Wolff tells a broad, jumpy, event-laden story about Trump’s shambolic final year ... a smart, vivid and intrepid book. [Wolff] has great instincts. I read it in two or three sittings ... It’s the book that this era and this subject probably deserve ... Wolff has an eye for status details.
Wolff’s method is essentially the same as...many other inside stories about highest-level politics: He uses lots of detailed off-the-record interviews with aides to produce a tale told in a third-person omniscient voice, without conventional journalistic attribution ... Books like this usually burst out of the gate with a few newsmaking anecdotes, and Wolff does provide some of these ... But the strength of Landslide comes less from these stories and more from a coherent argument that Wolff, in partnership with his sources, makes about how we should understand the period between Nov. 3 and Jan. 20. Most quickly produced books about political events don’t do that ... Wolff raises a...fundamental and frightening possibility: that the lesson of Trump is that in a democratic society, a malign and dangerous 'crazy person,' especially one with a deep instinctive understanding of public opinion and the media, can become genuinely popular. Millions of Americans love Trump. As Wolff points out, after Jan. 6, his standing in the polls went up. This is not an abstract or theoretical concern. Wolff doesn’t make a direct prediction. But he leaves us with the strong impression that Trump will be running for president again in 2024.
... a very entertaining book. It is sordid and foul-mouthed, darkly funny, appropriately excoriating of its main subject, and entirely addictive, and in that sense, it is a very good book ... What Wolff doesn’t want to grasp...is how this kind of isn’t-it-hilarious politics-as-entertainment media coverage of Trump is what led to Trump’s shocking rise in the first place; it’s what keeps him powerful and relevant and may enable his comeback. In that sense, this is a troubling, lackadaisical book written by a man who breezily shirks his most basic professional and moral obligations ... [Trumpism is] a sad and dark story, and even though we’re still in the middle of it, lots of people have gotten bored or simply exhausted. The Wolff version, with its cast of imbeciles and incompetents and adult babies who could have been pulled from an HBO writer’s room, is a far sunnier read, insofar as its big takeaway is: It was an even crazier ride than you thought, but the wheels of democracy stayed on. One worries, though, that Wolff has turned his back to the road and doesn’t see that we’re still hurtling toward a cliff.
If Donald Trump seems like a distant, bad dream, Michael Wolff’s pacily readable account of his last months as president warns that we shouldn’t write him off yet ... it uncovers new depths of dysfunction there. Wolff had peerless access to the White House operation and has an enviable ability to put us in the room ... the main players are augmented and at times obscured by a collection of misfits, oddballs, grifters and wackos. The Trump children get few mentions, Melania only two. Even the orange ogre himself is often felt rather than seen, through the reaction of aides to his raging tweets, phone calls and lashings out. Trump’s own brush with Covid is rushed over, and Joe Biden features only as a paper demon to be overcome. There’s no talk of policy because there is no coherent policy, just an obsession with winning, slavish loyalty and media spin. It’s a vivid portrait of a regime governed by chaos and venal favouritism, where trusted staffers could become bitter enemies in a moment ... There are many moments of comedy here ... But it’s not really funny. Wolff chillingly renders the Capitol attack through snapshot quotation from cellphone footage ... Even as we marvel at the madness and the delusion, the awful facts of Trump’s popularity and his counter-intuitive ‘relatability’ remain.
God help me, but I inhaled Landslide, gobbled it up despite the notorious opaqueness of Michael Wolff’s reporting methods, his overfondness for the word quite, and the suspicion that several of his sources are former Trump administration staffers seeking to launder their reputations ... Wolff is good at ontological flights...which would seem florid if applied to anything other than the madness and confusion of the postelection White House. Surely the reportage and probably the writing in I Alone Can Fix It...will be better than Landslide’s. But the sheer, freaky liftoff from the planet Earth that constituted Trump’s response to his defeat at the polls cries out for the sort of meta rumination that Wolff provides ... Landslide ends with an interview Wolff conducted with Trump, as repetitive, boring, and unrevealing as the nonstop diatribes the former president was famous for delivering in office.
... while it may not be the most important or valuable work in the summer library of Trump lit, it should stand as the worthiest among Wolff's own Trump trilogy, borrowing much of its seriousness from the harrowing events it describes ... His account lacks the degree of systematic reporting and the breadth and depth of sourcing that inform rival works, ultimately coming across as more of a beach read ... But Wolff has his gifts as a writer: a novelistic eye for scene and detail, an ear for dramatic dialogue. His story keeps moving, free of constraints common to courtroom lawyers or newspaper reporters ... Some of the salient assertions in his first two books were denied or at least disputed by officials with some authority. Wolff is scarcely alone in relying on unnamed or partially identified sources, although he does seem to attract more objections. That may be because he does not represent a major media institution. Or perhaps it is because his tone is so much more personal. His tales are conveyed as shared confidences rather than offers of evidence. And we should add that his narrative tends to be more entertaining, sailing swiftly ahead where others tend to grind. Much of this is about the novelistic sorts of judgments he offers freely about anything and everything. And that often means keeping story sources obscure, if not totally secret ... All good stories are rich in colorful characters, whether seen as good guys or bad, and Wolff gives us a gallery that does not disappoint.
... Michael Wolff has brought his Trump trilogy to a close ... The third is the best of the three, and that is saying plenty ... the author takes a long and nuanced view of the post-election debacle ... Wolff’s interview with Trump is notable ... Wolff is open to criticism when he argues that the path between the 6 January insurrection and Trump is less than linear. Those who stormed the Capitol may well have been Trump’s people, Wolff argues, but what happened was not his brainchild. Six months ago, Trump also put distance between himself and the day’s events. Not any more ... Wolff also fails to grapple with the trend in red states towards wresting control of elections from the electorate and putting them into the hands of Republican legislatures.
Wolff shrugs that Trump is 'nutso' and regards his calamitous administration as a 'shitshow'. Despite this nihilistic frivolity, Wolff’s attitude matches that of his subject ... Wolff’s jocular irresponsibility causes him one or two remorseful twinges ... Wolff can’t afford to sneer at the cynical double-dealing of Bannon or Murdoch. He needs access, while Trump – who previously threatened to sue Wolff but now flatters him as 'the most powerful reporter' – needs an outlet; each satisfies the other. Sadist and masochist are so intertwined that they merge in a sickly coital embrace ... Given Trump’s desire to monopolise our attention, I was pleased to find that he’s almost upstaged here by one of his brown-nosing flunkies. In a farcical subplot, Rudy Giuliani signs on as a catastrophically inept fixer and a supplier of useless legal advice ... The closest Wolff comes to reckoning with the damage done by these unhinged buffoons is in a couple of mock-epic slurs ... Trump may be bluffing about another presidential campaign in 2024; Wolff, however, must be itching for a chance to turn his bestselling trilogy into a tetralogy.
... [a] colorful if myopic account ... Wolff paints a scathing portrait ... while Wolff’s anecdotes astound, he fails to put these events in a larger context, leaving the question of why Trump’s 'ham-handed' disinformation campaign convinced so many Americans unanswered. The result is a dismaying yet unenlightening rehash of recent events.
