Here's WHY the Wolff book on Trump WH has stirred a hornet's nest of controversy
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comments and news VIDEO from net, Posted in Politics / National
(USA TODAY) -- Michael Wolff, author of a new bombshell book on the Trump White House, said Friday he spent three hours with the president during the 2016 campaign and in the White House reporting for the book -and dismissed the president's claim that he had never spoken to the writer.
"I absolutely spoke to the president, whether he realized it was an interview or not, but it certainly wasn't off the record," Wolff told NBC Friday.
Wolff told Savannah Guthrie he had records and notes of some 200 interviews with people in the White House, but dodged a question on whether he would release tapes of the conversations.
"I have records, I have notes," he replied. "I am certainly in every way comfortable with everything I have reported in this book."
In a full-throated denunciation of the work, Trump tweeted Thursday night -that he had authorized "zero access to White House (actually turned him down many times) for author of phony book!"
"I never spoke to him for book," Trump wrote. "Full of lies, misrepresentations and sources that don't exist. Look at this guy's past and watch what happens to him and Sloppy Steve [Bannon]!"
[MORE:]
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/01/05/author-white-house-tell-all-book-says-he-spent-3-hours-trump-project/1006641001/
Additional observations: -- Wolff reportedly spent 50 hours with Murdoch in doing his book about Murdoch. So compared to that track record of prep, 3 hours is not boast worthy. But IF TRUE THAT TRUMP TALKED WITH HIM it is "something" as Trump gives interviews sparingly and with calculation. Simultaneously, the fact Trump MIGHT have given Wolff any time at all is not surprising. While Trump regularly blasts the shameless imprecision and bellicosity of echo chamber MSM, he is at the same time still an old skool status aficionado, and while he denigrates the NYT as the "failing" NYT, he's "sat to yak with them" recurrently -inculding a recent sit. And the only reason for such is [obviously] that despite NYT's decline, Trump still notes-- many movers and shakers read it.
This might explain a possible willingness to talk with Wolf also. Wolff is a society "character" in NYC. Despite a sketchy resume of ups and downs in his career, his many years of well-read columns and articles in high gloss publications gave him a veneer of "journalistic stature". This despite the fact he considers himself more a "writer" than a "journalist". And despite the fact his accuracy in narratives has been more than once challenged, Wolff is something of a cocktail circuit "society figure" in NYC. By that superficial status alone, one can fathom a 'possible' Trump willingness to yak with him.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Wolff_(journalist)
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/feb/07/highereducation.news2
http://gawker.com/michael-wolffs-awful-girlfriend-is-pregnant-1684410627
REFERENCE - In a 2004 cover story for The New Republic, Michelle Cottle wrote that Wolff was "uninterested in the working press," preferring to focus on "the power players-the moguls" and was "fixated on culture, style, buzz, and money, money, money." She also noted that "the scenes in his columns aren't recreated so much as created-springing from Wolff's imagination rather than from actual knowledge of events." Calling his writing "a whirlwind of flourishes and tangents and asides that often stray so far from the central point that you begin to wonder whether there is a central point."
https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/washington-post-reporter-mark-berman-debunks-michael-wolff/2018/01/05/id/835514/
=== This notation just above indicates why the WOLFF book will (likely, for weeks) be a subject of controversy as to whether quotes included and anecdotes articulated are accurate. Along with that, it well may be that Trump's (possible) conversational cooperation was status-reactive but "content' naive; Wolff's writing history leans toward deflating power brokers.
https://www.newsmax.com/headline/michael-wolff-trump-credibility/2018/01/05/id/835350/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsQR-aaXfXc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWyuYHUfU14
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NdCqCKtNpE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZL0CGsLQUjw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuPCIweVFMM