Our guys are losers, nobody knows what they’re doing
We didn’t say it, Trump did, according to Michael Wolff ’s controversial bestseller
Trump presidency in Michael Wolff ’s book, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House has roiled the White House and caused a public split between President Donald Trump and his former chief strategist and far-right campaign architect Steve Bannon.
We bring you excerpts from the book which is already the bestseller on Amazon.
Losing is winning
“As the campaign came to an end, Trump himself was sanguine. His ultimate goal, after all, had never been to win . ... ‘This is bigger than I ever dreamed of,’ he told (former Fox News chief Roger) Ailes a week before the election. ‘I don’t think about losing, because it isn’t losing. We’ve totally won.’”
“Once he lost, Trump would be both insanely famous and a martyr to Crooked Hillary. His daughter Ivanka and sonin-law Jared would be international celebrities. Steve Bannon would become the de facto head of the tea-party movement. Kellyanne Conway would be a cable-news star. Melania Trump, who had been assured by her husband that he wouldn’t become president, could return to inconspicuously lunching. Losing would work out for everybody. Losing was winning.”
After Melania Trump was inconsolable that the New York Post obtained outtakes from a nude photo shoot done early in her modelling carer, Trump told her they would sue. “But he was unaccustomedly contrite, too. Just a little longer, he told her. It would all be over in November. He offered his wife a solemn guarantee: there was simply no way he would win.”
election Day
“Shortly after 8pm on Election Night, when the unexpected trend — Trump might actually win — seemed confirmed, Don Jr told a friend that his father, or DJT, as he calls him, looked as if he had seen a ghost. Melania was in tears — and not of joy.”
“There was, in the space of little more than an hour, in Steve Bannon’s not unamused observation, a befuddled Trump morphing into a disbelieving Trump and then into a horrified Trump. But still to come was the final transformation: Suddenly, Donald Trump became a man who believed that he deserved to be, and was wholly capable of being, the president of the United States.”
“(Kellyanne) Conway, the campaign’s manager, was in a remarkably buoyant mood, considering she was about to experience a resounding, if not cataclysmic, defeat . ... Now she briefed some of the television producers and anchors whom she had been carefully courting since joining the Trump campaign — and with whom she had been actively interviewing in the last few weeks, hoping to land a permanent on-air job after the election.
after the victory
“Balancing risk against reward, both Jared (Kushner) and Ivanka decided to accept roles in the West Wing over the advice of almost everyone they knew. It was a joint decision by the couple, and, in some sense, a joint job. Between themselves, the two had made an earnest deal: If sometime in the future the opportunity arose, she’d be the one to run for president. The first woman president, Ivanka entertained, would not be Hillary Clinton; it would be Ivanka Trump.”
Bannon on meeting with russians
“The chance that Don Jr did not walk these jumos up to this father’s office on the twenty-sixth floor is zero.”
“The three senior guys in the campaign thought it was a good idea to meet with a foreign government inside Trump Tower in the conference room on the 25th floor — with no lawyers. They didn’t have any lawyers.”
“Even if you thought that this was not treasonous, or unpatriotic, or bad shit, and I happen to think it’s all of that, you should have called the FBI immediately.”
Trump’s putin obsession
“‘What has he gotten himself into with the Russians?’ pressed (the late Fox News chairman Roger) Ailes. ‘Mostly,’ said Bannon, ‘he went to Russia and he thought he was going to meet Putin. But Putin couldn’t give a shit about him. So he’s kept trying.’”
Trump’s Murdoch obsession
“’I’ll call him,’ said Ailes. ‘But Trump would jump through hoops for Rupert. Like for Putin. I just worry about who’s jerking whose chain.’”
Too much to think about
““I wouldn’t give Donald too much to think about,’ said an amused Ailes. Bannon snorted. ‘Too much, too little — doesn’t necessarily change things.’”
Flattery and egyptian shoes
“Abdel Fattah El Sisi, the Egyptian strongman, ably stroked the president and said, ‘You are a unique personality that is capable of doing the impossible.’ (To Sisi, Trump replied, ‘Love your shoes. Boy, those shoes. Man.…’)”
Brothers’ presidential nicknames
“His sons, Don Jr. and Eric — behind their backs known to Trump insiders as Uday and Qusay, after the sons of Saddam Hussein.”
The comb-over: explained by ivanka
“She often described the mechanics behind it to friends: an absolutely clean pate — a contained island after scalp-reduction surgery — surrounded by a furry circle of hair around the sides and front, from which all ends are drawn up to meet in the centre and then swept back and secured by a stiffening spray. The colour, she would point out to comical effect, was from a product called Just for Men — the longer it was left on, the darker it got. Impatience resulted in Trump’s orange-blond hair colour.”