Michael Wolff’s sensational new book on the early days of the Trump administration is riddled with errors and dubiously sourced claims.
Here’s what The Daily Caller has found so far:
1. The most striking portrait of Wolff’s carelessness in checking basic facts occurs in the early chapters of the book where he misspells a CNN political analyst’s name, misidentifies the position commerce secretary Wilbur Ross was nominated for at the time, and places a reporter at a restaurant he says he has never been to.
2. Wolff parroted a claim that the president once skipped a meeting with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in order to get a haircut. Washington Post White House reporter Ashley Parker noted several journalists heard the claim, “but no one wrote it bc every source w first-hand knowledge said it simply wasn’t true.”
McConnell’s chief of staff Don Stewart followed up on Parker’s tweet, saying the incident absolutely had not happened.
3. Wolff printed an unsubstantiated claim that Trump had no idea who former House speaker John Boehner was after the election. Trump, however, has tweeted about the former House speaker seven times since July 28, 2011 referencing ongoing political events.
Boehner even told a Stanford audience in April of 2016 that Trump was his “golfing and texting buddy.” Worse, Wolff claimed Boehner was forced to resign from intra-party strife four years earlier than he actually did so.
4. Wolff’s book claimed that CNN is the outlet which published in full the unsubstantiated salacious dossier on the president compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele. BuzzfeedNews is the outlet which published the dossier in January 2017.
5. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders noted to reporters Thursday that Wolff printed communications director Hope Hicks’ age as 26 when she is actually 29.
6. Several persons included in the book have denied outright quotes attributed to them by Wolff in the book. Former UK prime minister Tony Blair said a supposed recreated conversation between him and Jared Kushner was “categorically absurd” and “simply untrue.” Several former Trump aides quoted at length in the book have vehemently denied quotes attributed to them, including former deputy chief of staff Katie Walsh and Breitbart chairman Steve Bannon.
7. Wolff appears to have gotten one of his own quotes wrong writing in one column that media-mogul Rupert Murdoch called the president a “fucking moron” and writing elsewhere that he said “fucking idiot.”
8. Wolff characterized counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway as a “small time pollster” never involved in a national campaign.” Pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson noted however that Conway in fact was involved in a number of major national corporate projects prior to joining the Trump 2016 campaign and previously was a national pollster for former House speaker Newt Gingrich.
Wolff’s sourcing note in an excerpt explains many of the myriad inaccuracies, saying, “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.”
The author added, “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.”
Steve Bannon must response to the attacks of Trump now.
President Donald Trump continued his feud with his former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, in response to a new book about his administration.
Trump decried Bannon’s participation in interviews for the book released on Friday by Michael Wolff.
“Michael Wolff is a total loser who made up stories in order to sell this really boring and untruthful book,” Trump wrote. “He used Sloppy Steve Bannon, who cried when he got fired and begged for his job. Now Sloppy Steve has been dumped like a dog by almost everyone. Too bad!”
Michael Wolff is a total loser who made up stories in order to sell this really boring and untruthful book. He used Sloppy Steve Bannon, who cried when he got fired and begged for his job. Now Sloppy Steve has been dumped like a dog by almost everyone. Too bad! https://twitter.com/gop/status/949395088735723520 …
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Trump and his White House aides are using Bannon as a foil for the controversial book, as many of the stories feature negative information about the president’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, and her husband, Jared Kushner. Wolff also delivers sharp criticism of the president, despite White House aides giving him access to the senior staff in the West Wing.
The president sent his comment on Twitter late Friday night after traveling to Camp David to discuss his future agenda with Republican leaders in Congress.
Wolff: Trump Has ‘Less Credibility Than, Perhaps, Anyone Who Has Ever Walked on Earth’
by IAN HANCHETT5 Jan 2018
On Friday’s broadcast of NBC’s “Today,” “Fire and Fury” author Michael Wolff fired back at President Trump’s criticisms of Wolff’s book and stated that people around the president describe him as childlike.
Wolff reacted to the president’s attorneys sending him a cease and desist letter by stating that this not only drove up book sales, but proves the point of the book. He added that it is “extraordinary” that a president would try to stop a book’s publication, and another president wouldn’t do this.
The discussion then turned to Trump’s tweet about the book. Wolff said he “absolutely” spoke to the president for the book and spoke to those who had frequent contact with the president.
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He later stated, “[O]ne of the things we have to count on is that Donald Trump will attack, he will send lawyers’ letters. This is a 35-year history of how he approaches everything.”
Wolff also said, “I have recordings. I have notes. I am certainly and absolutely, in every way, comfortable with everything I’ve reported in this book.”
Anchor Savannah Guthrie then asked, “Would you release any of those recordings since your credibility is being questioned?
Wolff responded, “My credibility is being questioned by a man who has less credibility than, perhaps, anyone who has ever walked on earth at this point.”
Wolff also responded to a negative profile of him that ran in the New Republic in 2004 that accused him of inventing stories by declaring, “I’ve written many books. I’ve written millions upon millions of words. I don’t think there has ever been one correction.”
After the discussion turned to the contents of the book, Wolff said that “100%” of the people around the president question his intelligence and fitness for office.
He continued that everyone described the president as like a child because of his need for instant gratification and the fact that “It’s all about him.”