There is an odd and unusual quality to this account of the first few years of the administration of Donald Trump. Perhaps it is not so unusual in relation to other books on the same topic such as Fire and Fury and Fear. It is tough to say if one has not read other critical accounts of what life is like inside the White House with an Oval Office occupied by a serial filer of bankruptcies, a Presidential candidate who pays off porn stars to keep quiet and CEO who is capable of firing people to face when acting in a role on television, but does not seem capable of actually doing it in real life. Weirdness pervades the Trump White House much like it does a David Lynch movie so maybe the behind-the-scenes accounts of everyday life within that weirdness should only be expected to have an odd quality to it.
What is it, in particular, that is so odd? Well, to take just particularly startling example, consider the reported account of what Donald J. Trump said to his White House Chief of Staff at the time, John Kelly, upon his first official visit to Hawaii to oversee the anniversary of the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor. “Hey, John, what’s this all about? What’s this a tour of?” The authors go on to observe of this moment: “If Trump had learned about `a date which will live in infamy’ in school, it hadn’t really pierced his consciousness or stuck with him.”
Now, there are really just two perfectly legitimate ways to respond to reading this. One way—and it is absolutely reasonable even as it also reveals a complete obliviousness to the wealth of information that had been presented in the public consciousness between the inauguration of Donald Trump and the publication of this book—is to question the authenticity of the source which conveyed this exchange to the authors. The only other legitimate response is horror that someone so bereft of the even the most basic grasp of American history is the leader of the free world.
And yet, when the book was published and excerpts and highlights were released which included the passage which reveals that the sitting President of the United States has no idea of the significance of Pearl Harbor, there was collective shrug from those who did not just automatically outright reject the authenticity of the story. To describe that reaction merely as “odd and unusual” is, of course, purposely understatement. It is not merely odd, it is terrifying. It is not unusual; by this point in history, it is only to be expected.
To a great many people who disapprove of Donald J. Trump on everything because the collective weight of all that he has done in the past makes disapproval the only logical choice, a great mystery has attached itself to the man: why do his supporters accept everything he does or says with a grain of salt no matter how egregious or revealing of his basic lack fitness for the job. The truth is that there is no great mystery to solve; it is all laid out in this book on nearly every single page. Every person who works on the White House staff, is a member of the Cabinet, is a Republican lawmaker in Congress or who simply still support and intend to vote for his re-election in 2020 put up with all that capacity for being the most unqualified person to ever hold the reins of power in America for just one single and quite simple reason: they are getting something they desperately want that they might not get with anyone else in the job.
It really is as simple as that. Page after page after page reveals a genuinely breathtaking ability of truly astounding number of people to willfully ignore everything they may find personally repugnant about Donald Trump the man because Donald Trump the President is giving them something they really want. The secret lesson to be gained by reading between the lines, of course, is figuring how just exactly what Trump has delivered on among the many promises he made that have yet to be fulfilled. Figure out what he has actually given his supporters and A Very Stable Genius becomes something much greater than mere behind-the-scenes juicy account of a White House in chaos. It becomes a clearly define portrait of the psychology of the whole MAGA gang as a collective unit.
