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Associated Press

He’s a provocateur who’s said to love a brawl and once bemoaned the glare of the spotlight – and the bigger disappointment of watching it move on.
“You think, well, what am I, chopped liver?” author Michael Wolff said in 2009 about coverage of his divorce, according to Women’s Wear Daily.
Obscurity is a threat to Wolff no longer.
His explosive new book on US President Donald Trump is drawn from what he said was regular access to the West Wing and more than 200 interviews, including with Trump. It blew open what seems an inevitable feud between the publicity-loving president and his former adviser, Steve Bannon, who is quoted extensively and unflatteringly describing Trump, his family and advisers.
Publication of explosive book on Trump’s White House is brought forward, defying legal threats

I authorized Zero access to White House (actually turned him down many times) for author of phony book! I never spoke to him for book. Full of lies, misrepresentations and sources that don’t exist. Look at this guy’s past and watch what happens to him and Sloppy Steve!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 5, 2018


Here we go. You can buy it (and read it) tomorrow. Thank you, Mr. President.
— Michael Wolff (@MichaelWolffNYC) January 4, 2018

Shell-shocked White House aides scrambled to control the fallout of Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House this week as excerpts were published ahead of the book’s scheduled January 9 release. The publisher announced late Thursday that it would move up the release to Friday due to “unprecedented demand.”
“Thank you, Mr President,” Wolff tweeted.
Ivanka seeks US presidency, and other explosive claims in new book
“Complete fantasy” is how White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders described Wolff’s book Thursday, as the president’s allies increasingly raised questions about Wolff’s credibility. Trump’s lawyers sent Wolff and his publisher cease and desist letters, as they had to Bannon. The book, Sanders continued, contains “mistake after mistake after mistake.” She said the White House had rejected some two dozen of Wolff’s requests for an interview with Trump.
The 64-year-old author and blogger has given Trump’s allies fodder, particularly with an acknowledgement in the introduction that he could not resolve discrepancies between some accounts in a White House riven by rivalries.
“Many, in Trumpian fashion, are baldly untrue,” Wolff writes of some accounts. “Those conflicts and that looseness with the truth, if not reality itself, are an elemental thread of the book.” He says he “settled on a version of events I believe to be true.”
For example, Wolff writes in the book that Trump didn’t know who former House Speaker John Boehner was on Election Night, 2016. Sanders disputes that, pointing to public photos that show the golf enthusiasts had hit the links over the years. Two people close to Boehner confirmed that and said they had spoken before and after the election.

So I was one of the 6 guests at the Bannon-Ailes dinner party in January 2017 and every word I've seen from the book about it is absolutely accurate. It was an astonishing night... pic.twitter.com/I4vgOrHOYb
— Janice Min (@janicemin) January 4, 2018

Sanders also derided Wolff’s contention in the book that Trump and his family had not wanted to win the election.
For his part, Trump went after Bannon in an unusual White House statement. Wolff and his publisher did not respond to a request for comment and an interview. He is expected to hit the talk-show circuit on Friday.
Wolff built his four-decade career writing about some of the world’s rich and powerful people – including Rupert Murdoch – in seven books and across a wide range of newspapers and magazines. Sometimes, he critiqued the media. And often, he got scathing reviews back on his writing style, his focus on atmospherics and his factual mistakes.
“One of the problems with Wolff’s omniscience is that while he may know all, he gets some of it wrong,” wrote the late David Carr in The New York Times, noting some discrepancies in dates in Wolff’s 1988 book about Murdoch, The Man Who Owns the News: Inside the Secret World of Rupert Murdoch. 
But Wolff was getting support from other corners Thursday. Janice Min, an owner of The Hollywood Reporter, tweeted that she was one of the few guests at a dinner, reported in the book, at Roger Ailes’ house in January last year. According to Wolff, Bannon discussed Trump’s plans for appointing Cabinet and other advisers and Ailes warned him about the qualifications of some. “It’s not a deep bench,” Bannon acknowledged, according to the book.
“So I was one of the 6 guests at the Bannon-Ailes dinner party in January 2017 and every word I’ve seen from the book about it is absolutely accurate,” Min tweeted.
Nearly a year ago, Wolff disparaged news outlets covering their own industry even in the time of Trump.
“The media should not be the story,” he said on CNN in February.
Around the same time, Wolff also wrote a prescient Newsweek column about how the still-new and struggling Trump White House and the media might reach a balance or detente. At the time, Wolff had been spotted multiple times on the White House grounds with a “blue badge” – instead of a traditional press badge – that gave Wolff wide access to the West Wing. One former White House official said Wolff was known to camp out for hours in the West Wing lobby after meetings, sitting on a sofa as he waited to talk to staffers passing by.
“It is not at all unlikely that each side, no matter how determined to kill the other, emerges into a new and beneficial normal – and perfect balance, with news media ratings and profits soaring and the many Trump dramas commanding our undivided attention,” Wolff wrote in the February 10 column. “Until one side makes an error or gains the advantage, and there’s a kill.”


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Donald Trump

Not unlike Trump, author Michael Wolff loves a brawl and the spotlight

(FILES): This March 13, 2017 file photo shows then senior White House adviser Steve Bannon (L) listening as US President Donald Trump speaks to the press before meeting with his Cabinet in the Cabinet Room of the White House in Washington, DC. Rattled by a one-two punch of betrayal and scandal, Donald Trump on Thursday, January 4, 2017 tried to block the publication of a bare-knuckle book that portrays his White House as a fetid stew of backbiting, incompetence and dysfunction. Trump instructed his lawyers to prevent the release of "Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House" -- an expose by author and political muckraker Michael Wolff -- which quotes key Trump aides expressing serious doubt about his fitness for office. The book -- which paints Trump as mentally unstable and far out of his depth -- quotes at length his former ally and chief strategist Steve Bannon, who also received a "cease and desist" order from Trump's attorneys. / AFP PHOTO / NICHOLAS KAMM

FILE - In this April 12, 2017, file photo, Michael Wolff of The Hollywood Reporter speaks at the Newseum in Washington. Wolff used to worry about the spotlight moving on. No longer. The author of an explosive book on President Donald Trump’s administration is the target of a cease and desist letter from Trump’s lawyers. And he’s the focus of a campaign by the president’s allies to cast doubt on the book’s claim that Trump is a reluctant and troubled president. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)

Michael Wolff seen in the lobby of Trump Tower in January 2017, during the presidential transition. Photo: Washington Post / Jabin Botsford

‘The railhead of all bad decisions’: Steve Bannon blames ‘Javanka’ for missteps by Trump administration

Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner. Photo: EPA

Former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon speaks during a campaign rally for Republican candidate for U.S. Senate Judge Roy Moore in Midland City, Alabama, U.S., December 11, 2017. REUTERS/Jonathan Bachman

Trump, claiming Bannon has ‘lost his mind’, sends ex-adviser cease-and-desist letter

President issues explosive rebuttal after former chief strategist says Don Jnr’s meeting with Russians in Trump Tower was ‘treasonous’ and ‘unpatriotic’

FILE PHOTO: White House Chief Strategist Stephen Bannon (L) attends a meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and congressional leaders to discuss trade deals at the at the Roosevelt room of the White House in Washington U.S., February 2, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/File Photo

FILE - In this July 11, 2017, file photo, Donald Trump Jr. is interviewed by host Sean Hannity on his Fox News Channel television program, in New York. An email sent to President Donald Trump and Donald Trump Jr. before the 2016 election included a decryption key for hacked documents that the website WikiLeaks had made public a day earlier. The email obtained by The Associated Press was sent to Trump and his eldest son on Sept. 14, 2016, the day after WikiLeaks had released the emails publicly on its Twitter account. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)

White House Senior adviser Jared Kushner sits behind U.S. President Donald Trump during a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, U.S., November 1, 2017. Kevin Lamarque: "The role of Jared Kushner has gone through a series of changes. He began front and centre as a high profile adviser, but as time has passed and issues surrounding him have surfaced, he has become more of a background figure." REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo SEARCH "POY TRUMP" FOR THIS STORY. SEARCH "REUTERS POY" FOR ALL BEST OF 2017 PACKAGES. TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

U.S. President Donald Trump (L-R), is joined by Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, Vice President Mike Pence, senior advisor Steve Bannon, Communications Director Sean Spicer and National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, as he speaks by phone with Russia's President Vladimir Putin in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, U.S., January 28, 2017. Jonathan Ernst: "Very early in the Trump administration, weekends were as busy as weekdays. On Trump's second Saturday the official schedule said he would be making private phone calls to a number of world leaders including Russia's Vladimir Putin. I arrived early and, before sitting down at my desk walked up to Press Secretary Sean Spicer's office. He, too, was just taking his coat off. I gingerly made the suggestion that previous administrations had sometimes allowed photos of such phone calls through the Oval Office windows on the colonnade. To my mild shock, he didn't even think about it twice. "We'll do it!" he said. In truth, I real

Donald Trump has lashed out at Steve Bannon after the ex-adviser accused his son and team of treason, and his son-in-law of laundering money. They are seen here at a swearing-in ceremony for senior White House staff on January 22. Bannon was fired as chief strategist in August. Photo: REUTERS

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