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Where in Fire and Fury Does It Talk About an Affair

'Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House' by Michael Wolff

  • 22 February 2018
  • Reading suggestion
  • gsclibrary

Foreign affairs & international relations

201802-Fire and Fury

Without a doubt, Michael Wolff's book - Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House - on US president Donald Trump is one of the books that has recently attracted most attention. The fact that the American president tried to prevent it from being published speaks for itself. Trump's lawyers issued a threat against Wolff's publisher, seeking to stop the book's publication. Nevertheless, the book's publication schedule was pushed forward by the publisher and it topped the bestseller lists.

Since Donald Trump was sworn in as the 45th President of the United States, the world has witnessed an unprecedented tempestuous, impassioned, and turbulent presidential term of the man elected Commander-in-Chief. Never before in history has a presidency so divided the American people and the very circumstances of how this book came about are as fascinating and unimaginable as its contents. The author offers an unparalleled insight into the White House and Donald Trump's team prior, during and after the election that marked 2016 and produced an unexpected victor.

A working title of his book, The Great Transition: The First 100 Days of the Trump Administration,  suggested a more positive, even sympathetic view of Trump, and probably in part helped Wolff to enter the White House and conduct talks with an inexperienced White House staff.

Fire and Fury paints a portrait of a White House in turmoil, and it is based on interviews with multiple current and former Trump aides and advisers (Wolff conducted more than 200 interviews over 18 months), who mistakenly believed they could shape the book to the president's liking.

The book opens with the period prior to the presidential election and continues with the portrayal of the bewilderment within the Trump team after the official results were announced. Wolff somewhat controversially suggests Trump was unsure whether he wanted to become president, and was as shocked as the rest of the world when that happened. He was so uncertain of his own campaign that he even refused to donate money to it, Wolff reports. The man who only wanted to be "the most famous man in the world" became the president of the United States. The author, providing a wealth of vivid examples, paints a picture of a president who is "unqualified for the job and incapable of doing it" while explaining the conditions that made him possible.

Throughout the book, filled with utterly bewildering remarks and quotes delivered by Donald Trump himself, readers are acquainted with numerous intriguing details about the new president, such as the fact that Trump allegedly has no interest in devising legislation or conducting foreign policy, and that he likes to watch himself on television.

Also, some of the topics covered in the 22 chapters of Wolff's book deal with what President Trump's staff really think of him, Trump's secret when it comes to communicating, who is really directing the Trump administration's strategy since Steve Bannon was fired, as well as with numerous other actors in US politics.

If you would like to know more on why, upon the publication of this book, Trump publicly severed his relationship with his former strategist Steve Bannon or why, according to the author, FBI director James Comey was really fired, this book offers you answers.

Interested in reading this page-turner? It is available at the Library, so just drop in and take a look or borrow it!

Michael Wolff is an American author, essayist, and journalist, and a regular columnist and contributor to USA Today, the Hollywood Reporter, Vanity Fair, New York, the UK edition of GQ, and the Guardian. He has received two National Magazine Awards, a Mirror Award, and has authored seven books. He was previously best known for his biography of Rupert Murdoch, titled The Man Who Owns the News, which was released in 2008, and Burn Rate, a chronicle of his rags-to-riches-to-rags adventure as a fledgling Internet entrepreneur.


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Where in Fire and Fury Does It Talk About an Affair

Source: https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/documents-publications/library/library-blog/posts/fire-and-fury-inside-the-trump-white-house-by-michael-wolff/