The author of a book that is highly critical of US President Donald Trump’s first year in office said his revelations were likely to bring an end to Trump’s time in the White House.
Michael Wolff told BBC radio that his conclusion in Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House — that Trump is not fit to do the job — was becoming a widespread view.
“I think one of the interesting effects of the book so far is a very clear emperor-has-no-clothes effect,” Wolff said in an interview broadcast yesterday.
Photo: AFP
“The story that I have told seems to present this presidency in such a way that it says he can’t do his job,” Wolff said. “Suddenly everywhere people are going: ‘Oh my God, it’s true, he has no clothes.’ That’s the background to the perception and the understanding that will finally end ... this presidency.”
Trump has dismissed the book as full of lies. It depicts a chaotic White House, a US president who was ill-prepared to win the office in 2016 and aides who scorned his abilities.
Trump took to Twitter late on Friday to renew his attacks on Wolff and on his former top aide Steve Bannon who was quoted in the book.
“Michael Wolff is a total loser who made up stories in order to sell this really boring and untruthful book,” Trump said. “He used Sloppy Steve Bannon, who cried when he got fired and begged for his job. Now Sloppy Steve has been dumped like a dog by almost everyone. Too bad!”
Bannon, formerly Trump’s chief strategist, is chairman of the so-called alt-right Breitbart News Web site.
In his interview with the BBC, Wolff was asked if he believed that Bannon felt Trump was unfit to serve as president and would try to bring him down.
“Yes,” Wolff replied.
He also hit back at claims that the book was untruthful.
“This is what’s called reporting. This is how you do it,” he said. “You ask people, you get as close as you can to the event, you interview the people who were privy to the event, you interview other people who were privy to the event, you come to know the circumstance as well as anybody and then you report it.”
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Friday found himself obliged to defend Trump’s fitness for office after the book called into doubt his mental health.
In an extraordinary portion of a television interview on foreign policy challenges, Tillerson was asked about claims that Trump has a short attention span, regularly repeats himself and refuses to read briefing notes.
“I’ve never questioned his mental fitness. I’ve had no reason to question his mental fitness,” said Tillerson, whose office was last year forced to deny reports that he had referred to Trump as a “moron” after a national security meeting.
The book claims that for US Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin and former White House chief of staff Reince Priebus, the US president was an “idiot.”
For chief economic adviser Gary Cohn, he was “dumb as shit.”
And for US National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, he was a “dope.”
The White House dismissed the book along with its author and his sources, with White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders calling it “complete fantasy.”
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