Larry D. Lauer

The release over the weekend of the new book about the inner workings of the White House reveals just how much confusion the latest digital media revolution has created about what is really going on in the world.

24/7 cable news and social media contribute to the confusion by releasing hourly flows of unedited news and commentary. Even mainstream White House journalists inadvertently contribute to the confusion by being careful how they report what they know. Otherwise they fear losing their daily access. Add to this news releases from lobbyists, PR firms, businesses, nonprofits, NGO’s, associations, embassy’s, and more, and you pretty much have mass confusion. Lies begin to sound true, expert disagreements further confuse, and tolerance for vulgarity and personal attacks becomes commonplace. Ultimately, everything turns to mush.

It takes a trustworthy author who can somehow slide inside a controversial situation like this and stay there long enough to pull together an accurate story out of the bits and pieces of daily activities. But it is important to note that even with the most reputable of authors these books are rarely perfectly accurate. As a writer of books myself, I can tell you that a few missteps almost always happen as a natural part of the complicated mental process of pulling together reams of notes and recordings.

So the challenge for the reader of Fire and Fury will be to decide whether or not this author’s professional integrity and judgment can be trusted. And then, based on other readings and investigations does his conclusion ring true?

What is frightening about this book is how true the overall message rings to so many established longtime journalists and scholars. Yes, some have already pointed out that this author has written other controversial books, and that his writing style has a dramatic novel-like flair. And yes, some have reported finding a few specific misquotes and mistakes. But the author promises that he has recordings of all his interviews and firmly asserts that virtually everyone he interviewed and talked with agrees with his conclusion: Mr. Trump behaves like a child, reads nothing, has little patience in a meeting, works fewer and fewer hours every day, and makes everything completely about himself.

So my recommendation to you is this: Read the book and reflect on everything else you have read and believe to be true. Do this, and at the very least I think you will come away paying even more attention to every one of Mr. Trump’s future tweets and disruptive pronouncements. This is not just Trump being Trump. It could be a matter of life and death for millions.