Michael Wolff, a columnist for USA Today, The Hollywood Reporter, and GQ magazine, published a book on Friday, Jan. 5, about Donald Trump’s presidency.
Wolff stated his book is based on “conversations that took place over a period of eighteen months with the president, with most members of his senior staff—some of whom talked to me dozens of times—and with many people who they in turn spoke to.”
However, Wolff isn’t known for accurate or ethical journalism.
Wolff’s columns gained popularity in the late 1990s for harsh criticism of New York media moguls.
“His great gift is the appearance of intimate access,” an editor who has worked with Wolff told the publication. “He is adroit at making the reader think that he has spent hours and days with his subject, when in fact he may have spent no time at all.”
In what the profile called a “psychoanalytic schtick,” Wolff makes the reader believe he’s pierced the inner psyche of his subjects. But he’s been repeatedly accused of distorting the truth.
As the profile stated, Wolff “eschews traditional reporting“ and “the scenes in his columns aren’t recreated so much as created—springing from Wolff’s imagination rather than from actual knowledge of events.”
With his political persuasions described as liberal “in a striving, aspirational, Clintonian new-Dem way,” Wolff’s new book, “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” seems to follow the same pattern.
One of the key characters in his narrative, former White House aide Katie Walsh, already denied the negative comments about Trump that Wolff attributed to her. Trump’s friend Tom Barrack did the same.
That wouldn’t be a new tactic for Wolff either.
“He has a reputation for busting embargoes and burning sources by putting off-the-record comments on the record,” the New Republic profile said.
“Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my Presidency,” it reads. “When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind.”
“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!”
“I’m not going to go through every single page of the book, but there are numerous examples of falsehoods that take place in the book,” she said during the Thursday White House press briefing.
She did give one example though: The book claims Trump didn’t know who former House Speaker John Boehner was, which Sanders called “pretty ridiculous.”
“Frankly, some of you have even tweeted out that the president not only knows him but has played golf with him, tweeted about him,” she said.
Wolff responded to Trump’s comments on Friday with yet another character attack.
