Michael Wolff’s book “Fire and Fury” hijacked the news cycle this week.
Fantastical tales of a White House in disarray, administrative turmoil, and anecdotes aplenty meant to justify Trump’s “unfitness” for the Oval Office made for some captivating reading.
Excerpts allegedly quoting former White House aide Steve Bannon ignited a scorched earth flame war between the embittered exiled aide and Trump.
Immediately, certain parts of the story were called to question as they didn’t hold up to basic fact-checking, begging the question: How much of “Fire and Fury” is true?
Wolff himself isn’t entirely sure all parts of the book he’s peddling as the ultimate insider account of Trump’s first year are actually true. In fact, he knows some of his sources were telling tall tales, yet chose to include their stories anyway.
From Business Insider:
The author of the explosive new book about Donald Trump’s presidency acknowledged in an author’s note that he wasn’t certain all of its content was true.Michael Wolff, the author of “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” included a note at the start that casts significant doubt on the reliability of the specifics contained in the rest of its pages.Several of his sources, he says, were definitely lying to him, while some offered accounts that flatly contradicted those of others.But some were nonetheless included in the vivid account of the West Wing’s workings, in a process Wolff describes as “allowing the reader to judge” whether the sources’ claims are true.In other cases, the media columnist said, he did use his journalistic judgment and research to arrive at what he describes “a version of events I believe to be true.”
“Allowing the reader to judge”? What is this, a Choose Your Own Adventure book?
The whole ordeal is garbage and as Professor Jacobson discussed last week, noise.
Truth doesn’t matter. What matters to many on both sides of the aisle is that their point of view is continually confirmed by stories that stroke their chosen reality:
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