Author Michael Wolff's new book chronicling the first year of Trump's presidency, from the final days of the 2016 campaign to October of the following year, has some bombshell claims sending shockwaves through the country, and naturally, denials from the White House.
Throughout the book, the author portrays Trump and his closest aides as astonished by his electoral victory in 2016, and wholly unprepared for office.
Now, only Wolff will be able to answer how factual the book is. However, under a lot of criticism following the excerpt of the book published in New York Magazine.
His critics say the author has a penchant for stirring up an argument and pushing facts.
Nevertheless, the book called, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, has some surprising claims. Take a look at some of them-
1. Trump expected to lose the presidential race to Democrat Hillary Clinton and had already planned to return to private life after the campaign was over. In fact, he was quite amused to find out that people even wanted to back him.
In August, when he was trailing Hillary Clinton by more than 12 points, he couldn’t conjure even a far-fetched scenario for achieving an electoral victory. He was baffled when the right-wing billionaire Robert Mercer, a Ted Cruz backer whom Trump barely knew, offered him an infusion of $5 million. When Mercer and his daughter Rebekah presented their plan to take over the campaign and install their lieutenants, Steve Bannon and Conway, Trump didn’t resist. He only expressed vast incomprehension about why anyone would want to do that. “This thing,” he told the Mercers, “is so fucked up.”
2. The now President of the United States had already planned what is next in store for him.
"Once he lost, Trump would be both insanely famous and a martyr to Crooked Hillary. His daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared would be international celebrities. Steve Bannon would become the de facto head of the tea-party movement. Kellyanne Conway would be a cable-news star. Melania Trump, who had been assured by her husband that he wouldn't become president, could return to inconspicuously lunching. Losing would work out for everybody. Losing was winning."
3. Once he moved to the White House, Trump didn’t want anyone to touch his toothbrush or pick his shirt from the floor as he’s notoriously afraid of being poisoned.
"[Trump] retreated to his own bedroom—the first time since the Kennedy White House that a presidential couple had maintained separate rooms. In the first days, he ordered two television screens in addition to the one already there, and a lock on the door, precipitating a brief standoff with the Secret Service, who insisted they have access to the room. He reprimanded the housekeeping staff for picking up his shirt from the floor: "If my shirt is on the floor, it's because I want it on the floor." Then he imposed a set of new rules: Nobody touch anything, especially not his toothbrush. (He had a longtime fear of being poisoned, one reason why he liked to eat at McDonald's—nobody knew he was coming and the food was safely premade.) Also, he would let housekeeping know when he wanted his sheets done, and he would strip his own bed."
4. Some of Trump's closest allies, including Rupert Murdoch, were stunned by his lack of understanding on issues of policy. Murdoch even called Trump a “f*** idiot”.
"Murdoch suggested that taking a liberal approach to H-1B visas, which open America's doors to select immigrants, might be hard to square with his promises to build a wall and close the borders. But Trump seemed unconcerned, assuring Murdoch, 'We'll figure it out.'"
"'What a f--king idiot,' said Murdoch, shrugging, as he got off the phone."
5. Trump was annoyed on the Inauguration Day. He fought with his wife and hated the fact that some of the A-level celebrities didn’t want to attend it.
"Trump did not enjoy his own inauguration. He was angry that A-level stars had snubbed the event, disgruntled with the accommodations at Blair House, and visibly fighting with his wife, who seemed on the verge of tears. Throughout the day, he wore what some around him had taken to calling his golf face: angry and pissed off, shoulders hunched, arms swinging, brow furled, lips pursed."
6. Trump’s close aids questioned his intelligence, in various terms.
"For Steve Mnuchin and Reince Priebus, he was an 'idiot.' For Gary Cohn, he was 'dumb as sh-t.' For H.R. McMaster he was a 'dope.' The list went on."
7. Former Goldman Sachs executive Gary Cohn, who leads the president's National Economic Council disagreed with Trump on a number of occasions. But who knew he was so pissed with the President? Cohn, apparently, said that Trump is always bored, and so bored that he won’t even sit through meetings with world leaders or read policy papers. Apparently, he didn’t even read one-page memos.
"It's worse than you can imagine. An idiot surrounded by clowns. Trump won't read anything - not one-page memos, not the brief policy papers; nothing. He gets up halfway through meetings with world leaders because he is bored. And his staff is no better.
Kushner is an entitled baby who knows nothing. Bannon is an arrogant prick who thinks he's smarter than he is. Trump is less a person than a collection of terrible traits. No one will survive the first year but his family. I hate the work, but feel I need to stay because I'm the only person there with a clue what he's doing. The reason so few jobs have been filled is that they only accept people who pass ridiculous purity tests, even for mid-level policy-making jobs where the people will never see the light of day. I am in a constant state of shock and horror."
8. How did Trump get orange hair? The book also reveals that. And you blame it on the President's impatience. Ivanka Trump has spilled the beans to her friends on how her father's unusual hairstyle came to be.
“She often described the mechanics behind it to friends: an absolutely clean pate – a contained island after scalp-reduction surgery – surrounded by a furry circle of hair around the sides and front, from which all ends are drawn up to meet in the center and then swept back and security by a stiffening spray.” “The color, she would point out in comical effect, was from a product called Just for Men – the longer it was left on, the darker it got. Impatience resulted in Trump's orange-blond hair color.”
9.Trump turned his White House bedroom into a TV watching retreat. And, he ate cheeseburgers on his bed.
“If he was not having his 6:30 dinner with Steve Bannon, then, more to his liking, he was in bed by that time with a cheeseburger, watching his three screens and making phone calls — the phone was his true contact point with the world — to a small group of friends, who charted his rising and falling levels of agitation through the evening and then compared notes with one another.”
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