"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:

The Wall Street Journal's aggressive effort to get Trump with the Big Bawdy Birthday Letter backfired, according to the NYT.

I'm reading "How Trump Deflected MAGA’s Wrath Over Epstein, at Least for Now/By tapping into other grievances, President Trump managed to turn one of the most fractious moments for his base into a unifying one."

That's an amazingly pro-Trump headline for the NYT. Let's read:

Mr. Trump turned one of the most fractious moments for his base into one of the most unifying by tapping into other MAGA grievances: the deep mistrust of mainstream media, the disdain for Rupert Murdoch and the belief that the president had been unfairly persecuted by his political foes.... 

Stephen K. Bannon, a former White House adviser to Mr. Trump and influential leader of the MAGA base, said that the dynamics were shifting in part because the reporting in the story seemed “phony,” and because the paper decided not to show Mr. Trump a copy of the letter.

“The Murdochs’ bizarre assault on the president galvanized his base because of both content and process,” Mr. Bannon said. “Now we are united as Trump goes on offense — against the Murdochs, the courts and the deep state.”...

It seems less a matter of Trump managing to turn things around as the press behaving badly and suffering the predictable consequence.  

"Mr. Trump had been under pressure from the noninterventionist wing of his party to stay out of the conflict, and was having lunch that day..."

".... with one of the most outspoken opponents of a bombing campaign, Stephen K. Bannon, fueling speculation that he might hold off. It was almost entirely a deception. Mr. Trump had all but made up his mind to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities, and the military preparations were well underway for the complex attack. Less than 30 hours after Ms. Leavitt relayed his statement [that he would make a decision about whether or not to strike Iran 'within the next two weeks'] he would give the order for an assault.... Mr. Trump’s 'two weeks' statement was just one aspect of a broader effort at political and military misdirection that took place over eight chaotic days, from the first Israeli strikes against Iran to the moment when a fleet of B-2 stealth bombers took off from Missouri for the first American military strikes inside Iran since that country’s theocratic revolution in 1979...."

From "Shifting Views and Misdirection: How Trump Decided to Strike Iran/When Israel began its assault on Iran, President Trump kept his distance. But within days he was on a path that led to an extensive bombing mission aided by political and military ruses" (NYT).

"Rebekah Mercer, the billionaire backer of Bannon and Trump, chooses sides."

WaPo reports. Excerpt:

Long before Trump stepped onto the campaign trail, the Mercer family and Bannon were drawing up schematics for an outsider populist presidential candidate who could topple the establishment. It was a dream years in the making. And now Trump, who fulfilled their hopes, has come between Mercer and Bannon, a further escalation of the conflict ripping through the president’s base....

In 2011, the future president first met Bannon to discuss a possible presidential run. The same year, the Mercers were introduced to conservative flamethrower Andrew Breitbart and Bannon, agreeing to invest $10 million into Breitbart News, according to the New Yorker. One stipulation of the Mercers’ deal was to place Bannon on the news company’s board. Breitbart died months later, which left the news operation in Bannon’s hands....

Sloppy Steve.

I authorized Zero access to White House (actually turned him down many times) for author of phony book! I never spoke to him for book. Full of lies, misrepresentations and sources that don’t exist. Look at this guy’s past and watch what happens to him and Sloppy Steve!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2018

Trump nicknames, ranked (best to worst):
Lyin' Ted
Rocket Man
Little Rocket Man
Little Marco
Sloppy Steve
Crooked Hillary
Sleepy Eyes Chuck Todd
Cryin' Chuck Schumer
Low Energy Jeb
Failing New York Times
Psycho Joe
Liddle Bob Corker
Pocahontas

— Olivia Nuzzi (@Olivianuzzi) January 5, 2018

BREAKING: Bannon gets his Forever Name: Sloppy Steve https://t.co/CnULrpiaxQ

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) January 5, 2018

ADDED:

Wait! @realDonaldTrump - On Oct 28 you gave ME the nickname “Sloppy Michael Moore” in one of your crazed tweets. Using the same nickname for TWO people...another sign of dementia! Unfit to serve!

— Michael Moore (@MMFlint) January 5, 2018

AND: "Sloppy" is good because Bannon looks extremely sloppy and there's also the idea that it was sloppy to leak so much (ick, bodily fluids) and to be so inattentive to what is true and what it means to be loyal.

The main problem is that Trump already used "sloppy" for Michael Moore.

With 2 data points on "sloppy," I get the impression that he feels disgust toward men who are fat and don't discreetly encapsulate the fat in a standard business suit (as he himself does).

"Amid the firestorm over Michael Wolff's forthcoming book 'Fire and Fury,' a lawyer for President Trump says legal action against Steve Bannon is 'imminent'..."

"... accusing the former White House aide of breaking a confidentiality and non-disparagement agreement he had signed with the Trump campaign," Axios reports.

Axios has "key excerpts" from Wolff's book show why Trump is "so livid." I expected these to be more surprising or disturbing, but it's the same kind of reporting on Trump that we've seen for the past year — disarray, in-fighting, short attention span. Seems like the main thing here is that Bannon was and is entirely disloyal to Trump.

Are Trump haters going to be Bannon fans now? From Axios:

[W]ithout Trump, Bannon would still be a colorful but little-known media executive and radio gadfly....

Despite knowing his trashing of President Trump was coming in Wolff's bombshell of a book, Bannon had continued talking to the president, and had even been telling friends he wanted to run Trump's reelection in 2020.

Bannon has described himself to friends as a "revolutionary" and not in an ironic way. He genuinely views himself as a transformational figure of history, who belongs in the history books. A source who knows Bannon well — and is mostly sympathetic to him — told us he thinks Bannon is even more narcissistic than Trump.

And... Bannon has also told friends he'd run for president in 2020 if Trump does not, knowing the same book would include his on-the-record argument that Mueller could topple Trump.

If so, then Bannon serves his own ambition when he offers up material with which to take down Trump. That should be a reason to mistrust him, but if you hate Trump and want him destroyed, you welcome Bannon, the man you once loathed. Should liberals allow their anti-Trump passion to speed Bannon along? Maybe they think that Bannon is so ugly and ridiculous and obviously evil that he could never get very far if he decides to run for President, but it's that kind of thinking that let Trump get so much traction that he could not be stopped.