Fire and Fury

This article is about the 2018 book. For other uses, see Fire and Fury (disambiguation).

Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House

First edition cover
Author	Michael Wolff
Country	United States
Language	English
Subject	Presidency of Donald Trump
Genre	Non-fiction, U.S. politics
Published	January 5, 2018
Publisher	Henry Holt and Company
Media type	Print, e-book, audiobook
Pages	336
ISBN	978-1250158062

Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House by Michael Wolff is a book which claims to detail the behavior of U.S. President Donald Trump and staff of his 2016 presidential campaign and White House. The book highlights unflattering descriptions of Trump's behavior, chaotic interactions among senior White House staff, and derogatory comments about the Trump family by former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon. Trump is depicted as being held in low regard by his White House staff, leading Wolff to state that "100% of the people around him" believe Trump is unfit for office.

Published on January 5, 2018, by Henry Holt and Company, the title refers to a quote by Trump about the conflict with North Korea. It became the number one bestseller in print, e-book and audiobook on Amazon.com as well as on the Apple iBooks Store after excerpts were released on January 3. On January 4, a lawyer for Trump sent cease-and-desist letters to the author and publisher in an attempt to stop the book's publication.

Background

According to Wolff, when he approached Donald Trump about writing a book on his presidency, Trump agreed to give him access to the White House because he liked an article Wolff wrote about him in June 2016 for The Hollywood Reporter. Trump, however, later claimed that he had never authorized access for Wolff and never spoke to him for the book. Starting in mid-2016, Wolff interviewed campaign and transition staff. After Trump's inauguration and continuing through most of the first year of his presidency, Wolff was allowed access to the West Wing of the White House, conducting research for his book through interviews and as a "fly on the wall" observer. He says he conducted over 200 interviews with Trump and his associates including the senior staff, and was allowed to witness events at the White House without his presence being managed. This allowed Wolff to be present the day of the dismissal of James Comey. Wolff reportedly audiotaped some of the conversations mentioned in the book.

Content

File:Michael Wolff 2008 (3176857947).jpg

The book's author Michael Wolff (pictured) has said that he conducted more than 200 interviews with White House staff, including Donald Trump during his writing of the book..

In the prologue, Wolff includes this note:

Many of the accounts of what has happened in the Trump White House are in conflict with one another; many, in Trumpian fashion, are baldly untrue. These conflicts, and that looseness with the truth, if not with reality itself, are an elemental thread of the book. Sometimes I have let the players offer their versions, in turn allowing the reader to judge them. In other instances I have, through a consistency in the accounts and through sources I have come to trust, settled on a version of events I believe to be true.

Wolff chose the title after hearing Trump refer to "fire and fury" when discussing the conflict with North Korea. According to the book, nobody in the presidential campaign team expected to win the 2016 presidential election, including Donald Trump, who reportedly did not want to win, and his wife. Donald Trump Jr. said his father "looked as if he had seen a ghost" when he realized he had won, and Melania Trump was "in tears – and not of joy."

Many of the most controversial quotes in the book came from Steve Bannon, the chief executive of the Trump campaign in its final months and White House Chief Strategist from January to August 2017. Bannon referred to the meeting during the presidential campaign of Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner with Russian officials as "treasonous" and "unpatriotic", described Ivanka Trump as "dumb as a brick", and referencing the Special Counsel investigation being led by Robert Mueller, said "they’re going to crack Don Junior like an egg on national TV". Bannon also said that Mueller's investigation would likely uncover money laundering involving Kushner from loans received by his family business from Deutsche Bank. Wolff says Trump himself was characterized by "wide-ranging ignorance". For example, Sam Nunberg, a campaign advisor, reportedly tried to explain the United States Constitution to Trump, but could not get past the Fourth Amendment. Wolff also claims that Kushner and Ivanka Trump discussed having Ivanka run in a future presidential campaign.

Release

The book was originally scheduled to go on sale on January 9, 2018, but the publisher, Henry Holt and Company, moved up the release date to January 5 due to "unprecedented demand". An excerpt of the book was released by New York magazine on January 3, 2018. The same day, other media outlets reported on further content of the book. The Guardian reported "explosive" highlights, stating them to have been based on sight of the full book. That day, preorders of the book made it the number 1 bestseller on Amazon.com.

White House reaction

Donald Trump denied many of the assertions made in the book, calling it "a complete work of fiction."

At her daily press briefing on January 3, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House Press Secretary, called the book "filled with false and misleading accounts". The White House released a statement saying that Bannon had "lost his mind", and Charles Harder, a lawyer for Trump, sent a cease-and-desist letter to Bannon, alleging he had violated a non-disclosure agreement. On January 4, Harder sought to stop the release of the book, sending a cease-and-desist letter to the author and publisher with the threat of a lawsuit for libel. His lawyers also said that the book "appears to cite no sources for many of its most damaging statements about Mr. Trump."

On the day of the book's publication on January 5, Trump wrote on Twitter:

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!

In response, Wolff stated in an interview later that day that "One of the things we have to count on is that Donald Trump will attack ... My credibility is being questioned by a man who has less credibility than perhaps anyone who has ever walked on Earth at this point." According to Wolff, Trump himself encouraged Wolff to write a "fly-on-the-wall account of Trump's first hundred days". Wolff has also stated that he has "dozens of hours" of taped interviews which back up the claims made in the book.

On January 6, Trump continued to attack the book, calling it "a complete work of fiction" and "a disgrace" and labeling Wolff a "fraud". Also that day, in a move interpreted as a response to the book raising questions about Trump's competence for office, Trump tweeted that his "two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart". From his successes in business, television and politics, Trump concluded that he was in fact "a very stable genius".

Reviews

Trump biographer Michael D'Antonio, reviewing the book for CNN, attested that Wolff's overall portrait of Trump accorded with his own understanding and that of others, specifically drawing attention to details concerning Trump's short attention span, issues of misogyny and white supremacism, as well as Trump's opinion that "'expertise' is 'overrated'". He added that Wolff's descriptions of the people around Trump also form "a credible picture". D'Antonio criticized Wolff's "tabloidy prose", and reminded the reader to treat the book with a degree of skepticism, but concluded that it was "essential reading" that will provide a framework on which future writers may build.

David Brooks, speaking on the PBS NewsHour, said that, because in the past Wolff has been known to not check facts, he is "very dubious about accepting everything" in the book. "Nonetheless, the general picture confirms what we already knew. And I think there is a general sense the president is unfit. They treat — they do treat him like a child."

Axios reporters Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen wrote that there were parts of the book that were "wrong, sloppy, or betray[ed] off-the-record confidence. But there are two things he gets absolutely right". They wrote that Wolff's depiction "of Trump as an emotionally erratic president" was accurate, as well as his writing of some White House officials having a "low opinion" of Trump. Andrew Prokop wrote in Vox that "we should interpret the book as a compendium of gossip Wolff heard. A fair amount of it does clearly seem to be accurate." Aaron Blake of The Washington Post wrote that "Wolff seems to have arrived at a stunning amount of incredible conclusions that hundreds of dogged reporters from major newspapers haven't ... it's worth evaluating each claim individually and not just taking every scandalous thing said about the White House as gospel."

A review by Mick Brown in The Telegraph described the book as "overheated, sensationalist – and completely true to its subject". David Sexton of the London Evening Standard said the book is a political exposé worth reading and is "destined to become the primary account of the first nine months of the Trump presidency." Lloyd Green, reviewing Fire and Fury in The Guardian called the book "a must-read. It pulls away whatever curtain still cloaks the Trump White House, leaving those who know Trump best to do the talking."