Siege is US author Michael Wolff’s second foray into the weird world of the 45th president of the US, Donald Trump, after the blockbuster Fire and Fury, which chronicled the opening act of the Trump presidency.
According to the cognoscenti, Siege is something of an anticlimax, and Wolff’s legion of detractors have had a field day pointing out its errors. Its greatest failing, if one can call it that, is no fault of the author’s, but rather has to do with the strange turn of events that accompanied the investigation of special counsel Robert Mueller.
His report, it was commonly believed, would provide the ammunition for impeaching and dumping Trump. Instead, it caused a few lesser figures to be jailed, and Trump was able to emerge unscathed, proclaiming there was “no collusion”. Trump’s denouement was meant to have been the book’s rousing climax. Instead Trump has emerged stronger, and certainly the beloved “base” of deplorables can’t find fault with him.
Siege provides a riveting and lurid depiction of the man occupying the White House, and the characters he has surrounded himself with.
Its main source is the alt-right high priest Steve Bannon, a former Goldman Sachs investment banker who masterminded Trump’s unlikely journey to the presidency.
That Bannon is the predominant source, has attracted much criticism, given his right-wing views and his casual acquaintance with the truth. Towards the end, Bannon ruefully remarks of Mueller (according to Wolff): “Never send a marine to do a hit man’s job”.
Wolff’s characterisation of Trump should make every person who cares about the future of the free world very worried.
In it, Trump comes across as the ultranarcissist. Far from being a right-winger populist intent on pressing his antediluvian agenda, he appears to be a man with no agenda at all, save for his overweening concern about how he is viewed by his colleagues and the world.
Inattentive, careless and without a sliver of erudition, he is convinced of his own superiority. He is quoted as saying: “It’s playing the game. I’m good at the game. Maybe I’m the best. Really, I could be the best. I think I am the best. I’m very good. Very cool. Most people are afraid that the worst might happen. But it doesn’t, unless you’re stupid. And I’m not stupid.”
I’m good at the game. Maybe I’m the best. Really, I could be the best. I think I am the best. I’m very good. Very cool
— Donald Trump
Having evaded the law all his working life, Trump’s presidency is more of the same: a duel with legality. Never mind that he is hopelessly out of his depth with the Russian dictator, Vladimir Putin, or that he probably couldn’t have pointed out North Korea on the map before his meeting with Kim Jong Un.
Trump listens to no-one, and his characteristic way of dealing with people, especially women critics, is to belittle them by calling them names and mocking them.
He is openly derisive of his elder son, Don Jr, he calls his son-in-law Jared Kushner “a girl” and he openly mocks his staff. He is the sun at the centre of a universe of chaos.
Ironically, it may well be, concludes Wolff, that he will get away with it.
He concludes, regarding the Mueller near-miss: “Once again, he had dodged a potential death blow. But his exoneration changed little because he was still guilty of being Donald Trump. It was not only that his very nature would continue to repulse a majority of the nation, as well as almost everybody who came into working contact with him, but it would lead him again and again to the brink of personal destruction”.
Trump is likely to dismiss all the arrows thrown at him as “fake news”. He dumped Bannon for talking to Wolff for the first book, but Bannon has continued to talk, as have so many White House staffers amazed at the chaos that has become part of their lives.
The book provides fascinating insights into Trump and the family, titillating and entertaining.
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