"President Trump Gaggles with Press on Air Force One En Route Palm Beach, FL, Jan. 31, 2026."

I'm going to pick through the transcript and will update in about an hour. Meantime, you can pick over the text and pull out your favorite highlights

ADDED: From the YouTube transcript:

"Nuzzi’s book compares in first week sales to those like John Fetterman's 'Unfettered' (2,600 copies in its first week) and Michael Wolff's 'All or Nothing: How Trump Recaptured America' (3,000 copies)..."

"... both of which were largely considered busts. Experts theorized 'Canto' was an example of the disconnect between media elites and consumers, and that scandal-filled headlines preceding its release exhausted the public interest before the book even hit the shelves...."

From "Olivia Nuzzi’s 'Canto' Sells Just 1,200 Print Copies In First Week" (Forbes).

"WTF is going on here with Michael Wolff giving PR strategy to Jeffrey Epstein?"

Said the podcaster Brian Reed, quoted by The Guardian in "Blurred lines: how Michael Wolff aspired to be part of elite circles he wrote about/The writer who features prominently in newly released Jeffrey Epstein emails has achieved extraordinary access but faced questions about his journalistic ethics."

Wolff's attempt at an explanation: "I was engaged then in an in-depth conversation with Epstein about his relationship with Trump and this seems to be part of that conversation."

The Guardian also quotes what NYT reporter Maggie Haberman said about Wolff back in 2018 (when his Trump-bashing book "Fire and Fury" came out: "He believes in larger truths and narratives.... So he creates a narrative that is notionally true, that’s conceptually true; the details are often wrong."

Reminds me of the old Ratherism "fake but accurate."

Back to The Guardian:

"Looks terrible — until you learn that [VICTIM] is the late Virginia Giuffre, who had worked for Trump before she fell into Epstein’s clutches, and had publicly said time and again that the future president never misbehaved in the least toward her."

Writes the Editorial Board of the New York Post, in "Epstein emails: The Dems and their lapdogs with laptops cry Wolff again."

What an incredibly sleazy move, redacting the name Virginia Giuffre, as if it were to protect her, when her name has already been public, she wrote a book to get her story out, she's told us she believed Trump did nothing wrong, and she's no longer alive. It's plainly and deliberately deceptive, and it's stupid too, because the name was going to come out, as it did in less than one day.

Such an idiotic distraction. I'm happy to look at any new evidence about the Epstein story, but I don't want to waste my time on manipulations like this. I refuse to read the NYT article, "Michael Wolff, Chronicler of Elites, Provided Epstein With Advice on Trump/Mr. Wolff was enough of an insider to provide advice to Jeffrey Epstein on how to handle his dealings with Donald J. Trump." What does "enough of an insider" even mean?? Enough of a Trump hater? I made that a gift link, in case you want to figure out how straight the NYT is playing it.

"Mr. Epstein’s email from 2019, which claims Mr. Trump 'knew about the girls' and asked Ms. Maxwell 'to stop,' was sent to Mr. Wolff..."

"... who had recently written a tell-all book about the president. Mr. Epstein was months away from the arrest and federal charges that would send him to prison, but he was the focus of significant attention.... In his email, Mr. Epstein mentioned a victim of his sex-trafficking operation. He also mentioned Mar-a-Lago, then disputed that Mr. Trump had ever asked him to resign from the club. 'Never a member ever,' Mr. Epstein wrote...."

From "Epstein Alleged in Emails That Trump Knew of His Conduct/In a message obtained by Congress, the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein wrote that Donald J. Trump spent hours at his house with one of Mr. Epstein’s victims" (NYT).

This is the top story at the NYT home page right now.

ADDED: From the New York Post, "Epstein emails: The Dems and their lapdogs with laptops cry Wolff again."

"Ron DeSantis sat at her table talking in an outdoor voice indoors, failing to observe any basics of conversational ritual or propriety, reeling off an unself-conscious list of his programs and initiatives and political accomplishments."

"Impersonal, cold, uninterested in anything outside of himself. The Carlsons are dog people with four spaniels, the progeny of other spaniels they have had before, who sleep in their bed. DeSantis pushed the dog under the table. Had he kicked the dog? Susie Carlson’s judgment was clear: She did not ever want to be anywhere near anybody like that ever again. Her husband agreed. DeSantis, in Carlson’s view, was a 'fascist.'"

Wrote Michael Wolff, in "The Fall: The End of Fox News and the Murdoch Dynasty," quoted in "Tucker Carlson Refutes New Book’s Claim That Ron DeSantis Accosted His Dog" (The Jewish Voice).

Carlson's response: “This is absurd.... He never touched my dog, obviously.... It’s totally made up. Ridiculous actually."

"For Democrats, who see him exiled to Mar-a-Lago, stripped of his key social media platforms and facing determined prosecutors, his future seems risible if not pathetic."

"But this is Donald Trump, always ready to strike back harder than he has been struck, to blame anyone but himself, to silence any doubts with the sound of his own voice, to take what he believes is his and, most of all, to seize all available attention. Sound the alarm."

From "Why I’m Sure Trump Will Run for President in 2024" by Michael Wolff (NYT). The highest-rated comment over there — with over 1600 recommendations and full of typos — is: 

What else is he goingt to do? He doesnt' read. He has no interest in music, dance, movies, TV, theater, or art. He could care less about science. He doesnt' like to travel. He has no firends. He's not interested in helping people. He's not religious. He has no sense of humor. He's not loyal to any sport teams. He has no imagination, no curiosity. He craves junk food. He's the most boring person on the planet. of course, he's going to run. It's all he has left.

So many wacky propositions there! The one I find the funniest is that he can be disparaged for his lack of interest in dance. Has anyone else ever been disparaged for lack of interest in dance? In any case, we've seen him dance and he seems to love it!

 

It was a whole dance craze! On TikTok!

But the least true statement in that comment is... oh, I don't know. It's a competition between "He has no sense of humor" and "He's the most boring person on the planet."

Maybe people have to lie to themselves about how entertaining Trump is so that can resist rooting for him simply because it's so fun and funny. You know, like they did last time:

 

Yes, the "future seems risible," but which way is it risible?

ADDED: Trump danced — with a sense of humor and unboringly — on "Saturday Night Live":

Of course, when that NYT commenter faulted Trump for his lack of interest in dance, he meant dance as something that fits in set of things he listed — "music, dance, movies, TV, theater, or art." Smell the elitism. He meant ballet and the kind of modern dance that you watch with quiet awe from a cushy seat.

AND: It's absurd to say he's not interested in TV, when he starred in a TV show for 14 years.

"Fire and Fury" author Michael Wolff says he's working on "nothing" — he's "embracing" "obsolescence."

... although this piece itself (in the UK Spectator) is something:

[I]t is hard not to be fatalistic if you are a journalist. Every magazine I have ever worked for, and I have worked for them all, is dead or will die shortly. For another thing, Donald Trump is the one consuming subject, sucking all views and opinions into his void, and on this issue I have nothing left to say. Still, even with the collapse of so many journalistic enterprises, many of my former colleagues still go on at great and constant unpaid length on social media or, scrambling for a pay-per-appearance contract, as desperately willing pundits on cable television. Why? People are afraid, it seems, to say nothing. I’m looking forward to trying.

You know what I say: Better than nothing is a high standard. It's good that (if?) Wolff realizes that the endless barrage of ranting against Trump is worse than nothing. But he can't get everyone else to stop doing it, and one man's silence can't be heard when everyone else is talking. He clearly knows that, which is why he is talking. Talking about how other people need to have the courage to shut up.

Alas, I have a four-year-old. So there will have to be some form of exchanging words for dollars in order to provide for the next 20 years of her education. But really I am not sure how, if I were doing gainful work, I would be able to perform all the duties necessary for applying to kindergarten. I have older children, all of whom have been successfully educated, but our daughter is my wife’s first and she has cast a wide net among Uptown, Downtown, public, private, traditional and progressive schools....

Wolff is 66 years old and publicly whining about his current wife's spending habits and the difficulty he's having making a living in his field that has gone to hell. Retire! You're 66! But somehow, you have a 4 year old, and you're on the hook for the next 20 years — that is, until you are 86.

[My son is] a stand-up comedian... A surprising number of my contemporaries have children who are stand-up comics. Could this have something to do with the disappearance of a certain kind of journalism?...

Could it have something to do with seeing your own father as some kind of joke?

ADDED: I have the feeling that Wolff really does have a writing project, and it's the story of his adventures in fatherhood, with a 4-year-old daughter and a standup comedian son. He's struggling with his own mortal decline and the decline of his profession. It's unlikely that he's honest or talented enough to write a book I'd care about reading, but if a great writer would steal this idea and write a novel titled "All My Friends' Sons Are Stand-up Comedians," I'd love to read it.

"Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, will speak about the Russia investigation at 11 a.m. on Wednesday morning..."

"... his first public comments since he took over the inquiry two years ago, the Justice Department announced."

The NYT alerts us. (Nice photo at the link.)

I was just noticing James Comey's new column in the Washington Post, "No ‘treason.’ No coup. Just lies — and dumb lies at that."

I had passed over it earlier today, because I have low tolerance for that sort of thing these days, but I got interested in it when I read this enticing interpretation from wildswan in the comments in last night's café.

We weren't plotting against Trump, we were also plotting against Hillary and everyone else. Our goal was power over them all. But our plots seemed about to fail. We had to cut Hillary down to size; but then, while we maneuvered against her, unexpectedly Trump won. Of course, we had an insurance policy against him, so that swung into action. We formatted it as usual as an "investigation." But unexpectedly there was trouble getting his people to accept our lies. And he wouldn't give in. It was His fault that we had to ratchet up our attack so much. And if He wants to call our investigations and jailings and leakings a coup, it was a self-inflicted coup and also it didn't happen. Due to Him. We aren't to blame. We tried to "investigate", as we call it, Him into impotence. God knows how we tried; and so do Melania, Barron, Kelley Ann Conway, George Conway, General Flynn, his wife, his son, Papadopoulos, his fiance, Manafort, the members of his firm, Roger Stone, Sarah Sanders and assorted individuals fired for no reason except supporting Him against the "investigation". Nothing is my fault; they should have given in. They should give in now. Last chance. I am FBI.

Don't know if that's accurate. Don't know if that's remotely related to what Mueller wants to say to us.

There's also this, which came out in the NYT yesterday: "White House Insider Account Has Feel of an Outside View, and Prompts a Mueller Denial":

Two years ago, the author Michael Wolff parlayed his access to one of President Trump’s most powerful advisers, Stephen K. Bannon, into “Fire and Fury”... Now, Mr. Wolff is back with a sequel, “Siege: Trump Under Fire,” which appears to rely just as heavily on Mr. Bannon. But the author’s source left the White House in August 2017 and has watched Mr. Trump’s circuslike presidency from afar since. That gives the disclosures in Mr. Wolff’s latest book a secondhand feeling — and one of his most sensational claims drew a quick, emphatic rebuttal.

A spokesman for Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel in the Russia investigation, denied Mr. Wolff’s claim that in March 2018, Mr. Mueller was preparing to indict the president for obstruction of justice on three counts, including witness tampering. Andrew Weissmann, one of Mr. Mueller’s prosecutors, whom Mr. Wolff says led that effort, did not even work on the part of the investigation that focused on obstruction....

I'm guessing that's what Mueller wants to talk about.

UPDATE: Why did Mueller make an occasion out of his closing of the office and resigning? He took no questions and he mainly said the written report is the thing and we should read that and that alone. "The report is my testimony," etc. etc. I know there's a lot of chatter on the TV news channels, but they have to do that.

"Because to be discredited is to be credentialed in the world of fake news."

My answer to the question "Why is anyone listening to Michael Wolff, isn't he completely discredited?"

The question was asked by Meade, who was reading "Michael Wolff Says Donald Trump And Jared Kushner 'Will Throw Each Other Under The Bus'" (HuffPo).

"Eager to be seen as leading the debate, Trump tossed out ideas like so much fish food."

WaPo's Ashley Parker and Philip Rucker toss out random red meat in "‘We’re going to take action’: Inside Trump’s shifting stance on gun rights," teased on the front page as "How Trump cast himself as the main protagonist in the unfolding gun drama."

Presumably "fish food" is an intentional allusion to an incident that came in at #6 on President Trump's "2017 Fake News Awards": "CNN FALSELY edited a video to make it appear President Trump defiantly overfed fish during a visit with the Japanese prime minister. Japanese prime minister actually led the way with the feeding."

Also in the new article:

The president, who has often struggled to convey empathy, clutched a slim notecard with reminders about how to communicate with the grieving — “I hear you,” read one — that officials said White House Communications Director Hope Hicks jotted down during a huddle with Trump to prepare for the event.

So he held a piece of paper that had 5 notes from Hope Hicks? Wouldn't you think you'd want to look at the transcript to see how many times the man you portray as empathy-challenged used the phrase Hope Hick wrote down for him? I checked. Here's the transcript. The answer is zero.

Maybe that note card will make the 2018 Fake News Awards list. Remember this story about George H.W. Bush?

There was no card, but it did sound like a talking point accidentally read out loud. H.W.'s idiosyncratic locutions could have been portrayed as charming and evidence that he really was speaking straight from the heart. As George W. Bush put it in "41: A Portrait of My Father":

At one town hall, he delivered an underwhelming line to New Hampshire voters: “Message: I care.” No doubt he did care, a lot.

That was 1992, and H.W. Bush went on to lose his bid for reelection. It was the last time a U.S. presidential incumbent lost — the time the man had to read his empathy from a card. It didn't happen then, and it didn't happen with Donald Trump. But if it makes sense to you, if it strikes a chord, if it rings true, it is true.

"But I’m being asked to give up on Charlie Rose, Kevin Spacey, Al Franken, Louis CK and Garrison Keillor, just to name a few. In a way, I’m starting to feel violated."

From the top-rated comment on "The Smearing of Woody Allen" (NYT):

Dylan Farrow’s memory could plausibly have been altered by the intense atmosphere surrounding the charges, and she may have a perfectly sincere but false memory of the events. It’s telling that her story changed during the initial investigation, but that she’s absolutely certain now, many years later.

Or maybe I’m wrong. If so, I’m deeply sorry. But I’m being asked to give up on Charlie Rose, Kevin Spacey, Al Franken, Louis CK and Garrison Keillor, just to name a few. In a way, I’m starting to feel violated. I don’t want to give up on Woody Allen, and it will take more than an unsubstantiated accusation to make me do so.

From the op-ed itself, which is by Bret Stephens:

Soon after Rolling Stone published a sensational — and, as it turned out, false — account of a gang rape at a University of Virginia fraternity, Richard Bradley, the editor of Worth magazine, suspected that something was amiss.... [W]hat most stirred Bradley’s doubt was how perfectly the story played “into existing biases,” especially the sorts of biases Rolling Stone readers might harbor about fraternity life at Southern universities. Since the account of the rape “felt” true, it was easy to assume it was....

That makes me think of Michael Wolff. Remember him?

Michael Wolff asked on MSNBC about the factual errors in his Trump book.

His actual response: "If it makes sense to you, if it strikes a cord, if it rings true, it is true."

Katy Tur response: "I read it, I -- a lot of the did feel true"

This is Journalisming. pic.twitter.com/IOowlxWNvV

— Benny (@bennyjohnson) January 8, 2018

(By the way, you strike a chord, not a cord.)

Mika kicks Michael Wolff off the show.

"You might be having a fun time playing a little game dancing around this, but you're slurring a woman... It's disgraceful," she says as he fudges and bullshits. Mika gets irritated, in her subtle, I'll-just-move-one-sheet-of-paper-from-here-to-there style, and comes out with: "If you don't get it – and you don't get what we're talking about – I’m sorry. This is awkward. You're here on the set with us, but you're done."

UPDATE: Afterwards, Wolff "went on Twitter, and, as if determined to prove correct anyone who doubted his judgments about the way men speak about women, wrote, 'My bad, the President is right about Mika.' President Trump has called her 'low I.Q. Crazy Mika' and 'dumb as a rock Mika,' and claimed to have seen her 'bleeding badly from a face-lift.' If being criticized for a couple of minutes can persuade Wolff to sign on to all that, then his book deserves more skepticism than it has already earned." (From The New Yorker.)

The Grammys comedy sketch about trying out as the audiobook reader of "Fire and Fury" (and ending with Hillary Clinton).

"Spoken Word" is a category in the Grammy Awards, and it seems to be almost entirely the audiobook version of published, printed books. I love audiobooks, but I wouldn't call them "spoken word" performances. They keep giving the award to Presidents — Jimmy Carter (more than once! including 2 years ago for "A Full Life: Reflections at 90"), Bill Clinton (beating out David Sedaris!). They gave it to Hillary Clinton in 1997 for "It Takes a Village" (come on! who wants to listen to Hillary Clinton read her book).

My idea of a "spoken word" performance would be something more like what Spalding Gray used to do. Something like this, which he could take on tour and perform on stage, and you'd actually go see in a concert hall. I've done that. I've seen Henry Rollins give a spoken word concert. He once won a Grammy in the spoken word category, but it wasn't for a live, memorized performance like what I saw here in Madison years ago. It was a reading of his book "Get in the Van." And speaking — in written word — of Henry Rollins, I loved his performance on "Portlandia" as a member of the old punk rock band Riot Spray:



But back to last night's Grammys. I can't stand the Grammys, though I did DVR the show and attempt (unsuccessfully) to watch a few things, but I did watch that "Fire and Fury" sketch (just now, on YouTube). It must be hard for the Grammys people to figure out how to do politics, because they are playing to a general audience, and the people of the United States did elect Donald Trump. They can't act like they're talking within a group that all agree they hate Donald Trump. And yet those who like Donald Trump may like him in part because he can take all the heat you want to give him, his whole life has been heat, he likes heat, in a certain way. He wins even when he's attacked, as a certain subgroup of Trump fans understand.

In last night's sketch, we saw Cardi B, John Legend, DJ Khaled, Cher, and Snoop Dogg along with Hillary Clinton, and they were comical in different ways, some of which could be viewed as skeptical of the book or even admiring of Trump. Cardi B stops and says "Why am I even reading this shit? I can't believe this!" DJ Khaled seemed to love embodying Trump to proclaim, "If my shirt is on the floor, it's because I want it on the floor."

And a joke is made at Hillary's expense, with James Corden assuring her that her spoken-word Grammy is "in the bag." She has to say "The Grammy's the bag?" in an excited hopeful voice to set up the comedian James Cordon's line "in the bag," which is said in a way intended to remind us of how Hillary was (it seems) duped by pollsters and advisers assuring her that she'd already won the election.

ADDED: That "Portlandia" clip is even better now that Bruno Mars won all the Grammys.

"Fire and Fury" Michael Wolff author got people speculating that Donald Trump was having an affair with Nikki Haley.

Politico explains how this brilliant attention-getter did his slimy work:

[Wolff] dropped hints on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” last week when he said he was “absolutely sure” Trump is having an affair — just not sure enough to write about it in his book. Wolff went on to say that discriminating readers would be able to determine the president's paramour by giving his book a close reading: “Now that I've told you, when you hit that paragraph, you're gonna say, 'Bingo.'”

I love the way you have to buy his damned book and even read it — read every paragraph with an eye toward SEX!!! — to find the name he made you believe was there. And when you find it, you're gonna say "bingo!"

Readers quickly homed in on a single sentence in the runaway best-seller, which has been criticized for everything from sloppy copy editing to gross factual inaccuracies. Wolff writes, “The president had been spending a notable amount of private time with Haley on Air Force One and was seen to be grooming her for a national political future.”

Did these readers say "bingo!"?

It got bad enough that Haley actually responded:

“It is absolutely not true... I have literally been on Air Force One once and there were several people in the room when I was there... He says that I’ve been talking a lot with the president in the Oval about my political future. I’ve never talked once to the president about my future and I am never alone with him. So the idea that these things come out, that’s a problem... But it goes to a bigger issue that we need to always be conscious of: At every point in my life, I’ve noticed that if you speak your mind and you’re strong about it and you say what you believe, there is a small percentage of people that resent that and the way they deal with it is to try and throw arrows, lies or not.” 

How Trump "took the heat" for all of them: The "shithole" timeline.

January 9: With the "Fire and Fury" frenzy raging and the mainstream media pushing the Trump-is-nuts narrative, Trump convened a Meeting with Bipartisan Members of Congress on Immigration in the White House. Modeling sanity, he humorously acknowledged the craziness of politics and his ability to help the "traditional politicians" "take the heat."

Thank you, Lindsey.... you know, when you talk about comprehensive immigration reform, which is where I would like to get to eventually — if we do the right bill here, we are not very far way. You know, we’ve done most of it. You want to know the truth, Dick? If we do this properly, DACA, you’re not so far away from comprehensive immigration reform. And if you want to take it that further step, I’ll take the heat, I don’t care. I don’t care — I’ll take all the heat you want to give me, and I’ll take the heat off both the Democrats and the Republicans. My whole life has been heat. (Laughter.) I like heat, in a certain way. But I will. I mean, you are somewhat more traditional politicians. Two and a half years ago, I was never thinking in terms of politics. Now I’m a politician. You people have been doing it, many of you, all your lives. I’ll take all the heat you want. But you are not that far away from comprehensive immigration reform....

January 11: The 2 Senators he named in his I'll-take-the-heat remark, Lindsey Graham and Dick Durbin, came to meet with Trump in private, and immediately afterwards there was a report from an unnamed source claiming that Trump had said "Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?" Whoever chose to drop this bomb — Durbin? Graham? — delivered the heat. It wasn't quite the heat Trump had asked for. He'd offered to take the heat on the way to bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform, but it seemed that Trump had resisted the Graham-Durbin proposal, which would have given special priority to Haitians. We don't know for sure exactly how Trump expressed what seems to be his preference for a "merit" system, but the quote was very exciting and, the frenzy of "Fire and Fury having died out, the media jumped at what they needed to fan anti-Trump fires once again. Trump is a racist was at least as hot as the previous week's Trump is crazy. Trump got the heat. And he likes heat, in a certain way. Does he like it that way? Who knows? Saying "shithole" over and over while deploring the man who said it had far more energy than the underlying policy question, but maybe on some level we were forming opinions about whether we prefer immigrants based on "merit" or from the places people have the most reason to want to leave.

January 14: Various persons from the January 11th meeting say different things about what Trump really said and whether they could "recollect" anything specific, and then Trump himself spoke up. NYT:

After three days of denunciations from around the world, President Trump declared that he is “not a racist”.... Mr. Trump also insisted that he had not made the inflammatory comments in a White House meeting on Thursday.... “I’m not a racist,” Mr. Trump said... “I am the least racist person you have ever interviewed, that I can tell you.”...

Trump was backed up by 2 other Senators who'd been in the room:

“I didn’t hear that word either,” [Tom] Cotton said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “And I was sitting no further away from Donald Trump than Dick Durbin was.” Mr. Cotton said Mr. Durbin “has a history of misrepresenting what happens in White House meetings,” an assertion that [David] Perdue made in his own interview Sunday morning on ABC’s “This Week.”

January 15: It's Martin Luther King Day. Where do we want to go with this? Fan the flames again? Do we want to believe we have a crazy or racist President or a crazy and racist President? Or does it seem that Trump has taken the heat, taken all the heat they wanted to give him. His whole life has been heat. He likes heat, in a certain way. That doesn't mean we all like heat. Some of us would like to get to normal, including normalizing immigration policy, with real legislation that we actually believe is the right solution and that we want to see enforced.

A great cold open on "SNL" last night.

I particularly love Fred Armisen as Michael Wolff. It's also wonderful to see Bill Murray as Steve Bannon, and I'm told the Mika and Joe stuff is spot on. I find Kate McKinnon very funny here, but I don't know "Morning Joe" enough to see how closely she's tracking Mika Brzezinski, but Meade tells me it's a great impersonation:



I'm told I should watch some YouTubes of "Morning Joe" so I can understand the Mika and Joe dynamic, but trying to extrapolate from this imitation, it seems that the man (Joe) is inflated with self-importance and the woman (Mika) serves the role of continually deflating him in this weird combination of disrespecting him and being sexually attracted to him. Did I get that right? I don't know, but I laughed a lot and am prompted to believe I would laugh even more if I understood the target that is Mika Brzezinski.

What really cracked me up was Fred Armisen, whom I couldn't recognize for a good while because of the bald head but also because he assumed the ridiculous, infuriating demeanor of Michael Wolff so perfectly.

I laughed even more at the "My Drunk Boyfriend" sketch, which was about full-size robot dolls that are actually like your drunk boyfriend. The physical comedy is really excellent:

The "stable genius" stomps all over the Trump-is-stupid-and-crazy narrative by running a meeting in front of the cameras.

I'll call him a table genius. Look at him, with members of Congress arrayed around him at that table. The news media had to keep the cameras running live. After spending the last week promoting the theory that he's stupid and crazy, the media look stupid and crazy, as he's clearly in command, speaking coherently, behaving competently, and getting full respect from the members of Congress. This really was a perfect response the barrage of criticism that bounced off Michael Wolff's convenient-but-fake book:



For comparison, here's Michael Wolff squirming under questioning from Norah O'Donnell (who smiles sunnily as she goes for the jugular):



NOTE: This is a post I'd originally put up at 5:56 this morning, but it got deleted somehow, not intentionally.

There's a lot of envy about all the money Michael Wolff is making off his dubious book...

... and now here comes Wikileaks dumping the whole thing on the web for anyone to read free.

What a crazy lying, cheating, stealing world we live in.

Stay honest. Stay virtuous. 2 wrongs don't make a right.

So much leaking! Have you ever seen so much leaking?

Wikileaks. Bannon leaks. Including tears.

Feel the truth: "Read the book. See if you don't feel like you are with me on that couch in the White House. And see if you don't feel alarmed..."

So said Michael Wolff on "Meet the Press" today, after Chuck Todd confronted him about "a lot of little errors" — "One page had three in one. Some of them may be copy edits, small, factual errors. But it adds up. Why shouldn't a reader be concerned about some of these mistakes?"

Wolff's answer was just "I think a reader should read the book. The book speaks for itself" and that quote I put in the post title, which I thought was a very weird answer. Wolff wouldn't defend the book and the method and care he used. He just insisted that people read the book. Questions about whether the book is true should be determined by readers simply feeling whether it's true.

That reminded me of the way Stephen Colbert presented himself years ago on the first episode of "The Colbert Report": "Now I know some of you may not trust your gut...yet. But with my help you will. The 'truthiness' is, anyone can read the news to you. I promise to feel the news... at you."

It felt like a complete concession that the book was fiction. Because that is how fiction works. It isn't reporting, but a different way of getting to the truth. If it feels true, it is true, for the purposes of the mental life of the reader. What's out there in the real world is... oh, what is it? Is that "real world" you speak of anything at all? I'm here in my own head, where whatever is felt is.

Here's Mark Leibovich, chief national correspondent for The New York Times Magazine, also in the above-linked "Meet the Press" transcript:

Where I am is first of all, is it possible to go any higher than number one on Amazon if you're going to write a book? I mean, this is just, it's incredible. 

No, it's not incredible. People love a hot pile of salaciousness. They love it even more than whatever hot pile they're cooking up in the pressure cooker they got for Christmas (judging from the Amazon best-seller list, which has Instant Pot recipe books at ##3 & 4).

Back to Leibovich:

I do think... there are very significant journalistic critiques that you can throw at this book. But I also think the "it rings true" truth about this is absolutely valid. 

Ah ha ha ha ha. He's buying the feel-the-truth-at-you/fiction-is-truth theory that sounded like bullshit when Wolff said it.

And part of it is what Michael Wolff has said and will say again I'm sure is that this is exactly how people around him, or many people around him at the White House, certainly Republicans on the Hill speak privately. Now, if you were to ask, probably I would say 80% of elected Republicans on the Hill, "What do you think of the president's fitness for office?" The first thing you will hear, I guarantee you, is, "Can we go off the record?"

So he's using the fiction method. Just making up something. Even putting a number on it. 80%! He hasn't asked this question of all the congressional Republicans. He just feels that if he did 80% of them would say let's go off the record. And he's feeling that at you.

ADDED: In the comments, some are puzzling over the phrase "See if you don't feel like you are with me on that couch in the White House" (in the quote in the post title). But it relates to something earlier in the transcript. Chuck Todd asks Wolff how he managed to become — as he claims — "a fly on the wall in the West Wing." Wolff answers:

You know, I literally kind of knocked on the door and said, “Can I come in?” and they said “Okay.” And I came in. I sat on the couch and that’s the point of view that I’ve written this book from. I mean, in the real intention of this book, is to have readers sit with me on the couch and watch what’s going on in the West Wing. I went into this with absolutely no agenda whatsoever. I have no particular politics when it comes to Donald Trump. This is really all about human nature.

Notice how much Wolff sounds like a novelist. Nothing wrong with being a novelist. But there is something wrong with reading a novel and not realizing it's a novel. Remember, recently, the internet went wild talking about the New Yorker short story "Cat Person," and it seemed rather obvious that a lot of people were just talking about it as if it were a blow-by-blow account of a real relationship? Come on, people! That's incompetent reading. Fiction is different.

AND: "Fire and Fury" takes on the burden of being "fake news." Then mainstream news media can report on the book, pass the material along, and claim not to be doing "fake news." Remember the Allcott/Gentzkow definition of fake news I've been talking about (beginning here). The definition (by 2 economists and adopted by at least some political scientists) excludes "rumors that do not originate from a particular news article." I don't accept the definition myself, but I'm seeing the gears turning in the minds of the mainstream media people who want to say things but still worry about their journalistic professionalism.