red dot

A couple of days ago I completed that Fire and Fury book about Trump. I've already commented that it felt like the book was going out of date faster than I could read it. The narrative finished sometime in October, so there's the last few missing months, weeks and days.

Usually I pay attention to the 'long waves', which tend to iron out the buzzy moves of a 24 hour news cycle. It's far more difficult with Trump, because of the sheer volume of interference frequencies that operate all of the time.

It was similar with this book. Noisy in its own right, it was also looking in a certain direction. Although wide-angled, it showed certain major interests, such as Jarvanka and Bannon. As an example, when there was an inference of a link to, say, Russia, or to, say, organised crime, this book would deal more with how the inference was handled rather than what the inference was actually about. I suppose the author had to draw lines in order to get something published.

But the directionality means that (for example) the Christopher Steele dossier (pp 37-39, 92-93, 102, 151, 156) and the Glenn Simpson data digging (not listed) can still seem somewhat underplayed. Maybe the ongoing Mueller investigation will have more to say about it, assuming Trump doesn't find a reason to remove him.

Trump's pseudo-monopoly power gives him so many strings to pull. It means on a matter involving his personal integrity he believes he owns all of the 'get out of jail cards'.

Presidential privilege, a fistful of lawyers, a massive genius bigger-than-big tilt button (the biggest) to press whenever he likes, even the recent resurrection of a 24 year old Espy case. He can do what he likes to avoid having to stand up to proper questioning about any of his curious past or as he calls it the 'Democrat hoax'.

Today's US Embassy in London excuse is another example. He suspects it wouldn't be a popular visit. For starters, he wouldn't be rewarded with full pomp and shiny-shiny, so he incorrectly blames the previous president for the selection of Nine Elms as siting for the new embassy, away from the prior Mayfair.


But before we've had a chance to visit the embassy construction site to pose next to the Madame Tussauds waxwork figure, he's already moved on to racially slurring a range of countries (which he now denies). And so it goes on.

What did come through clearly in the book was that the narcissistic sun-god man-child doesn't like to be confused by facts and uses a simple red dot approach to clearing out people he doesn't like. Nothing subtle, just a straight line to the target.

And that target can be anyone who could make him look secondary.