While it’s fun to cheer on the attacks Donald Trump is lobbing toward allegedly human sweat stain Steve Bannon, there’s an important feature of this infighting—the attacks are being aimed at Bannon, not at author Michael Wolff. Sarah Huckabee Sanders did toss a statement into her Wednesday briefing that the not-yet-released book was “full of falsehoods” and dismissed the idea that Wolff had the level of access he claimed, but that was just a lull in a series of shots based on comments from the book.
Several commentators and journalists have picked up the slack, noting that Wolff took considerable criticism over the accuracy of accounts in his 2004 book about startup companies, Burn Rate. Others have insisted that Wolff’s claimed access to the Trump White House is just too good. The excerpts so far released include bits of conversation between Bannon and others that seems just too detailed to have been recreated from interviews.
How could Wolff possibly know for sure what Steve Bannon and the late Roger Ailes said at a private dinner?
As it happens, there’s a good answer for that.
It turns out Wolff hosted the dinner for six at his Manhattan townhouse.
Not only did Wolf apparently have “fly on the wall” access to important White House meetings, he has something else that’s going to make it hard for the members of Team Trump to point fingers at someone not wearing one of their jerseys.
Michael Wolff has tapes to back up quotes in his incendiary book — dozens of hours of them.
Michael Wolff has an article of his own up this morning, explaining how his access to the Trump White House was generated through the same disinterest, disdain for rules, and lack of preparedness that generated most of the stories he found.
After the election, I proposed to him that I come to the White House and report an inside story for later publication — journalistically, as a fly on the wall — which he seemed to misconstrue as a request for a job. No, I said. I'd like to just watch and write a book. "A book?" he responded, losing interest. "I hear a lot of people want to write books," he added, clearly not understanding why anybody would. "Do you know Ed Klein?"— author of several virulently anti-Hillary books. "Great guy. I think he should write a book about me." But sure, Trump seemed to say, knock yourself out.
Wolff was admitted into the White House at least 30 times—and that’s in addition to outside events, like the dinner he hosted for Ailes and Bannon—while people spilled to him their concerns and talked openly about Trump’s staggering incompetence.
It’s one of those things that not only wouldn’t happen in a normal White House, it’s one of those things that wouldn’t happen even if the candidate happened to be an outsider who surrounded himself with friends. Trump’s problem is that he didn’t have any friends. This is a guy who legitimately spent his evenings in bed eating KFC, making phone calls to talk shows. Trump was a well-known personality, who didn’t know anyone.
Including his own kids.
"You know, we never saw that much of him until he got the nomination," Eric Trump's wife, Lara, told one senior staffer. If much of the country was incredulous, his staff, trying to cement their poker faces, were at least as confused.
The only person he seemed to know was Ivanka—for whom he couldn’t deny any request.
"It's a littleee, littleee complicated …" he explained to Priebus about why he needed to give his daughter and son-in-law official jobs. But the effect of their leadership roles was to compound his own boundless inexperience in Washington, creating from the outset frustration and then disbelief and then rage on the part of the professionals in his employ.
The portrait that emerges from Wolff’s story is of a man who not only wasn’t interested in being president, but someone who wasn’t really interested in anything. Trump got off on his ability to play “tough boss” for a few minutes at a time on the radio. And that was … pretty much it. Beyond that he wanted to play golf, eat cheeseburgers in bed, and feed his massive list of neuroses.
Indeed, he seemed as confused as anyone to find himself in the White House, even attempting to barricade himself into his bedroom with his own lock over the protests of the Secret Service.
All of this would be simply pathetic, maybe even pitiable, if the same moronic nutcase wasn’t also bragging about his big nuclear button and signing every bill that Republicans can get to his desk.
Another excerpt from Fire and Fury is expected today.