Discredited reporter Ed Klein is back with another book, Unlikeable: The Problem with Hillary. Like his previous output, Unlikeable features supposedly insider accounts of conversations and behind-the-scenes dealings of the most powerful politicians in the country. And, like his previous work, the book reads like a conservative fever dream translated into a screenplay.

Klein's previous books -- which have forwarded outlandish smears like the claim that Chelsea Clinton was conceived when Bill raped Hillary -- have been roundly criticized by a wide range of reporters, including many conservatives. His supposed reporting has been labeled “bullshit,” “smut,” “junk journalism,” and “fan fiction.” Unlikeable finds Klein living up to his reputation.

Blood Feud, Klein's 2014 book about the supposed war between the Obamas and the Clintons, was reportedly dropped by a HarperCollins imprint because it “did not pass a vetting by in-house lawyers.” BuzzFeed additionally reported that HarperCollins had “concerns about the reporting quality.” (The book was eventually released by conservative publisher Regnery, which also published Unlikeable.)

Despite his complete lack of credibility, Klein can still rely on certain sections of the conservative media to celebrate his supposed scoops every time he puts out a new book, and Unlikeable has been no different. Klein's new “reporting” has garnered a series of headlines in recent weeks in the New York Post, and Klein himself has been given a platform to promote the book this week on Fox & Friends, Hannity, and Fox Business.

But no matter how badly conservative media might want Klein's latest to ring true, Unlikeable is undermined by dubious sourcing and sloppy research.

For instance, one chapter opens with a quotation supposedly from Obama Senior Adviser (and frequent Klein villain) Valerie Jarrett ominously declaring, “After we win this election, it's our turn. Payback time.”

This supposed quote has been bouncing around conservative websites and message boards for years. In 2012, Right Wing Watch tracked down the quotation's questionable origins, and discovered a convoluted series of anonymous sources overhearing other anonymous sources:

[A]n anonymous source supposedly within the Obama campaign supposedly overheard a representative from Jarrett's office make this statement and attributed it to Jarrett herself; it was then passed along to some pseudonymous source named “Wall Street Insider” who then forwarded it to [conservative blog] The Ulsterman Report ... and it eventually ended up on Glenn Beck's radio program where the quote was treated as entirely legitimate.

Fittingly enough, the Ulsterman Report routinely published interviews with anonymous highly-placed sources in the government that didn't pass the smell test.

Even WND, a birth certificate-obsessed conspiracy website not exactly known for high editorial standards, reported of the supposed Jarrett quotation in 2012, “The quote, however, is suspect and is at best four steps removed from Jarrett herself.” Meanwhile, Klein, who regularly touts himself as serious reporter, found it compelling enough to use as a chapter header.  

In another chapter, Klein's source is allegedly a “well-known cardiologist,” who claims to have been asked by Bill Clinton “to review Hillary's medical records.” The cardiologist explains in an interview with Klein that politicians often fear doctors will leak their medical information “to the press ... But doctors are discreet.” The doctor (“who requested anonymity”) then proceeds to talk about Hillary Clinton's supposed ongoing medical problems:

Bill was so concerned that he asked a well-known cardiologist to review Hillary's medical records. After looking over her cardiograms and X-rays and other records, the cardiologist recommended that Hillary travel with a full-time physician who would keep her under constant observation.

“Most politicians are reluctant to be monitored by a doctor because they fear that if the results are leaked to the press, the information might harm their chances of election,” the cardiologist said in an interview for this book. “But doctors are discreet. And in Hillary's case, it is very important that she be monitored on a daily basis. Her symptoms-- the fainting-- are very worrisome, especially for someone of her age. I have a lot of experience with political candidates and have seen the toll that the stress of a campaign can take. It's stressful for young candidates, and for older ones like Hillary, it's beyond belief.”

As Salon's Simon Maloy (formerly of Media Matters) explained, Klein's “hot scoops” are usually “based on anonymous 'sources' who always happen to be present when the most powerful people in the country cook up their various schemes and conspiracies, and who then provide verbatim details of those highly scandalous conversations exclusively to Ed Klein.” 

Apparently, the Clintons keep repeatedly inviting these anonymous sources back to intimate dinner parties and important meetings and divulging their deepest secrets to them, thereby allowing Ed Klein to continue publishing books.

Another of Klein's favorite tactics, regularly on display in Unlikeable, is using sources that have simply heard, after the fact, about private conversations they were not present for -- but which they can nonetheless recreate in impressive detail.

In one instance, President Obama, Michelle Obama, and Jarrett have a private conversation in the White House about their supposed hatred of Clinton, which Klein somehow reproduces word-for-word based only on “sources who spoke to Jarrett”:

While Jarrett gave her briefing, the president paced, his head bowed, deep in thought. Jarrett was happy to see Hillary in trouble. Obama wasn't so sure. He felt a great deal of animosity toward both Clintons, and he smiled when Jarrett told him of Hillary's latest travails, but he didn't want to see the Democratic Party lose the White House.

“It's all her own fault,” he repeated over and over, according to sources who spoke to Jarrett. "Bill should have advised her better. He should have made her goddamn behave, follow the rules." 

[...]

Barack plopped down in a chair and let out a sigh.

“Dumb, dumb, dumb,” he said. “Just goddamn dumb.” (emphasis added)

BuzzFeed's Katherine Miller mocked the many absurd passages in Klein's last book Blood Feud -- highlights include Hillary Clinton swirling a glass of wine and saying of Obama to her old college friends, “You can't trust the motherfucker.” Miller described Klein's book as reading “like stilted fan fiction, featuring dialogue that no human has likely said or will probably ever say until you read it aloud to friends and family.”

Unlikeable continues the trend. In the below scene, President Obama and Hillary Clinton argue in the Oval Office about Clinton's use of private e-mail while secretary of state:

But before Jarrett could intercede, Obama spun around and looked directly at Hillary.

“There is nothing I can do one way or the other,” he said. “Things have been set in motion, and I can't and won't interfere. Your problems are, frankly, of your own making. If you had been honest. . . .”

Hillary interrupted him.

“There are always haters out to get the Clintons,” she said. (emphasis added)

While Obama gets to sound like a Bond villain, Clinton has a habit of violently clearing off desks in fits of rage. An unnamed “Foreign Service Officer” tells Klein that “after a telephone argument with President Obama, she took her right arm and cleared off her small working desk, sending pictures, glasses, everything crashing to the floor.”

A few chapters later, Clinton does the same thing to her husband's desk:

“You've thrown us in the crap again!” she screamed. “I've never been this pissed off at you! I don't think you really want me to be president.”

Bill looked up over the rim of his eyeglasses, which were perched on the tip of his nose.

“Calm down,” he said.

His air of nonchalance only made Hillary angrier, and with a sweeping motion of her arm, she shoved everything off the top of his desk, sending papers and an expensive piece of Chihuly blown glass flying onto the floor.

"Jesus!" Bill said.

He got up to retrieve the Chihuly sculpture, which fortunately wasn't damaged. He put it carefully back on his desk. He had one of the largest private collections of Chihuly glass in the country.

“You don't care about anything but that fucking piece of glass,” Hillary said. (emphasis added)

Clinton also sends a water glass flying across her office in a fit of rage (according to the unnamed “Foreign Service officer,” who saw it “with my own eyes”).  

Unlikeable finishes with a strange and out-of-nowhere epilogue that issues dire warnings about the “new normal” in America. According to him, “long-accepted standards and codes of behavior” have been turned “upside down.” Features that are “unacceptable,” “abnormal,” and make America “coarser” apparently include:

Support for same-sex marriage has doubled over the past decade to 60 percent.

[...]

In less than thirty years non-Hispanic whites will no longer make up a majority of Americans.

[...]

Bruce Jenner, once the picture of masculinity, is canonized for being castrated.

[...]

The average American woman now weighs the same as the average American man did in the 1960s.

He concludes: “Conservatives rightly fear that decadence will lead to the fall of the United States just as surely as it led to the fall of Rome.”

Klein's “fan fiction” perfectly follows conservative mythology -- down to the very last page.