Michael Wolff, the author of the new book “Fire And Fury: Inside the Trump white house” that’s become a bestseller for being a liberal’s wet dream and US President Donald Trump’s worst nightmare, has spoken to the Guardian to discuss what the writer himself calls “an international political event.”
The book grew out of a dinner meeting with disgraced Fox News chairman Roger Ailes, who was fired after sexual harassment allegations, and fired Trump aide Steve Bannon. Bannon, at the time, was still working in Trump’s administration and had, in fact, orchestrated the “Celebrity Apprentice” star’s unlikely victory in the Presidential election just a few weeks earlier.
As Wolff explains, “It wasn’t about having a powerful person [at the dinner] – just the opposite.”
“Fire and Fury” has become a huge cultural and political phenomenon, as it has exposed a number of hard truths about the current White House and the delusional man-child running it. The biggest takeaway from the book is the potential mental health defects that the President is suffering from. According to Wolff and his book, aides and officials within the White House bring Trump’s mental health into question all the time, and since the release of the book, Trump has been desperate to illustrate to the world how mentally competent and smart he is.
‘The stuff that has been focused on seems kind of random to me’
Wolff said that “almost all of the stuff” that the public and the media have been transfixed on from the book since it was published appears to be “kind of random” to him. He theorised that what is happening is that because Trump is such an “anomalous” human being who is “so not what he’s supposed to be” that everything you read in the book – all this wild, unexpected, so-crazy-you-couldn’t-make-it-up stuff – is “explosive.” Wolff also said that “everything [Trump] does” is, in some ways, “preposterous.”
While Wolff said that he is not entirely sure that Trump is “clinically off his rocker,” he can confirm that, based on what he witnessed in the White House and heard from people close to the President, Trump is “deeply unpredictable," erratic and unusual, with behaviour and rhetoric that occasionally errs on the side of "incoherent," adding that he is "self-obsessed" in a matter that is unsettling.
Ouch. He said that if Trump wasn’t famous and wasn’t the President of the United States, thereby making him special, then people would be asking, “What’s going on here, is something wrong?”
Trump’s recent immigration meeting a ‘reaction to the book,’ says Wolff
Trump has taken Wolff’s book to heart, bringing up the topic of his mental capability on an almost daily basis.
He recently called an on-camera open discussion about immigration and border security that would invite in both parties for the conversation. Wolff saw this as a “reaction to the book,” as a way for the President “to establish himself as sane.” The discussion was definitely an odd one, particularly because Trump spent the whole thing budding to agree with everybody, no matter what their party or stance on the issue.
Wolff described Trump’s nature as this: He's always chasing "a win," but exactly what that "win" entails or whether or not it supports anything he's said previously or how big or small it is are details that "[don't] really matter.” That’s Trump for you. It doesn’t matter if it fits an election promise or his #AmericaFirst policy.
If he can call it a win, he’ll brag about it until he runs it into the ground. The “Fire and Fury” author said that while Trump ran his campaign with the notion of “I’m a negotiator,” since he took office, according to his “friends and cronies” who Wolff spoke to, “they all say he’s never negotiated anything.” Wolff says that Trump cannot negotiate, period, simple as, because it's a skill that "requires detailed understanding" and is "methodical." Zing.
