CHUCK TODD: Okay, fair enough.
You were pretty tough on the coverage of Donald Trump early in 2017. Here’s something you wrote in 2017, in January, so: “To the media, it is a given that Trump is largely out of control and that the people around him are struggling at all times to save him from himself—and largely failing. This view persists … despite Trump’s victory flattening almost every media assumption about his supposed haplessness and lack of strategy.”
And you were just- you thought that the media was too one-sided or that was the impression you were giving. I have to say, when you read this book, you seem to reinforce the entire media narrative you were criticizing.
MICHAEL WOLFF: You know, I think that in the beginning, the media took this point of view without having had this experience. You know, I went into this, a decent part of the country went into this, his entire staff went into this thinking maybe this can work. It’s different, even peculiar, but who knows what can happen here. And that was exactly my, my frame of reference. I would have been delighted to have written a contrarian account here. Donald Trump, this unexpected president, is actually going to succeed. OK, that’s not the story. He is not going to succeed. This is worse than everybody thought.
CHUCK TODD: Did you, I’m just curious because it’s a very tough book. You basically, you’re sending a message here to anybody reading this book. Did you leave out good stuff because it got in the way of the narrative? Like if people said positive things about him, um, I’m not saying- that you left it out because it took away from the thesis of the book that you wanted to get out there?
MICHAEL WOLFF: If I left out anything, it’s probably stuff that was even more damning.
CHUCK TODD: It’s that bad?
MICHAEL WOLFF: It’s that bad. I mean, it’s an extraordinary moment in time. And the last several days focused on my book I think are proof of this. This is what happened here, what’s going on here. This is, you know, I think not an exaggeration and not unreasonable. It’s not unreasonable to say this is 25th Amendment kind of stuff.
CHUCK TODD: Did anybody say that in the West Wing to you?
MICHAEL WOLFF: All the time.
CHUCK TODD: 25th Amendment? They would bring up the 25th Amendment?
MICHAEL WOLFF: Yes, actually, they would say, sort of in the mid-period, “We’re not at a 25th Amendment level yet.” Or they would-
CHUCK TODD: That’s alarming.
MICHAEL WOLFF: This is alarming in every way. And then this went on, “Okay, this is a little 25th Amendment.” So 25th Amendment is a concept that is alive every day in the White House. There was an interesting thing that, in all of this weird stuff that has gone on for the last, last number of days. An interesting thing that I especially noticed was, was yesterday, was it yesterday or this morning? Everything—
CHUCK TODD: Understand it’s a whirlwind.
MICHAEL WOLFF: John Kelly said, was, was questioned about these, these wackadoo tweets, and he said, “Oh, I didn’t see them.” I’m going to just say, “Like hell he didn’t see them.” And that’s what goes on in the White House all the time. It’s how to look away. It’s how not to confront.
CHUCK TODD: They’re putting their head in the sand purposely?
MICHAEL WOLFF: Yes. Absolutely. It’s how to rationalize this and how, and you can’t confront it. You can’t say, you know, what, this is, this is, this is a moment a time. This is a breakdown.