POSTED BY MARTIN KICH
John Wilson, one of the co-editors of this blog, has written a newly published book on Donald Trump. It looks as if it will be every bit as lively and engaging as his previous books.
Here is the information on the book provided on the website of the publisher, OR Books:
TRUMP UNVEILED
Exposing the Bigoted Billionaire
“A guy calls me a genius and they want me to renounce him? I’m not going to renounce him.”
—Donald Trump on Vladimir Putin (Dallas, TX, June 16, 2016)
“I know words, I have the best words. I have the best, but there is no better word than stupid.”
—Donald Trump (Hilton Head Island, SC, December 30, 2015)
As the man himself might say, there’s so much to write about! There’s racist Trump, sexist Trump, bankrupt Trump, lying Trump, paranoid Trump, clueless Trump, conman Trump, bullying Trump, and more. Here, in one lovingly researched and slim volume, is Trump stripped bare: the truth behind the glitz. If it sounds frightening, it is: the man who might well be the next President of the United States has the integrity of roadkill.
Never before in American history has anyone quite like Donald Trump gotten so close to the presidency. He’s been called America’s savior, a demagogue, and a potential dictator. Whether or not he is elected this November, it behooves us to know the facts about the man—and yes, there are plenty to be had.
Buy it now—before he sues to cover up Trump Unveiled!
250 pages • Paperback ISBN 978-1-682190-72-2 • E-book 978-1-682190-73-9
John K. Wilson is the author of seven books, including Barack Obama: This Improbable Quest,Newt Gingrich: Capitol Crimes and Misdemeanors,Patriotic Correctness: Academic Freedom and Its Enemies, and The Most Dangerous Man in America: Rush Limbaugh’s Assault on Reason. He is the co-editor of AcademeBlog.org and the editor of Illinois Academe. He has a Ph.D. in education from Illinois State University, and is the co-organizer of the Chicago Book Expo and the Evanston Literary Festival.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Trump the Narcissist
Chapter 1: Lying Trump
Chapter 2: Bankrupt Trump
Chapter 3: Trumping Civil Liberties
Chapter 4: Paranoid Trump
Chapter 5: Racist Trump
Chapter 6: Sexist Trump
Chapter 7: The Politically Incorrect Trump
Conclusion: The Danger of Donald Trump
. . . . The myth that Trump opposed the war in Iraq is one of the most frequent lies Trump tells. Trump said about Hillary Clinton, “She’s the one who raised her hand for the war in Iraq and I’m the one who has been fighting it from the beginning.” There were some people opposing the war in Iraq from the beginning, but Trump definitely wasn’t one of them. To the contrary, Trump had been supporting war in Iraq for more than a decade, and only began criticizing it when things went badly.
Trump declared that the invasion of Iraq was “one of the worst decisions in the history of our country, perhaps the worst.” But contrary to what he claims now, it was a decision he embraced. On Sept. 11, 2002, Trump was asked if he supported invading Iraq, and his answer was, “Yeah, I guess so” and added a reference to his past support for a total invasion of Iraq: “I wish the first time it was done correctly.” On the first day of the war, Trump praised it as a “tremendous success from a military standpoint” and predicted the stock market would “go up like a rocket.”
By March 25, 2003, Trump was declaring, “The war’s a mess” after the US mistakenly shot down a British jet. But that was a critique of the way the war was fought. Even by September 11, 2003, Trump did not explicitly oppose the war in Iraq, saying, “It wasn’t a mistake to fight terrorism and fight it hard, and I guess maybe if I had to do it, I would have fought terrorism but not necessarily Iraq.” On November 4, 2003, Trump supported Bush and the war in Iraq: “he is on a course that has to stay.” On December 15, 2003, Trump said, “Some people agree and some people don’t agree, but we are there. And if we are there, you have to take down Saddam Hussein.” And even if Trump was now slightly skeptical about starting the war, he was firmly opposed to ending it: “We are there now, we have to stay, we have to win, otherwise we just won’t have the same respect.”
By April 16, 2004, Trump had re-written history to proclaim himself an opponent of the war: “I was never a fan of Iraq, going in, because, this guy used to keep the terrorists out. He’d kill the terrorists.” And Trump espoused a theory that certain countries must be run by dictators: “To think that when we leave, it’s gonna be this nice democratic country. I mean, gimme a break. There’s usually a reason why a country is run a certain way.” For a U.S. President to imagine that totalitarian rule is essential for some countries is a particularly dangerous mindset.
In 2016, when Trump was pressed to explain his comments, he said: “What I mean by that is it almost shouldn’t have been done and, you know, I really don’t even know what I mean, because that was a long time ago and who knows what was in my head?”
In a 2016 CNN Town Hall, Trump tried and failed to explain what he was thinking: “When you’re in the private sector, you know, you get asked things and, you know, you’re not a politician and probably the first time I was asked. By the time the war started, I was against it. And shortly thereafter, I was really against it.”
During a 2016 Republican debate, Trump declared: “I’m the only one on this stage that said, ‘Do not go into Iraq. Do not attack Iraq.’ Nobody else on this stage said that. And I said it loud and strong. And I was in the private sector. I wasn’t a politician, fortunately. But I said it, and I said it loud and clear, ‘You’ll destabilize the Middle East.’ That’s exactly what happened.” That’s exactly what didn’t happen. Trump never said it “loud and strong.” In fact, no one ever stepped forward to say that they ever heard Trump say anything like that, even privately. He certainly never opposed the war in Iraq publicly.
By contrast, Hillary Clinton warned that an invasion of Iraq was “fraught with danger” and noted that “after shots are fired and bombs are dropped, not all consequences are predictable.” Clinton’s mistake was to trust George W. Bush; Trump, by contrast, was far more militaristic than Bush, and had consistently called for an invasion of Iraq for more than a decade.
Many times in the 1990s Trump criticized George H.W. Bush for failing to extend the Persian Gulf War and overthrow Saddam Hussein, even though doing so would have required a massive intervention, enormous numbers of dead Iraqis, and resulted in precisely the same chaotic situation that led Trump to conclude that we would be better off with Saddam left in control today.
You can order a copy of the book at: http://www.orbooks.com/catalog/trump-unveiled-john-k-wilson/?utm.
I think we could just bring this thread to a conclusion by simply agreeing that:
All of MY SIDE’s references and statements are to be taken in the coolest, hip-ironic, culturally aware, benign-metaphorical way possible (see Watts v. United States, and [granting my side the full benefit of the] the conflicting interpretive modes the various judges/justices on the Supreme Court and the Court[s] of Appeals [have approved]),
AND
All of YOUR SIDE’s references and statements are to be taken in the most mindlessly literal, threatening way possible.
That should work for almost all of our commentators, of whatever persuasion.
Also, any charge against MY SIDE requires exquisite legally admissible proof of its accuracy,
WHEREAS
Any charge against YOUR SIDE must be true if it was asserted by anyone, anywhere.
People on MY SIDE are responsible only for what they said personally, in full-quotation context.
BUT
People on YOUR SIDE are responsible for the inferred implications of anything said by anyone who ever held any idea vaguely similar to what your people think.
OK?