Meghan McCain shreds anti-Trump author Michael Wolff's credibility on 'The View'

Here's a tip for factually challenged anti-Trumpers who are thinking about writing a book and promoting it on TV. If pretty much everyone - including anchors at CNN and MSNBC - are openly questioning your credibility, don't ask an interviewer to list the people who are calling you out. If you do that, your interview isn't going to go so well. That's a lesson that "Fire and Fury" author Michael Wolff learned the hard way during an appearance on The View.

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As virtually every news outlet has reported, his book is riddled with errors, sloppy reporting, and unsubstantiated quotes and claims. In the wake of its release, there have been a steady stream of denials from Wolff's sources and the whole thing has taken on the air of a money-grubbing hit-piece. So, Meghan McCain opened her segment by pointing out the shaky nature of Wolff's relationship with the truth. He demanded to know who was doubting him, and McCain was more than happy to rattle-off a list of his detractors - many of them who are no fans of President Trump. This had to sting:

'Fire and Fury' Author Michael Wolff in the View

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Wolff’s bogus pseudo-journalism is actually detrimental to anti-Trump efforts

Wolff's primary argument seems to be "OK, yeah, but there are some other people who aren't denying my claims!" That has to be one of the weakest rejoinders I've ever heard. If your stated goal is to present your work as journalistic truth designed to bring down a President, saying "some of the people quoted aren't disputing it" is a spectacularly mealy-mouthed defense. As Conrad Black writes over at the National Review, the net effect of Wolff's bogus pseudo-journalism is actually detrimental to anti-Trump efforts:

Having encountered Michael Wolff and having had an acidulous public exchange with him, I attest that he is an utterly odious man. He can’t write properly, has no professional integrity, and is a sociophobic mud-slinger and myth-maker. His entry into the continuing Trump controversy in its twilight proclaims that we have reached the era of the swiftly evaporating, nausea-inducing nothingburger. And yet, in what will surely prove the one civically useful thing Wolff will have done in his adult life, he has performed almost the final evisceration of the throbbing pustule of deranged Trumpophobia. His book is so overtly and egregiously false, so completely worthless as an account of what is happening in the White House, the respectable elements of Trumpophobia are finally taking to the lifeboats.

If the plan was to pave the way for impeachment, Wolff's shoddy reporting hasn't done the cause any favors.

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