Posted on 05/13/2022 3:01:04 AM PDT by Kaslin
Mark Esper, President Donald Trump's last confirmed secretary of defense, has been the toast of all the networks this week for his new memoir, starting with the high-profile debut on "60 Minutes" with CBS anchor Norah O'Donnell. Then came CNN and MSNBC and PBS and NPR and Fox News.
That doesn't even count the massive sharing of soundbites from these interviews, mostly dedicated to the unending hunger for "tell us all the crazy crap Trump said next" anecdotes. The last president's failure to accept the certified election results and his failure to call off Jan. 6 rioters may be the craziest stuff.
Other than Bret Baier of Fox News -- surely the most skeptical of the lot -- the toughest question Esper faced was, how could he stand ever taking a job with Trump, and why on Earth did he hang around?
Put that parade aside for a minute for a much more general point about "tell-all" books. Try for a few minutes to remember the "tell-all" books that emerged from Bill Clinton's cabinet and White House inner circle. Maybe you can come up with "Locked in the Cabinet" by Labor Secretary Robert Reich (1997). That wasn't a rip-roaring "tell-all." Then there's "All Too Human" by George Stephanopoulos (1999). The network interviewers threw questions about how he looked like an "ingrate" and a "backstabber," inquiries that aren't often thrown at Republican tattlers. But by that time, he was an ABC News star.
Former FBI Director Louis Freeh wrote critically of Clinton in his memoir "My FBI," and that made "60 Minutes," but that was in 2005, which was not exactly timely.
Then repeat the imaginative exercise and attempt to list the "tell-all" books from President Barack Obama's cabinet and inner circle. OK, that's too funny to contemplate, as if anyone would dare toss gossipy dirt at Barack and Michelle Obama, revered like secular saints. One could joke that Obama's cabinet couldn't be defined as "insiders," since he didn't meet them much.
This is not to say that conservative authors and conservative publishers didn't write critical books, but the "mainstream" networks and newspapers weren't going to treat them like anything but tabloid trash.
Here's the point of the exercise: The book publishing industry is like a slow-motion version of the liberal media. They have all the same ideological reflexes and the same desires on who they should celebrate and who they should ruin. So we had all kinds of Ronald Reagan-ripping books, both during and long after his presidency. Likewise, the Bushes have been dipped in boiling literary oil more than a few times.
Then came Trump. "Tell-all" book season started before the first anniversary of his inauguration -- with Michael Wolff's shakily sourced "Fire and Fury." Four years later, Esper is merely the latest. From Omarosa to Anthony Scaramucci to Mary Trump, publishers could count on bitter Democrats and ex-Republicans to leap on every gossipy morsel.
The same goes for newspaper bigfoots like Bob Woodward, who has a trilogy of anti-Trump books titled "Fear," "Rage" and "Peril."
So it's not too early to speculate that there will be no "tell-all" season for insider books on the Biden White House. Instead, the pro-Biden media just performed a cream-puff carousel for Biden's sister Valerie discussing her book, "Growing Up Biden." They already demonstrated their pathetic toothlessness in promoting Hunter Biden's memoir.
Unless there's another Trump book, Woodward might have to spend the next few years writing on some other Washington bigfoot, like he once did for Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan. Perhaps he will chronicle the wondrous bureaucratic insider Anthony Fauci.
I noticed this this week. Esper was definitely being fluffed.
He is slime.
Milley should have been cashiered as well.
Esper looks, talks and acts like a weasel. He should never have been hired, which is what I have to say for an awful lot of the people Trump put in positions of authority and which is why I am hoping he steps aside for De Santis.
The Dollar and 15 cent store bargain bins are overflowing with all the anti-President Trump garbage.
Every Trump cabinet appointee would have been appointed and confirmed if DeSantis was in the White House. That includes a “weasel” like Esper. It ESPECIALLY includes weasels like Esper.
Ron DeSantis has been groomed for a political career. He’s an establishment Republican through and through, and has never held a job outside government. I don’t know what would make any rational person think he has any latitude for independence in a political leadership position.
I look at DeSantis’ record as governor, which has been damned good.
Esper looks, talks and acts like a weasel.
Yep, Esper is a weasel. But Trump had to choose from a list of weasels. At that point it was choose an approved of weasel or try to get an outsider through congressional approval. Esper turned out to be a terrible choice, but there weren’t any better ones to be had.
That has nothing to do with my point about cabinet appointments. Do you think DeSantis is going to bring his whole Florida cabinet with him to Washington?
Wasn’t there a book on the Obama administration called “Bathhouse Barry and Big Mike: The Power Duo at the Whitehouse”?
I don’t know much about his Florida cabinet but they would have to be better than the people who Trump selected, with exceptions of course. Rex Tillerson at State? Esper at DoD? Raving neocons like John Bolton at NSC? Wray at FBI? I could go on.
Every one of those clowns would be a leading candidate for a DeSantis cabinet post. Hell — I wouldn’t even be going out on a limb in predicting that John Bolton would be his top choice for Secretary of State.
“ At that point it was choose an approved of weasel or try to get an outsider through congressional approval. ”
Is addition what outsider wants to have his life ruined when the propaganda media does a deep dive into the entire life of that candidate and his entire family back to when they were in grade school? The propaganda media does not even need facts to mess up a person’s life. Articles headlined “some say” or “according to reports” , anonymous of course, are enough.
Many of Trump’s nominees had to wait many months for the confirmation process to be completed. What happens to his regular life during this time? The insiders in DC are evil and have no concern for ordinary Americans.
Mark Esper has been the toast of all the networks this week.
He agent found some suckers who are willing to take his bait for sales.
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