Friday, January 5, 2018

Your daily - perhaps hourly - "Fire and Fury" collection

Chris Wallace went on FOX News on Thursday to discuss Steve Bannon remarks on President Trump and the First Family in the explosive and controversial book by Michael Wolff Fire and Fury.

[...]
Chris Wallace: I was talking to a former senior administration official, White House official, he had, Michael Wolff did, almost free access in the White House. He was repeatedly invited in. The communications team in the White House urged all of the senior advisers to cooperate. They thought this was going to be a positive book for the president. And you can argue whether it’s accurate or not or whether the quotes exist or not. We’ll find out about that… But the fact that he was in the White House. This was with the approval of the president.
  Gateway Pundit
And Wolff himself responded to Trump's tweet claiming he gave Wolff no access to the White House and didn't talk to him about a book.
The White House also said earlier this week that Trump never sat down with Wolff.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters on Wednesday that the only direct interaction between Wolff and Trump was a five- to seven-minute phone call shortly after the inauguration.

[...]

"I absolutely spoke to the president... it certainly was not off the record," Wolff said on NBC's "Today Show" Friday morning, just hours after the midnight release of the book.

"My window into Donald Trump is pretty significant," he added. "I work like every journalist works. I have recordings. I have notes. I am certainly and absolutely in every way comfortable with what I have reported."

Wolff also took a jab at Trump for his criticism, saying: "My credibility is being questioned by a man who has less credibility than anyone who walks on Earth."

[...]

"This man does not read. Does not listen. He's like a pinball, just shooting off the sides," he said of Trump.

  The Hill
There are definitely parts of Michael Wolff's "Fire and Fury" that are wrong, sloppy, or betray off-the-record confidence. But there are two things he gets absolutely right, even in the eyes of White House officials who think some of the book's scenes are fiction: his spot-on portrait of Trump as an emotionally erratic president, and the low opinion of him among some of those serving him.

[...]

In the past year, we have had many of the same conversations with the same sources Wolff used. We won't betray them, or put on the record what was off. But, we can say that the following lines from the book ring unambiguously true:

[...]

"Here was a key Trump White House rationale: expertise, that liberal virtue, was overrated."

[...]

More than half a dozen of the more skilled White House staff are contemplating imminent departures. Many leaving are quite fearful about the next chapter of the Trump presidency.

  Axios
Continue reading.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

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