As the new year begins, an infuriated Donald Trump says his onetime consigliere, Steve Bannon, has lost his mind. And that’s just the beginning. The work year started Tuesday with a 17-tweet day for Trump. And the next day, excerpt from a Michael Wolff tell-all book on the Trump’s first year appeared, in which Bannon called Don Jr.’s meeting with the Russians “treasonous” and Ivanka “dumb as a brick.” Then he got personal. Meanwhile, Trump responded as you’d guess he would, putting out a statement that when Bannon was fired, “he not only lost his job, he lost his mind.” Via The New York Times.
Why was Trump so upset about Michael Wolff’s book, “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House”? According to a Washington Post reading, Trump was portrayed as unprepared, uninformed, lacking focus and terrified that he had won. But he did watch a lot of cable TV.
A New York magazine excerpt from Wolff’s book: No one in the Trump campaign believed he had any chance to win. The Washington Post writes that Wolff’s book is unbelievable — some of it literally so.
From The National Review, David French writes that if Trump has finally cut himself off from Bannon, it would be one of the best moves of his presidency.
Trump’s button may be bigger, but in his exchange of taunts with Kim Jong-un, he has made the presidency much smaller. Via The New Yorker.
Meanwhile, in the midst of all the turmoil, Trump semi-quietly disbanded his commission on voter fraud, which was being sued by nearly everyone, including even one of the commissioners. Via Vox. And Paul Manafort sues Robert Mueller and asks a judge to limit the scope of the special counsel’s probe. Via The New York Times.
The young may be turning increasingly Democratic, but The Atlantic finds that the future of Trumpism as a force in the Republican Party can be found on college campuses.
Trump seems to be out to get the Palestinians, but the Palestinians seem to have absolutely no strategy for fighting back. Via Foreign Policy.
Long read (very long read), but well worth the time for those who care about journalism in America: James Risen on his time as national security reporter for The New York Times during the time of the war on terror. Risen’s battles with the Bush administration were nothing compared to his battles with the Times editors. Via Intercept.
