Michael Wolff
Michael Wolff, the president’s greatest critic, assesses his surprisingly smooth UK visit with Harriet Alexander
What Trump’s greatest critic made of his UK visit
In a crowded field, Michael Wolff stands out as a diehard critic of Donald Trump. So following the president’s unexpectedly successful state visit to Britain last week, what did the 65-year-old veteran New York journalist and attack-dog-in-chief make of Trump’s three-day trip?
“There were no overt mistakes with the Royal family,” says Wolff without obvious enthusiasm. “Everything else was a series of odd utterances. But his aides will have been overwhelmed with relief.”
Which is about as high a praise as Trump can expect from Wolff. And while the president did attract plenty of criticism – for his playground taunting of Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, for suggesting (then denying) that the NHS must be “on the table” in trade talks with Britain, and for a breach of royal protocol during a state banquet at Buckingham Palace when he appeared to touch the Queen on the back as she rose for a toast – Wolff admits it could have been so much worse.
As president-watchers go, Wolff has long had a ringside seat, observing the first year of the administration from a couch inside the White House, taking up de facto residency when, amid the chaos, no one really noticed he was there. The resignations and recriminations were catalogued in gleeful detail in his 2018 bestseller, Fire and Fury.
Wolff ’s new book, Siege: Trump Under Fire, picks up where Fire and Fury left off, chronicling Trump’s second year in yet more jawdropping, salacious glory.
This time, however, Wolff himself may be forgiven for feeling under siege. Fallout from his first book put the journalist – who has carved out a career dishing the dirt on the rich and famous – firmly in the crosshairs, and facing accusations of playing fast and loose with facts and of relying on dubious sources.
When The Washington Post highlighted a series of errors in the first book – that the Trump team was
down to two lawyers when, in fact, there were four; that a date of a key email hack was wrong – Wolff fought his corner. “There was a list of niggling things,” he says, “but none of them rise to a level beyond the mistakes The New York Times confesses to on a daily basis.” He admits that many of his sources have proven to be “Janusfaced”.
“My methods, however they might be criticised, have been proven to produce an incredibly reliable and vivid account of the Trump presidency,” he says from his fine Manhattan townhouse where we meet, and where he lives with his wife and their three-yearold son.
After publication, Rolling Stone magazine described him as “the most unreliable historian America has ever encountered” and, therefore, “the perfect biographer for the Trump era”. Surely that must hurt?
“I’m assuming that the suggestion is that I’m a slippery character, too,” he says. “I think that, so far, I have done as good a job, and perhaps a better job, than anyone in bringing all of this, the biggest story of our time, to life.”
Whereas for Fire and Fury he spent months observing from a couch in the West Wing, for his follow-up Wolff relocated to another spot – the Washington DC townhouse rented by Steve Bannon, former White House chief strategist. Bannon, ousted from the White House in August 2017, hasn’t spoken to Trump in a year, yet remains king among Wolff ’s 150-odd sources: a man he described as “a godsend for any writer”.
The reliance on Bannon has been as strongly criticised as factual slips and thinly sourced anecdotes. But Wolff
‘If Meghan had said he was the greatest, he would have returned the favour’
doggedly defends his “Virgil”, guiding him through Trumpworld.
“Steve Bannon is a significant player,” he insists. “Beyond that, he’s this incredibly interesting figure. The Trump-Bannon relationship, that kind of pairing, has seldom happened in American politics. And, more importantly, seldom when you have that kind of relationship do you get someone who is willing to talk about it.”
It’s certainly true that he has again created a wildly readable page-turner of a book. The scenes purporting to depict Trump’s incompetence are horrifying and gripping; Wolff himself admits to having a “train-wreck fascination” with the man portrayed as “raging and vengeful” and also, at times, “lazy, disengaged and even self-satisfied”.
Wolff argues that Trump’s mental state was on full display during last week’s state visit to Britain. He lashed out at the Duchess of Sussex – in response to her having described him as “misogynistic” – referring to her as “nasty”, only then to flat-out deny having said that, despite his comments being captured on video.
Is Trump trying to pull the wool over our eyes, believing us to be gullible, or does he actually believe he never said it?
Wolff gives a shrug. It’s a common pattern in Trumpland – “absolutely par for the course”. “It appears, then disappears, then is denied,” he says. “You’re always left at the end of the day with the question: what is real here?”
For Wolff, Trump has even greater failings. “He’s prone to denigrate… except his daughter,” he says. “Denigrate all people. Everyone. That’s his default. If Meghan had said he was the best and the greatest, he would have returned the favour.”
How does he account for Trump’s singular approach to other people and to being in power? “Warnings don’t really work for him,” he says.
“The path he has gone down is an experience that is outside the normal human condition. He has spent 45 years just on a singular search for attention. Outside attention, that is.”
The book, for all its caustic commentary and page-turning gossip, has not sparked a frenzy anything like that of Fire and Fury. This time, Trump has not even bothered to tweet insults at Wolff. Surely, as a gleeful provocateur, that must sadden him?
“I would say I’m relieved,” he says. How? Being attacked by Trump was the best thing imaginable for book sales. In January 2018, Wolff was everywhere, for weeks. Bette Midler tweeted a photo of herself sitting up in bed, aghast, unable to put the book down. He sparked a sensation.
“It was good for book sales,” he admits. “But it also felt genuinely perilous at the time, the President of the United States threatening to shut down your publisher. And to sue you.”
And he believes there is much more drama to come. Wolff won’t be drawn on whether he believes Trump will be re-elected, and admits he never votes.
“I am trying to really restrain myself and not be a pundit,” he says. “But I tend to think… that he is the opposite of indomitable and, in fact, incredibly vulnerable – more and more so every day.”
Trump, he concludes, has been a disaster for America, but a gift for him. “Oh, he’s the craziest,” he says. “He’s off the scale.”