Michael Wolff Talks ‘Very Angry’ Trump, ‘Surreal’ ‘Fire and Fury’ Release
Fire and Fury author Michael Wolff discussed the “surreal” release of his explosive new book, his White House access and Donald Trump‘s “very angry” reaction in a new interview.
“It’s a weird combination of totally normal — I just sit at the desk behind the computer like always — and all you do is hear your own name in the background,” Wolff told The Hollywood Reporter. “There was a paparazzi outside this morning. That was a weird feeling.”
Trump has spent the past few days criticizing Fire and Fury on social media, even lashing out at his former advisor Steve Bannon – or “Sloppy Steve” as Trump has rebranded him – for being one of those who spoke so candidly about the Trump administration to Wolff.
“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, citing his White House sources, of the president’s reaction to Fire and Fury.
Wolff’s assumptions were proven right when Trump fired off a series of late-night tweets Saturday reiterating that he is a “very stable genius” and “like, really smart.” Trump also lashed out at Wolff in a tweet where he called the author “a total loser who made up stories in order to sell this really boring and untruthful book.”
In the interview, Wolff downplayed suggestions that, as a liberal-leaning journalist, he intentionally calibrated Fire and Fury so that it would embarrass Trump.
“I just wrote what I thought and what I heard. That’s one thing about the book: There really aren’t any politics in the book. I have no side here. I’m just interested in how people relate to one another, their ability to do their jobs and a much less abstract picture of this world than whatever the political thesis may or may not be,” Wolff said.
“I would have been perfectly happy to have written a contrarian book about how interesting and potentially hopeful and novel Trump-as-president was. I would have written a positive Trump book. And I thought it would be a fun thing to do — an audacious way to look at the world. But then I got in there and I thought, ‘Oh my God.’ Day after day it just seemed that this guy was more dysfunctional. It wasn’t even me seeing that. It was listening to the people around him.”
Wolff also told The Hollywood Reporter about his dinner party with Steve Bannon and Roger Ailes, his unfettered White House access and his belief that 100 percent of the Trump administration think that the president is “hopeless.”
“These people are all normal, average, ambitious, competent people who are trying to do well and do their jobs and all that,” Wolff said of the White House. “So they’re not that different from us. And they have to deal with this guy. That goes from people thinking, ‘Oh my God, my boss is really a monster!’ – and that’s the best you’re going to think of him – to, ‘Oh my God, the country is being run by somebody who has no idea what they’re doing!'”
Excerpts from the book and its corresponding press coverage led to a surge in publicity and demand that forced retailers to sell Fire and Fury – titled after a quote where Trump threatened North Korea – early Friday instead of its planned January 8th release. The book also sold out of its first printing on Amazon in just a few hours despite the threat of a lawsuit from Trump’s lawyers. Wolff added of any potential film or television projects based on Fire and Fury, “I can say at this point no deal, but lots of things happening.”