HE’S DERANGED
That’s ‘Fake Book’ author Wolff... not me, insists President Trump
DONALD Trump yesterday dismissed the author of a controversial new expose on the White House as ‘deranged’.
The US President, who himself was depicted as being mentally unstable in Michael Wolff’s Fire And Fury book, questioned the sanity of the author and dismissed the account of Washington politics as a ‘Fake Book’.
The book has sparked controversy since it was published earlier this month. And at the weekend Mr Trump tweeted: ‘So much Fake News is being reported. They don’t even try to get it right, or correct it when they are wrong. They promote the Fake Book of a mentally deranged author, who knowingly writes false information.’
The President added a parting shot at the media, finishing: ‘The Mainstream Media is crazed that WE won the election!’
Just hours before the tweet, CNN’s Michael Smerconish had a heated argument with Wolff in which the author accused the cable news host of doing the White House’s work to ‘discredit him’.
In the CNN exchange, Wolff had to defend a ‘paper trail’ between himself and a White House staffer, with the host seemingly quoting from an email exchange. ‘What I’m really after is not so much a policy position interview with the president but an opportunity to humanise him,’ Smerconish read, apparently quoting Wolff’s email.
‘I think you know that I like him, and I believe I can show him in a way that might actually change perceptions of him.’
Wolff first accused White House communications director Hope Hicks of providing Smerconish with the emails Wolff sent. He then said the White House is ‘totally incompetent’ in its ‘concerted attack’ on the book.
Smerconish took particular issue with the idea that Wolff gained access to the White House, and people within, under false pretences. ‘When I write emails seeking interviews, my word choice is to say, “I will treat the individual with dignity and respect”. I never go so far as to say, “Let me humanise. You know I like the person”,’ Smerconish told the author.
Journalist Wolff argued with
‘Totally incompetent’
Smerconish, who had ‘promised’ the author the final word, when he did get what he wanted to say in, it was ‘read my book’.
The tome, which the White House has repeatedly called fabricated, was an instant bestseller. If the copies that are being printed and sent out now sell, Wolff stands to make $7.4million, according to Bloomberg News.
And of course, he could always gain royalties if film producers seek to adapt the book. Some of the sourcing has been called into question in Fire And Fury: Inside The Trump White House.
However, many people on record have confirmed the quotes they had given to Wolff, including former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon. When excerpts of the book were first released earlier this month, Mr Trump also questioned the sanity of Mr Bannon, stating that his former aide had ‘lost his mind’.