Michael Wolff, author of the new Trump tell-all, ‘Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,’ said he wasn’t out to write such a punishing account of the president’s West Wing.
‘I would have been delighted to have written a contrarian account here: Donald Trump, this unexpected president, is actually going to succeed,’ Wolff said Sunday on Meet the Press. ‘OK, that’s not the story. He is not going to succeed. This is worse than everybody thought.’
NBC’s Chuck Todd had asked Wolff about his previous criticism of media coverage of Trump, as the author once said he thought it too negative.
Michael Wolff, the author of the best-seller ‘Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House’, says he wasn’t out to burn the president in his new book, however what he encountered at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is ‘worse than everybody thought’
Meet the Press host Chuck Todd wanted to know if Michael Wolff had left out ‘good stuff’ because it went against his narrative. Wolff replied that he actually left out ‘stuff that was even more damning’
Wolff explained that that was before he saw the Trump dysfunction, up close.
‘You know, I think that in the beginning, the media took this point of view without having had this experience,’ Wolff said.
‘You know, I went into this, a decent part of the country went into this, his entire staff went into this thinking maybe this can work,’ Wolff recalled. ‘And that was exactly my frame of reference.’
Moderator Chuck Todd asked Wolff is he purposely left out ‘good stuff’ because it would take away from the narrative of the Trump presidency being a disaster.
‘If I left out anything, it’s probably stuff that was even more damning,’ Wolff replied.
When Todd asked if, ‘It’s that bad,’ Wolff agreed.
‘It’s that bad. I mean, it’s an extraordinary moment in time and the last several days focused on my book I think are proof of this ,’ Wolff said. ‘It’s not unreasonable to say this is 25th Amendment kind of stuff.’
Todd asked if the 25th Amendment, which, among other things, outlines how a vice president and a president’s cabinet can take a president out of office, was ever discussed by staff in Trump’s West Wing.
‘All the time,’ Wolff answered.
The author said staff would use it to describe Trump’s behavior saying things like, ‘We’re not at a 25th Amendment level yet.’
‘That’s alarming,’ Todd noted.
Wolff agreed. ‘This is alarming in every way,’ the best-selling author said.
‘So the 25th Amendment is a concept that is alive every day in the White House,’ Wolff said.