Donald Trump: Michael Wolff fires back at 'child-like' President after 'phony' book criticism
Updated
The author of a deeply critical book about Donald Trump's first year in office says he spoke with the President while working on it, contradicting Mr Trump's assertion that he had never talked to the writer for the book and had authorised "zero access" to the White House.
The book, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, dismissed by Mr Trump as full of lies, depicts a chaotic White House, a President who was ill-prepared to win the office in 2016, and Trump aides who scorned his abilities.
"I absolutely spoke to the President," Michael Wolff said on NBC's Today program.
"Whether he realised it was an interview or not, I don't know, but it was certainly not off the record."
Wolff added that he had spoken to people who spoke to Mr Trump on a daily, "sometimes minute-by-minute" basis.
Asked to clarify what he meant when he wrote that Mr Trump's entire circle questioned his fitness for office, Wolff said, "100 per cent of the people around him … they all say he is like a child".
"My credibility is being questioned by a man who has less credibility than perhaps anybody who's ever walked on Earth."
On Thursday evening, Mr Trump tweeted, "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," he added.
The early excerpts have also caused a public rift between the President and his former chief strategist and top campaign aide, Steve Bannon, over Mr Bannon's comments in the book about Mr Trump and his family.
Best-seller on day one
The book was an instant bestseller on Friday, its release moved forward by a day after published excerpts this week set off a political firestorm, despite threats by Trump lawyers of legal action and an effort to halt publication.
On its first day in stores, Fire and Fury was the top-selling book on Amazon.com.
In Washington, customers lined up in bitterly cold weather to purchase a copy at KramerBooks, which began selling copies at midnight.
Many Washington-area bookstores, including KramerBooks, reported selling out of copies as of Friday morning at 10:00am.
Justin Bethel, manager of the Politics and Prose bookstore, said its 30 copies sold out quickly.
The reaction was less frenetic in New York, Mr Trump's old home base. Book Culture, an independent book seller in the Upper West Side neighbourhood, said on Friday morning four people had bought the book and it had about 160 copies available, with 150 copies available in its other store.
White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders, who has called the book trash, said again on Friday that Wolff had talked only briefly to the President and did not have wide access.
"This is a guy who made up a lot of stories to try to sell books," Ms Sanders said in an interview on Fox News Channel.
In a tweet on Friday, Mr Trump called the book another attempt to smear him since any collusion between his election campaign and Russia "is proving to be a total hoax".
Special counsel Robert Mueller is investigating possible collusion as part of a broader probe into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
He has not announced any conclusions.
Reuters
Topics: world-politics, books-literature, donald-trump, united-states
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