In Many Ways, the Wolff Book Will Actually Help Trump

It is increasingly clear that we live in an upside-down world where the impact of events is very often the opposite of what logic would have formerly dictated. Consequently, it is usually a safe bet that anything that seems like a really bad development for President Trump will actually turn out, at least in part and for the short-run, pretty well for him.

Such is the case, counter-intuitively, with the Michael Wolff book, Fire and Fury, which has so dominated the news cycle for this first week in 2018.

To be clear, while I have already raised still-unanswered questions about Wolf’s methods and the credibility of some key elements in the book, in a “normal” era, the portrait he paints of Trump would be devastating in nearly every way and cause significant consequences for a sitting president. Heck, just the President of the United States actively trying to stop a book from being published should have been cause enough for a resounding rebuke from his own party (can you imagine Fox News Channel if Barack Obama had tried that?!).

Most of the objections to the book have either been very general, or, like taking Wolff’s statement that some of the book is untrue (because those in the Trump White House have such disregard for the truth), are very much out of context. Of course, no one within the White House has even tried to explain how or why Wolff, now portrayed as this obviously horrible man, was allowed such access there to begin with.

There is no doubt that there are factual inaccuracies and journalistic liberties in Wolff’s work. However, the core message of the tome, that Trump is thoroughly and uniquely unfit to be the leader of the free world, has been effectively unchallenged by everyone except Trump himself tweeting, rather ironically, about what a “stable” “genius” he really is (I am SO glad we finally got that issue settled!).

Now, there may be SOME ramifications for Trump from this. For instance, it is probable that the already-chaotic work environment at the White House may now be completely untenable for some who work there. There may also be some, possibly rather minor, implications from the book with regard to the Russia investigation.

However, I would argue that the pluses for Trump because of Wolff’s book may very well outweigh the negatives. After all, no Trump fan is going to bother to pay money to read something that Trump and his allies are telling them is just more “Fake News!” from a media which is dead-set on trying to destroy him because they hate America. The only people who will read/believe Wolff are those who already know that Trump is a menace to society.

But the real benefit to Trump comes in how he is now completely inoculated from nearly any personal charge which would be incendiary enough to get the attention of a dangerously desensitized public. Now, after he has already been called by those close to him a semi-literate, unqualified moron, who is quickly losing his mental faculties, what can possibly be said to move the needle? The extreme popularity of the “Gorilla Channel” spoof of Wolff’s book proves this point quite conclusively.

This phenomenon is already having an impact on even the anti-Trump elements of the news media. Watching CNN try their hardest last night to work up a lather about the latest revelation that Trump supposedly tried to stop Jeff Sessions from recusing himself from the Russia investigation was like seeing married men pretending to be excited about their long-time wife’s new dress.

There’s just (almost) nothing that we could learn now which would get those of us not in the “Trump Cult” to say, “Holy crap!” Therefore, you have about 35% of the population not believing a damn word that anyone in the non “conservative” media says about Trump, and most of the rest of the electorate so anesthetized by the insanity that nearly no new allegation could provoke them to real outrage.

This, as sad and dangerous as it is, is actually a pretty good spot for Trump to be in right now.

There is also the fact that the Wolff book appears to have given Trump the ability to rid the cancerous Steve Bannon from his orbit and potentially render his former top aide politically castrated. This development, along with the passage of the tax cut law, may be just enough, with a little of Trump’s luck/genius, to stave off a complete electoral catastrophe in the coming midterm elections.

It has often been said that the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing while expecting a different result. Those who believe that the Wolff book’s impact on Trump will be any different than most of what we have seen for the past 2-3 years are almost as nuts as the person portrayed in Fire and Fury.

John Ziegler hosts a weekly podcast focusing on news media issues and is a documentary filmmaker. You can follow him on Twitter at @ZigManFreud or email him at johnz@mediaite.com.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.