run this special office. Weighing all the pros and cons, they said no. They went to another top law firm. They said no, too. And another. According to Wolff, nine law firms turned them down, mostly concerned about their reputations.
The bottom line is, it’s hard for these guys to get good help. The first year saw an unprecedented turnover in senior staff, and according to CNN, the high-level departures continue, and they’re having trouble finding qualified people.
Allied bombing of Germany? Fake news! Going to sue for libel!
The confusion is understandable as both books are about Nazis. Apparently the confusion is being exacerbated by the original WW II title being promoted on the Gorilla Channel. 
People are passing the book around on the Web, and a Thai friend of the wife’s in Thailand sent it to us to download. I still don’t know if I’ll get around to reading it, as I hardly think it can tell me much new.
The author was on Bill Maher’s show, Real Time w/ Bill Maher, last and claims that Trump is currently having an affair, and that if you “read between the lines” in some paragraph towards the end of the book, it will be obvious who he is talking about.
I didn’t read the book, but does anyone have any idea what he’s talking about?
I haven’t read the book either, but if my Trumpdar is tuned finely enough, I’m going with Hope Hicks.
John Kelly?
Looks like it’s Nikki Haley that Wolff is talking about:
I find that unlikely. It’s not like Wolff has impeccable journalistic credentials, though.
Not sure why the folks who wrote that article ruled out his daughter. 