I interviewed Donald Trump for The Hollywood Reporter in June 2016, and he seemed to have liked — or not disliked — the piece I wrote. (Trump has a staffer take a picture of another picture of Trump when he was previously on the Kimmel show that's now hanging on the studio wall.) He deflects that person, or, even, dissembles about what that person might have said (as much, he dissembles for conservatives about what the more liberal Trump might have said), and is impatient that anyone might want to focus on that version of Trump. I'd like to just watch and write a book. I'm reading a book that I've read before, it's one of my favorite books, All Quiet on the Western Front, which is one of the greatest books of all time." "I hear a lot of people want to write books," he added, clearly not understanding why anybody would. "I'm reading the Ed Klein book on Hillary Clinton" — a particular hatchet job, which at the very least has certainly been digested for him. These two '80s guys were undoubtedly once quite in sync. I have friends, somebody that's a great writer, where they write a book and call me up and say, 'Can you do me a favor, can you tweet it?' Leaking became the political manifestation of the don't-blame-me eye roll. In an early conversation — half comic, half desperate — Bannon tried to explain him as having a particular kind of Jungian brilliance. He's intuitive, he gets it, he has a mind-meld with his base. Even Donald Trump couldn't say no to his kids. And, less well, but I think Andy has done a very good job." "I may be," says Trump, almost philosophically, and referencing the many people who have told him they've never seen anything like this. asked everyone pretty much of everyone else. The competition to take charge, which, because each side represented an inimical position to the other, became not so much a struggle for leadership, but a near-violent factional war. Priebus, everybody's punching bag, just tried to survive another day. Sanders called a Trump win a "real danger to the entire world" on May 27. He is, he takes obvious pride in saying, the only politician who doesn't regularly use a teleprompter. One of these frequent callers was Rupert Murdoch, who before the election had only ever expressed contempt for Trump. Now Murdoch constantly sought him out, but to his own colleagues, friends and family, continued to derisively ridicule Trump: "What a fucking moron," said Murdoch after one call. And, indeed, suddenly there were the 11 days of Anthony Scaramucci. It is hard not to feel that Trump understands himself, and that we're all in on this kind of spectacular joke. (At least nine major law firms had turned down an invitation to represent the president.) It used to be inside of 30 minutes he'd repeat, word-for-word and expression-for-expression, the same three stories — now it was within 10 minutes. By summer's end, in something of a historic sweep — more usual for the end of a president's first term than the end of his first six months — almost the entire senior staff, save Trump's family, had been washed out: Michael Flynn, Katie Walsh, Sean Spicer, Reince Priebus, Steve Bannon. (With Melania a nonpresence, the staff referred to Ivanka as the "real wife" and Hicks as the "real daughter.") Indeed, the plan was to have all interviewers going forward provide the questions. The tax bill, his singular accomplishment, was, arguably, quite a reversal of his populist promises, and confirmation of what Mitch McConnell had seen early on as the silver Trump lining: "He'll sign anything we put in front of him." If Trump is the subject of the conversation, then Trump is happy.
– The quotes are so incendiary that some are questioning their veracity. But Axios reports Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House author Michael Wolff has "dozens of hours" of tapes to back up statements that appear in the book. And in an excerpt running in the Hollywood Reporter, Wolff (who is the co-founder of Newser) explains just how he got access to them. A June 2016 Hollywood Reporter article may have helped grease things: Hope Hicks emailed Wolff to say Trump was pleased with the cover. Post-election, Wolff says he floated the idea of him coming to the White House "journalistically, as a fly on the wall" to gather information for a future book. Trump seemed disinterested in the idea of a book, but "his non-disapproval became a kind of passport for me to hang around," writes Wolff. And so Wolff writes he spent each week at the Hay-Adams hotel, scheduled appointments with senior staffers, and "plunk[ed] myself down, day after day, on a West Wing couch." The excerpt shares other tidbits—how the Secret Service protested the president's attempts to lock himself in his bedroom; how Trump's post-dinner calls to billionaire pals spurred leaks; how Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump thought Anthony Scaramucci would be the White House's saving grace—which Trump's lawyer is now trying to block from release. The Washington Post reports Wolff and his publisher, Henry Holt and Co., have been sent a letter that demands they "immediately cease and desist from any further publication, release, or dissemination of the book" or any excerpts; the lawyer also wants a copy and says a libel suit is being considered.