BOOK REVIEW: ‘Siege: Trump Under Fire’ by Michael Wolff

OPINION:

SIEGE: TRUMP UNDER FIRE

By Michael Wolff

Henry Holt and Company, $30, 335 pages

During the week before this book’s publication, The New York Times ran two full feature articles in that week’s issues, apparently attempting to distance itself from the book, which would soon be riding the paper’s own bestseller list, and from its author, with his disregard “for the usual fact-checking procedures valued by reporters at mainstream news outlets.”

They make the obvious points: Although Steve Bannon, one of the chief sources in “Fire and Fury,” left the White House in 2017, he continues in that role here; Mr. Wolff has not visited the White House in the past two years and is not close to people now employed there; and several of his most sensational claims in this one — among them that Robert Mueller had drafted an indictment of the president on obstruction charges — have been officially refuted, the result of faulty or non-existent sourcing.

To some, this apparent effort by The Times to discredit Mr. Wolff’s journalistic methods in advance of publication, and specifically his sourcing, could be an attempt to discourage their readers from confusing their daily dose of harsh criticism of the president, on both their editorial and news pages, with the Wolffian approach, although the sourcing is often equally anonymous — thereby raising the possibility of a measure of fakery, no doubt justified by the writers and editors as serving the public good.

As Jill Abramson, the only female executive editor ever of The New York Times put it, the paper’s news pages are “unmistakably anti-Trump.” And perhaps never has this total anti-Trump focus been more evident than when The Times published its briefly famous and unprecedented unsigned front-page anti-Trump op-ed by an anonymous “senior official” in the Trump administration.

Mr. Wolff approves the consternation and confusion it caused in the White House. But he also mentions the strained and unconvincing explanations of sourcing and authorship: “’The writer,” said the editor responding to a query, “’was introduced to us by an intermediary whom we know and trust.’” And that’s it. So much for sourcing, and as far as we know the op-ed could have been written by a jumped-up federal careerist protecting his pension or a committee of New York Times editorialists.

But Mr. Wolff isn’t concerned with The Times’ editorial or sourcing inconsistencies. More power to them. In fact, they’re in the same business, attacking this administration. As Mr. Wolff and The Times have proved beyond a doubt, anti-Trump sells. And in fact, much of what we read in Mr. Wolff’s latest we’ve also read in The Times, substantiated by unnamed sources.

There are exceptions. Mr. Wolff, with all the taste and delicacy of an old-school New York gossip columnist, has no compunctions about dealing with the sleazier rumor-sourced material. He tells us that the Trump marriage is a sham; that Melania spends most of her time in Maryland, in a house she bought for her parents, and although she’s a caring mother, the president has little or no relationship with their son, Barron.

The president, we are told, although no new names are supplied, continues his womanizing, and Mr. Wolff repeats a truly foul rumor involving former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, one of the truly admirable women involved in Republican politics.

We are told that the president was vociferous in his defense of Harvey Weinstein; that he doesn’t like Mike Pence; that he makes racist and anti-Semitic comments in private; that he seriously considered withdrawing his nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court because of his Catholicism.

And then there’s Mr. Wolff’s primary source, the exiled Steve Bannon, who nevertheless still claims to be in touch. Of the characterization of the Trump organization as “a semi-criminal enterprise,” he tells Mr. Wolff, “’I think we can drop the ’semi’ part.’” Mr. Bannon continues in this vein, in the process speculating on the possibility of suicide.

And where will all this take Mr. Wolff’s book? As he knows, yellow journalism still sells, and his book will hit the best-seller list at The New York Times, where the news sections of the paper seem increasingly inclined to shed the remaining restraints imposed by the journalistic ethics of another age and join Mr. Wolff in pursuit of a president.

• John R. Coyne Jr., a former White House speechwriter, is co-author of “Strictly Right: William F. Buckley Jr. and the American Conservative Movement” (Wiley).