Journalist Michael Wolff's explosive new book, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, hit bookshelves on Friday despite the Trump administration trying its best to suppress the expose.
Publishers had responded to a cease-and-desist letter from US President Donald Trump's lawyers by moving forward by four days the release of “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House” ─ an expose by author and political muckraker Michael Wolff that quotes key Trump aides expressing serious doubt about his fitness for office.
The book quickly sold out in shops in the US capital, with some people even lining up at midnight to get their hands on it and others circulating pirated copies. Trump has decried the instant best-seller as "phony" and "full of lies."
Released on January 5, the book sheds light on Trump's reputation inside the White House, making some new outlandish claims and confirming some old ones.
Trump rejected Bolton over his facial hair
John Bolton, the former US ambassador to the UN, was vying for the secretary of state role, but Wolff has quoted Steve Bannon, former White House Chief Strategist who is now on the outs with Trump, as saying that Trump turned down Bolton due to his facial hair.
"Bolton's mustache is a problem," said Bannon, according to BBC. "Trump doesn't think he looks the part. You know Bolton is an acquired taste."
Trump prefers McDonalds due to fear of being poisoned
Wolff, in his book, claims that Trump is so paranoid that he used to eat only McDonald's and prohibited the White House staff from touching his stuff out of his fear of being poisoned.
"He had a long-time fear of being poisoned, one reason why he liked to eat at McDonald's—nobody knew he was coming and the food was safely premade," reads an excerpt from Fire and Fury.
Ivanka plans on running for presidency
The book alleges that Trump's daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner both have designs on succeeding Trump as the next US president.
“The first woman president, Ivanka entertained, would not be Hillary Clinton; it would be Ivanka Trump,” reads an excerpt shared in The Guardian.
'Semiliterate' Trump barely reads, is a TV junkie
The US president has time and again claimed that he doesn't watch TV anymore and instead prefers to read official documents but Wolff's books portrays a different picture of him. Wolff says Trump is an avid watcher of TV and has three TV sets in his White House bedroom alone. Regarding reading, however, he may have a problem.
"Trump didn’t read. He didn’t really even skim. Some believed that for all practical purposes he was no more than semiliterate," Wolff claims in his book, according to Huffington Post, before adding: "Others concluded that he didn’t read because he just didn’t have to, and that in fact this was one of his key attributes as a populist. He was postliterate—total television."
White House has had enough of Trump
Wolff claims that the White House staff stood firmly behind Trump until he accused his predecessor Barack Obama of surveilling him without any concrete proof.
"It was a turning point," the book reveals. "Until now, Trump’s inner circle had been mostly game to defend him. But after the wiretap tweets, everybody, save perhaps Hope Hicks, moved into a state of queasy sheepishness, if not constant incredulity. Sean Spicer, for one, kept repeating his daily, if not hourly, mantra: “You can’t make this s*** up.”
An unexpected victory
Despite confidently predicting a sweeping victory, Trump and his camp, Wolff writes, never thought he’d win and only sought a boost for their individual TV and political careers out of his campaign. Melania Trump, in particular, ‘was horrified by the prospect of victory’, the book claims and ‘was in tears — and not of joy’ when her husband eventually won, reported The Guardian.
