Not to put too fine a point on it, but Anonymous can bite me. I have no intention of shelling out a dime to read about how someone almost ran into the burning house to save the baby, or about how someone almost gave up their seat in the lifeboat when the great ship went down, or about how someone almost dove into a freezing river to save a busload of nuns, or, for that matter, about how someone almost decided not to be a part of the most monstrous executive administration since the (un)death of Vlad The Impaler. I am not interested in someone's heartfelt account of their near-collision with actual integrity. I decline to be fascinated by the tale of how someone nearly ran into courage on the street but had to catch a bus instead. Like I said, Anonymous can anonymously bite me.

The excerpts from the book are as garish in their horror as you might expect them to be. From the Washington Post:



The author alleges that Trump attempted a Hispanic accent during an Oval Office meeting to complain about migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. “We get these women coming in with like seven children,” Trump said, according to the book. “They are saying, ‘Oh, please help! My husband left me!’ They are useless. They don’t do anything for our country. At least if they came in with a husband we could put him in the fields to pick corn or something.”



After the 2018 killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents, the author writes, Trump vented to advisers and said he would be foolish to stand up to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. “Do you know how stupid it would be to pick this fight?” Trump said, according to the book. “Oil would go up to one hundred fifty dollars a barrel. Jesus. How [expletive] stupid would I be?”



As he ranted about federal courts ruling against some of his policies, including the 2017 travel ban, the author writes, Trump once asked White House lawyers to draft a bill to send to Congress reducing the number of federal judges. “Can we just get rid of the judges? Let’s get rid of the [expletive] judges,” the president said, according to the book. “There shouldn’t be any at all, really.” The author portrays Trump as fearful of coups against him and suspicious of note-takers on his staff. According to the book, the president shouted at an aide who was scribbling in a notebook during a meeting, “What the [expletive] are you doing?” He added, “Are you [expletive] taking notes?” The aide apologized and closed the notebook.



Yeah, and?



Breaking news from Anonymous: the president is nuts. Getty Images

This was all stuff that we knew before he got elected. This is all stuff we knew before he was nominated. Yet Anonymous took a job in Bedlam anyway, and, as nearly as we can tell, still works there. I’m not buying for a minute that A and the "Steady State” did so to keep the president* from acting upon his own paranoia and bigotry. He never was going to change, and we knew that all along, too. They took the jobs because they were White House jobs. (And Anonymous’s attempt to recast John Kelly, the architect of the detention policies at the border, as some kind of moderating force is laughable.) And even if you believe that the author is in it to keep the president* on the rails, the author certainly has to know by now that it’s not possible to do so.



So, no, thanks. I’ll stick with the witnesses who appear in public and who explain under oath the breadth and depth of the corruption afflicting our politics, and I’ll leave the guessing game to the easily distracted, upon whom this president* depends.



And, anyway, I still think it’s Tiffany.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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