Wolff finds center stage

WASHINGTON» Michael Wolff is a provocateur who is said to love a brawl and once bemoaned the glare of the spotlight — and the bigger disappointment of watching it move on.

Obscurity is a threat to Wolff no longer.

His incendiary new book on President Donald Trump is drawn from what he said was regular access to the West Wing and more than 200 interviews, including some three hours with Trump himself.

It blew open what seems an inevitable feud between the publicityloving president and his former adviser Steve Bannon, who is quoted extensively and unflatteringly describing Trump, his family and advisers. Trump’s lawyers sent Wolff and his publishers cease-anddesist letters, as they had to Bannon.

Instead of halting publication of “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” Wolff’s publisher accelerated its sale to Friday, due to “unprecedented demand.”

“Where do I send a box of chocolates?” Wolff, 64, said on NBC’S “Today.” Earlier, he had tweeted: “Thank you, Mr. President.”

As of midday Friday, the book was No. 1 on both Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com.

The author said on NBC’S “Today” show: “I absolutely spoke to the president. Whether he realized it was an interview or not I don’t know. But it certainly was not off the record.” Wolff said he spoke with Trump for a total of about three hours over the course of the campaign and after Trump’s inauguration.

He added that he has recordings and notes and remains “absolutely in every way comfortable with everything I’ve reported in this book.”

“My credibility is being questioned by a man who has less credibility than, perhaps, anyone who has ever walked on Earth,” Wolff said.

Wolff has given Trump’s allies fodder, particularly with an acknowledgement in the introduction that he could not resolve discrepancies between some accounts in a White House riven by rivalries.

“Many, in Trumpian fashion, are baldly untrue,” Wolff writes of some accounts.

“Those conflicts and that looseness with the truth, if not reality itself, are an elemental thread of the book.”

He says he “settled on a version of events I believe to be true.”

Wolff built his fourdecade career writing about some of the world’s rich and powerful people — including Rupert Murdoch — in seven books and across a wide range of newspapers and magazines. Sometimes, he critiqued the media.

And often, he got scathing reviews back on his writing style, his focus on atmospherics and his factual mistakes.