Journalist Michael Wolff's bombshell new Fire and Fury explained how Donald Trump, his campaign, and even his wife, did not expect to win the 2016 presidential election.
In an interview published Saturday by The Hollywood Reporter, Wolff explains how the short-sightedness of the Trump campaign allowed him unscrutinized West Wing access.
"I literally think you go in there and say, 'I'm writing a book,' and they go, 'Oh. A book.' It's like a cloak of invisibility. And then also they would do this thing that would be like, 'Oh, this is off the record.' And I would say, 'I would like to use it for the book.' And they would say, 'Well, when does that come out?' And I would say, 'Next year.' 'Oh, oh, yeah, OK, fine,'" Wolff recounted.
Wolff explained a similar experience when he wrote a biography on Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch.
"The distinct feeling that you have when you say that you're writing a book is that these guys don't care about you. You're a kind of non-entity. 'A book.' Trump is not getting excited about somebody writing a book," Wolff explained. "I remember when the Murdoch book came out and Murdoch's guy [former News Corp. marketing and corporate affairs exec] Gary Ginsberg, called me, furious, and said, 'What is this? The book is all about him!' I said, 'It's a biography.' And Ginsberg says, 'But it's so personal.' That's when I realized, these guys don't just not read books — they don't know what books are."
The short-sightedness of the White House echoes the short-sightedness of the Trump campaign described in the book.
"Not only did Trump disregard the potential conflicts of his business deals and real estate holdings, he audaciously refused to release his tax returns. Why should he if he wasn't going to win?" page 18 of the book asks.
Wolff also told The Hollywood Reporter what he had heard from White House sources since publication of the bestseller.
"I hear that the president is very angry, or, let me be precise: I hear that he is truly bouncing off the walls," Wolff said of the Oval Office reaction.
In a second Saturday interview, Wolff told the BBC that the book was likely to bring down the Trump administration.
