Wolff’s explosive insight into Trump’s presidency
Michael Wolff’s controversial expose of the White House and the furore surrounding it has already ended Trump’s alliance with Steve Bannon, who became his biggest source. Bannon quite his job as head of Breitbart News having lost the confidence of his financial backers. Wolff does not respect the meaning of “off the record” and reconstructed the scenes.
Donald Trump does not read books but has helped cause a publishing sensation. Four days after “Fire and Fury” went on sale on January 5th, 2018, despite Mr. Trump denouncing Michael Wolff’s scathing account of his administration as fiction and threatened both the author and the publisher with legal action, several hundred-thousand 3-books had been sold, and readers worldwide have claimed to be illegally circulating an electronic PDF version of Mr. Wolff’s tale of eye-watering haplessness. The timing of the publication of this book when President Trump was enjoying better relations with his party’s congressional leaders, following the passage of tax cuts last month. Mr. Wolff’s portrayal of the 45th president as “semi-literate” man-child with “ no ability to plan and organise and pay attention and switch focus.
Wolff paints the White House in which virtually no one has any respect left for the President. Both Reince Priebus and Steve Mnuchin Trump’s former White House chief of staff and his treasury secretary respectively are quoted as calling the president an “idiot”, furthermore, Gary Cohn, Trump’s chief economic adviser, reportedly describes him as “ dumb as shit”. Rex Tillerson, the secretary of state thinks the president is a “f**ing moron” and Rupert Murdoch apparently called trump a “f***ing idiot”.
According to Bannon Ivanka Trump is “dumb as a brick” while Donald Trump Junior is “Fredo” – the low-IQ sibling.
According to Axios, the email-based newsletter revealed last week that Trump is cutting his office hours even shorter and now only emerges for appointments at around 11:00 am two hours later than when he started the job.
The president is surrounded by three giant flatscreen televisions and likes to stuff his mouth with a cheeseburger and send tweets according to Wolff.Wolff claims John Kelly, the retired general and White House chief of staff, had professionalised Trump’s Oval Office day. As people can no longer wander in and out at will.
Rebekah Mercer, a maths graduate from Stanford University and co-owner of a bakery that makes crème Brulee-flavoured cookies and is also a conservative mega-donor who gave Steve Bannon to Donald Trump’s campaign and bankrolled it. She inherited her fortunes from her father Robert Mercer, The former CEO of Renaissance Technology, a Long Island hedge fund that pioneered quantitative trading and enabled Rebekah to spend $28m in 2009-10 on six apartments at a Trump building in Manhattan that she merged into one home. She has been the architect of channeling Mercer money into a grab bag of right-wing groups and their causes which included investing $10m in Breitbart News, the right-wing internet site that Bannon instilled with his caustic brand of populist nationalism.
Bannon appearance in Michael Wolff’s tell-all Fire and Fury, where he was quoted Donald Trump Jr of “treasonous” behaviour, was too much for Ms. Mercer, who is usually cool and rational. She believes in the strength of entrepreneurs and knows how important it is to be free to create.
Mr. Wolff writes that Mr. Trump considers the Mercers to be “wackos”.
Fire and Fury: Inside The Trump White House by Michael Wolff, Little Brown £20 Henry Holt $30, 336 pages.
Wolff’s explosive insight into Trump’s presidency