“He just keeps going,” Ailes had marveled to a friend after the first debate with Hillary Clinton. “You hit Donald along the… — Michael Wolff Copy Share Image
“Sean Spicer, whose job was literally to explain what people did and why, often simply could not—because nobody really had a job,… — Michael Wolff Copy Share Image
“If Trump cared about something, he usually already had a fixed view based on limited information. If he didn’t care, he had… — Michael Wolff Copy Share Image
“Donald Trump became a symbol of the media’s own self-loathing: the interest in and promotion of Donald Trump was a morality tale… — Michael Wolff Copy Share Image
“(This required some tutoring for Trump, who referred to the Chinese leader as “Mr. X-i”; the president was told to think of… — Michael Wolff Copy Share Image
“But another likely leak source about his angst in the White House was Trump himself. In his calls throughout the day and… — Michael Wolff Copy Share Image
“Trump didn’t read. He didn’t really even skim. If it was print, it might as well not exist. Some believed that for… — Michael Wolff Copy Share Image
“Indeed, in his first weeks in the White House, an inattentive Trump was already trying to curtail his schedule of meetings, limit… — Michael Wolff Copy Share Image
“Bannon didn’t promote internal debate, provide policy rationale, or deliver PowerPoint presentations; instead, he was the equivalent of Trump’s personal talk radio.… — Michael Wolff Copy Share Image
“Trump simply could not abide the knowledge that somebody was getting a leg up at his expense. His was a zero-sum ecosystem.… — Michael Wolff Copy Share Image
“There would be, in other words, one chief of staff in name—the unimportant one—and various others, more important, in practice, ensuring both… — Michael Wolff Copy Share Image
“Bannon didn’t much question Donald Trump’s bona fides, or behavior, or electability, because, in part, Trump was just his latest rich man.… — Michael Wolff Copy Share Image
“Against this background (North Korea missile threats), almost no one paid attention to the announcement by the Trump supporter and American neo-Nazi… — Michael Wolff Copy Share Image
“One particularly profitable transaction with the president was to bring him new, ever harsher criticism of his chief strategist, or reports of… — Michael Wolff Copy Share Image
“Donald Trump was a step up—and early in the 2016 race, Trump became the Breitbart totem. (Many of Trump’s positions in the… — Michael Wolff Copy Share Image
“If the media, self-righteously, saw it as the Holy Grail and silver bullet of Trump destruction, and the Trump White House saw… — Michael Wolff Copy Share Image
“Trump had no real relationship with either father or daughter. He’d had only a few conversations with Bob Mercer, who mostly talked… — Michael Wolff Copy Share Image
“The chance that Don Jr. did not walk these jumos up to his father’s office on the twenty-sixth floor is zero,” said… — Michael Wolff Copy Share Image
“In fact, up close, Trump was not the bombastic and pugilistic man who had stirred rabid crowds on the campaign trail. He… — Michael Wolff Copy Share Image
“Bannon veered from “Mad Dog” Mattis—the retired four-star general whom Trump had nominated as secretary of defense—to a long riff on torture,… — Michael Wolff Copy Share Image
“His callers, largely because they found his conversation peculiar, alarming, or completely contrary to reason and common sense, often overrode what they… — Michael Wolff Copy Share Image
“Trump’s understanding of his own essential nature was even more precise. Once, coming back on his plane with a billionaire friend who… — Michael Wolff Copy Share Image
“Kushner’s preferred outlet was Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski’s Morning Joe, one of the president’s certain morning shows. Bannon’s first port of… — Michael Wolff Copy Share Image
“Just doing things became a Bannon principle, the sweeping antidote to bureaucratic and establishment ennui and resistance. It was the chaos of… — Michael Wolff Copy Share Image
“In politics somebody has to lose, but invariably everybody thinks they can win. And you probably can’t win unless you believe that… — Michael Wolff Copy Share Image
“One day, when Kushner accused Walsh of leaking about him, she challenged him back: “My phone records versus yours, my email versus… — Michael Wolff Copy Share Image
“There was, curiously, general agreement in the West Wing that Donald Trump, the media president, had one of the most dysfunctional communication… — Michael Wolff Copy Share Image
“When the president got on the phone after dinner, it was often a rambling affair. In paranoid or sadistic fashion, he’d speculate… — Michael Wolff Copy Share Image
“The real question, of course, was how Bannon, the fuck-the-system populist, had ever come to think that he might get along with… — Michael Wolff Copy Share Image
“this was another—and to some quite the ultimate—example of how difficult it was for the president to function in a literal, definitional,… — Michael Wolff Copy Share Image
The rise of Donald Trump established a new ground zero for liberal media, requiring no pretence of balance - better yet, with… — Michael Wolff Copy Share Image
The Clintons are one of the most closed political organisations operating in America today. It is a kind of secret society. — Michael Wolff Copy Share Image
“The leitmotif for Trump about his own campaign was how crappy it was and how everybody involved in it was a loser.” — Michael Wolff Copy Share Image
“the central issue of the Trump presidency, informing every aspect of Trumpian policy and leadership: he didn’t process information in any conventional… — Michael Wolff Copy Share Image
“Even though Trump liked to portray his business as an empire, it was actually a discrete holding company and boutique enterprise,” — Michael Wolff Copy Share Image
“The president, while often a fabulist in his depiction of the world, was quite a literalist when it came to how he… — Michael Wolff Copy Share Image
“A pro wrestling fan who became a World Wrestling Entertainment supporter and personality (inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame), Trump lived,… — Michael Wolff Copy Share Image
“A close Trump friend who was also a good Bill Clinton friend found them eerily similar—except that Clinton had a respectable front… — Michael Wolff Copy Share Image
“He was a clown-prince version of Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Trump believed, offering catnip to deep American ire… — Michael Wolff Copy Share Image
“Trump craved media approval. But, as Bannon emphasized, he was never going to get the facts right, nor was he ever going… — Michael Wolff Copy Share Image
Donald Trump doesn't necessarily stay mad for very long. He's a transactional guy. If you can offer him something, he will take it. Or… — Michael Wolff Copy Share Image
“it confirmed Bannon’s worst fear: Trump, in his true heart, was a marshmallow.” — Michael Wolff Copy Share Image
“An important aspect of Kaplan’s New York Observer and its self-conscious inside media baseball was that the paper became the prime school for a… — Michael Wolff Copy Share Image
“The candidate who billed himself as a billionaire—ten times over—refused even to invest his own money in it.” — Michael Wolff Copy Share Image
If institutions don't grow, they... well, I don't know what happens to them, because they always grow. I suppose the point is that we… — Michael Wolff Copy Share Image
“Even though Trump liked to portray his business as an empire, it was actually a discrete holding company and boutique enterprise,” — Michael Wolff Copy Share Image
“the organizational premise of the Trump White House: the family would always prevail.” — Michael Wolff Copy Share Image
“Trump, who referred to the Chinese leader as “Mr. X-i”; the president was told to think of him as a woman and call him… — Michael Wolff Copy Share Image
“Donald Trump, even more than his father, was perceived as a vulgarian—after all, he put his name on his buildings, quite a déclassé thing… — Michael Wolff Copy Share Image
“The index that appeared in the print version of this title does not match the pages in your e-book. Please use the search function… — Michael Wolff Copy Share Image
“Trump liked to say that one of the things that made life worth living was getting your friends’ wives into bed.” — Michael Wolff Copy Share Image
