Michael Wolff has said he will not release the tapes of his conversations with Donald Trump that formed a key part of of his book ‘Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump Whitehouse’.
The writer has said in that he spent about three hours talking to the president overall, chatting with Trump at various times, though the President has claimed he was given no access.
Appearing on the ‘Late Show’, Wolff was asked by host Stephen Colbert why he would not release the release the recordings in order ‘slap down the character attacks’ made against him.
Michael Wolff told Stephen Colbert he was in the writing, not the recording business
Wolff replied he was ‘not in the recording’ business but ‘I’m in the writing business’.
‘I’m offering something different. I’m offering—and this was totally mystifying to people in the White House—I’m offering a book.’
‘Fire and Fury’ has already shot to the top of the New York Times bestseller’s list and portrays Trump as an imbecile who never believed he would win the 2016 election.
It also severely questions the president’s ability to carry out his job and casts aspersions on his mental fitness amid suggestions from White House sources he might be losing his mind.
Responding to claims he is suffering mental decline, the president fired back and said he was never interviewed for it – hours after declaring himself a ‘very stable genius’ on Twitter.
Wolff claimed he spent months in the West Wing, literally sitting on a sofa watching the West Wing and definitely got tacit permission from the president.
The author told Colbert in Trump’s White House ‘everybody is telling you different stories’
Wolff has said he spent about three hours overall talking to the President for his book
He urged people to make up their own minds about the book and said the ‘alarming’ thing about it was that it is ‘all true’
Wolff’s book has already shot to the top of the New York Times’ best seller list
He urged people to read the book itself before making up their mind about it.
‘Does this comport with what you already know? Does it make sense? Does it have an internal integrity in which you come away saying, I think I understand this now?’ That’s my job as the writer.’
‘You should believe all of it. That’s the alarming thing, that this is all true.’
Wolff was asked by Colbert about the attacks on him, which have included Trump’s accusation the book was ‘a work of fiction’, rather than an accurate portrayal of him and the White House.
Colbert asked the writer what he meant when he wrote in the forward that he aimed to depict ‘the events I believe to be true’.
The president, pictured here NCAA National Championship, has hit back at the book, calling it a ‘work of fiction’
‘It’s the Trump White House. Everybody is telling you different stories,’ replied Wolff.
‘Let’s put it this way – everybody is lying in their own particular way because that’s what you do in the Trump White House.
‘So I had to go and take whatever the event was, find as many people as I could, and then use my judgment.’
Wolff also said he was ‘surprised’ about the impact of his book, to which Colbert replied: ‘You describe the president as mentally unstable, unfit for the office, basically kind of jibbering to his cheeseburger when he goes to bed and he’s got the launch codes, why wouldn’t that cause a splash?’
‘Because I thought we knew this,’ Wolff replied.
‘I kept saying, before this came out, to my publisher, I said, oh, you know, you’re printing a lot of copies, there’s nothing really too new in this book.’
Hitting back at the book, whose publication he tried to prevent, the President said of Wolff: ‘It’s a disgrace that he can do something like this’.
‘Libel laws are very weak in this country. If they were stronger, hopefully, you would not have something like that happen,’ said Trump who had defended his intelligence just moments before.
‘Only because I went to the best colleges, I was an excellent student, came out and made billions and billions of dollars and became one of the top business people, went to television and was a tremendous success, as I am sure you all know and ran for president first time and won.’
‘And then this guy who doesn’t know me, doesn’t know me at all. Who said he interviewed me for three hours in the White House, it didn’t exist, it’s in his imagination.’