Michael Wolff speaks out as White House hits back about Fire and Fury revelations

THE author of a controversial book about the White House has come out swinging against Trump, calling him the “least credible” person on Earth.

Michael Wolff. Picture: AFP PHOTO / GETTY IMAGES/ Ben Gabbe

THE author of an explosive new book detailing an insider account of President Trump’s White House has slammed his subject as a “child” who has “less credibility than perhaps anybody who has ever walked on Earth at this point”.

Biographer and journalist Michael Wolff published Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House early on Friday after a leaked excerpt made international headlines.

In his first comments since Trump’s lawyers tried to stop publication of the book, Wolff told NBC’s Today Show aides constantly told him that Trump was “like a child” who needed to be managed.

“I will tell you the one description that everyone gave, everyone has in common. They all say he is like a child,” he said. “And what they mean by that is he has a need for immediate gratification, it is all about him.”

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“100 per cent of the people around” Trump — “senior advisers, family members, every single one of them, questions his intelligence and fitness for office,” he said, adding that aides think he is a “moron” and an “idiot”.

“Let’s remember, this man who does not read, does not listen. So he’s like a pinball, just shooting off the sides.”

He said efforts to stop the book have helped him sell more copies and asked: “Where do I send a box of chocolates?”

WATCH: @SavannahGuthrie’s full interview with ‘Fire and Fury’ author @MichaelWolffNYC pic.twitter.com/pNUWx4nGbJ

— TODAY (@TODAYshow) January 5, 2018

US President Donald Trump has slammed the book, saying he gave “zero” access to Michael Wolff. Picture: JIM WATSON/AP

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders hit back in a separate interview on Fox and Friends where she said Wolff never interviewed the President despite “repeatedly begging” to see him.

She called the book “complete fantasy” and Wolff “a guy who made up a lot of stories to try and sell books.”

Trump has also spoken out online, tweeting: “I authorised 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!”

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

However Wolff said on NBC he “absolutely” spoke to President Trump, and that he is the least credible person on Earth.

“Whether he realised it was an interview or not, I don’t know, but it certainly was not off the record.”

“I spoke to him after the inauguration, yes. And I had spoken to, I mean I spent about three hours with the president over the course of the campaign and in the White House so my window into Donald Trump is pretty significant,” he said.

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“I work like every journalist works so I have recordings, I have notes, I am certainly and absolutely in every way comfortable with everything I’ve reported in this book.

“[He has] less credibility than perhaps anybody who has ever walked on Earth at this point”.

The publication of the book has rocked Washington with its revelations about Trump’s family, marriage, germ phobias and behaviour in the Oval Office. It has also marked a public break between Trump and his former chief of staff and campaign architect Steve Bannon, after Bannon called the Trump Tower meeting with Russians “treasonous”.

Former ally Steve Bannon has been dubbed “Sloppy Steve” by Trump. Picture: AFP PHOTO / Mike Theiler

The book has been rushed to publication to capitalise on the furore surrounding it. Picture: AFP PHOTO / Henry Holt and Company.

‘WHAT AM I, CHOPPED LIVER?’

It’s also focused attention on Michael Wolff, who has been described as a provocateur who loves the spotlight — except when it moves on.

“You think, well, what am I, chopped liver?” he said 2009 about coverage of his divorce, according to Women’s Wear Daily.

The 64-year-old built his four-decade career writing about some of the world’s rich and powerful people 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.

Wolff acknowledges in the introduction of Fire and Fury that he could not resolve discrepancies in a White House riven by rivalries, however he told NBC he was “comfortable” with everything written in the book

“Many, in Trumpian fashion, are baldly untrue,” Wolff writes of some accounts in the introduction. “Those conflicts and that looseness with the truth, if not reality itself, are an elemental thread of the book.” He said 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.

The Washington Post also noted Wolff had been accused a number of times of “not just re-creating scenes in his books and columns, but of creating them wholesale.”

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 détente.

— With Wires

Originally published as Michael Wolff speaks out as White House hits back about Fire and Fury revelations