Author brushes off attacks
Wolff defends tell-all Trump book but admits that he ‘said whatever was necessary’ to get access to White House sources.
Author Michael Wolff is remaining defiant in the face of personal attacks from the White House and threats of legal action from US President Donald Trump’s lawyers over his tell-all book about the West Wing.
Hardly bowed by a full-on assault from Trump’s team, Wolff yesterday appeared to revel in the attention that has helped to drive his book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House to be a likely bestseller after his publisher, Henry Holt, sped up its publication by several days.
The book paints Trump as unprepared for the presidency, and his aides as concerned about his fitness for office.
‘‘Where do I send the chocolates?’’ Wolff asked during an interview on
Today show when asked Trump’s vitriol.
Trump’s attention and attacks, he added, were ‘‘not only helping me sell books, but he’s helping me prove the point of the book’’.
‘‘This is extraordinary that a president of the United States would try to stop the publication of a book. This doesn’t happen – has not happened from other presidents.’’
Wolff also dismissed attacks by Trump and his allies over the author’s credibility.
Some sources for the book have disputed specific quotes and characterisations of their actions, while others have pointed to inconsistencies in the book and errors in Wolff’s past reporting to suggest that his account cannot be trusted.
‘‘Liar and phony,’’ read an email from the Republican National Committee, featuring Wolff’s picture and selected quotes from other journalists criticising his work.
But Wolff, a New York media columnist who has written for New York and Vanity Fair magazines, USA Today and The Guardian, said he had broad access to Trump, former senior White House adviser Steve Bannon and other senior officials.
‘‘I work like every journalist works. I have recordings. I have notes. I am, in absolutely every way, comfortable with everything released in this book. My credibility is being questioned by a man who has less credibility than perhaps anyone who walked on Earth at this point.’’
Wolff added that he had written ‘‘millions upon millions of words’’ box of in jest NBC’s about but ‘‘I don’t think there’s been any corrections’’.
Trump’s personal lawyers sent a letter to Wolff and his publisher yesterday threatening legal action and demanding that they cease publication, which did not happen. A revealing and embarrassing excerpt from the book was published this week in New York magazine.
‘‘Your publication of the false/ baseless statements about Mr Trump gives rise to, among other claims, defamation by libel,’’ the lawyers wrote.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Trump spoke to Wolff only once, for about ‘‘five to seven minutes,’’ and not specifically about the book. But Wolff told Today that he had conducted a full interview with the president.
‘‘What was I doing there if he didn’t want me to be there?’’ Wolff said. ‘‘I absolutely spoke to the president. Whether he realised it was an interview or not, I don’t know. It certainly wasn’t off the record. I spoke to him after the inauguration, yes.’’
All told, he said, ‘‘I’ve spent about three hours with the president over the course of the campaign and in the White House. My window into Donald Trump is pretty significant’’.
Trump has attacked Wolff and Bannon, who served as a key source and disparaged other aides, as well as Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr in on-the-record statements. Among other things, Bannon referred to a 2016 meeting between Donald Jr and a Russian lawyer, which has become part of a special counsel probe into the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russians during the election, as ‘‘treasonous’’.
Though Trump said on Thursday that Bannon had ‘‘lost his mind,’’ the Breitbart News chief has since attempted to ratchet down tensions with his former boss, calling him a ‘‘great man’’ who maintains his full support.
Wolff said his visits to the White House and his discussions with staffers left him with the impression that ‘‘100 per cent’’ of Trump’s aides, including daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner, who both serve as White House advisers, had come to doubt the president’s capacity for the job.
But the author also seemed to reveal that he had used a bit of deception to gain the trust of the very aides who looked foolish or disingenuous in the book.
‘‘I’m a nice guy,’’ Wolff said. But ‘‘I certainly said whatever was necessary to get the story’’.
Bannon faces fresh doubts about whether he can pull off his populist revolution within the Republican Party after his top financial patron cut ties with him in the wake of his feud with Trump.
Trump, who spoke by phone with donor Rebekah Mercer shortly before she issued a statement rebuking Bannon on Friday, crowed about the break between the two in a tweet yesterday. ‘‘The Mercer Family recently dumped the leaker known as Sloppy Steve Bannon. Smart!’’
Trump’s dramatic break with his former chief strategist may help Republicans avoid further electoral embarrassments like December’s defeat of Roy Moore for an Alabama Senate seat, a race in which Bannon had enthusiastically backed Moore.
But Bannon considers himself the standard-bearer for the populist, nationalist wing of the Republican Party that carried Trump to office, so the divide also risks alienating white, middle-class voters who are important for the party’s midterm prospects.
The Mercers’ wealth has been vital to Bannon, to the Republican Party and Trump.
In the years leading up to the 2016 presidential election, Bannon became a close political adviser to the family and directed their money to a series of interlocking projects that advanced his political ideology.
The Mercers extended a financial lifeline to far-right website Breitbart News, allowing Bannon to build it into a conservative juggernaut. Their family foundation funded another Bannon project, the 2015 book Clinton Cash, which presaged Trump’s ‘‘Crooked Hillary’’ label for his election opponent.
They also invested in Cambridge Analytica, a data firm that Trump’s campaign hired to target voters in the race’s final months.
Since 2006, the Mercers have given US$41.5 million to Republican candidates, according to Federal Election Commission records. From 2013 to 2015, the Mercer Family Foundation gave US$31.4m to conservative groups.