Michael Wolff told PBS News Monday that he had no political axe to grind when he began working on “Fire and Fury,” his newly-released book on the Trump White House.
“I went into this experience just waiting to hear what people would tell me,” he Wolff first explained before touching on what he called a note of fear that allegedly pervades the White House and its staff.
“And what they told me, the people closest to the president, was that things became more alarming by the day, that all of them, in some way or other, were afraid, afraid for their — both for their own careers and for the country.”
Wolff claims that Trump just doesn’t perform as a president has “traditionally done.”
“I think almost anything that he does worries them, because it is always unpredictable,” he continued. “It is always unpredictable. It’s extreme, it’s exceptional, and it is outside the bounds of what one has traditionally done as the president of the United States.”
The author says the pressure of waiting for the next crisis has consequences for unit morale.
“They didn’t know what to expect. They woke up in the morning, and they were in, you know, in something of a cold sweat,” he said.
“Almost all of them — for almost all of them, it was a countdown until when they could leave.”
Wolff’s book, “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” and his comments around its release continue to provide fodder for opponents of the president and accusations that the book is more fiction than journalism.