If we are to believe Michael Wolff's breathlessly discussed new book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, all the White House staff were fighting for survival, Hunger Games -style, during Donald Trump's chaotic first year in office. But while the ever-rotating cast of senior advisors was trying to appease Trump's whims, more was brewing behind the scenes: An excerpt suggests that Ivanka Trump, a key White House staffer, has been building up to presidential aspirations of her own.
Some have warned readers to take Fire and Fury, which is set to be released in full on January 9, with a grain of salt, considering there have been questions about Wolff's credibility, including from beat reporters covering the administration. Still, you can't deny the allure of reading an account of this largely inexperienced White House through the eyes of a journalist who basically parked himself on a couch in the West Wing because no one thought to kick him out.
It's scintillating, often scary, stuff, and many of the more sordid bits were already covered in a lengthy excerpt in New York mag as well as articles in The Guardian and The Hollywood Reporter. Trump has demanded that the publisher halt the book's release, threatening a lawsuit. Ahead, we've compiled some of the most unbelievable quotes, including ones that may shed light on a completely different Ivanka.
On Ivanka's presidential ambitions...
"Balancing risk against reward, both Jared and Ivanka decided to accept roles in the West Wing over the advice of almost everyone they knew. It was a joint decision by the couple, and, in some sense, a joint job. Between themselves, the two had made an earnest deal: If sometime in the future the opportunity arose, she'd be the one to run for president. The first woman president, Ivanka entertained, would not be Hillary Clinton; it would be Ivanka Trump."
Steve Bannon on Ivanka's intelligence...
"She was a nonevent on the campaign," Bannon, the former White House chief strategist, said according to The Wall Street Journal 's review of the manuscript. "She became a White House staffer and that's when people suddenly realized she's as dumb as a brick. A little marketing savvy and has a look but as far as understanding actually how the world works and what politics is and what it means — nothing. Once you expose that, you lose such credibility."
On Ivanka's relationship with her father...
"She was a helper not just in his business dealings, but in his marital realignments. If it wasn’t pure opportunism, it was certainly transactional. For Ivanka, it was all business — building the Trump brand, the presidential campaign, and now the White House. She treated her father with a degree of detachment, even irony, going so far as to make fun of his comb-over to others... The color, she would point out to comical effect, was from a product called Just for Men — the longer it was left on, the darker it got. Impatience resulted in Trump’s orange-blond hair color."
On Melania's reaction after her husband's victory...
"Melania was in tears — and not of joy."
On Hope Hicks' role...
"[W]ith his daughter and son-in-law sidelined by their legal problems, Hope Hicks, Trump's 29-year-old personal aide and confidant, became, practically speaking, his most powerful White House advisor. (With Melania a nonpresence, the staff referred to Ivanka as the 'real wife' and Hicks as the 'real daughter.') Hicks' primary function was to tend to the Trump ego, to reassure him, to protect him, to buffer him, to soothe him," Wolff wrote in THR in a column about the book.
On Ivanka and Jared supposedly being Democrats...
"While there might be a scary national movement of Trumpers, the reality in the White House was stranger still: There was Jared and Ivanka, Democrats; there was [former chief of staff Reince] Priebus, a mainstream Republican; and there was Bannon, whose reasonable claim to be the one person actually representing Trumpism so infuriated Trump that Bannon was hopelessly sidelined by April," Wolff wrote in THR. Eric and Ivanka Trump reportedly didn't register as Republicans in time to vote for their father in the New York primary back in 2016. Both Jared Kushner, Trump's senior advisor, and Ivanka Trump have donated to Democratic candidates in the past, including Hillary Clinton.
On the president's lack of expertise, through the eyes of Katie Walsh, Trump's deputy chief of staff before she quit after two months...
"He didn’t process information in any conventional sense. He didn’t read. He didn’t really even skim. Some believed that for all practical purposes he was no more than semi-literate. He trusted his own expertise — no matter how paltry or irrelevant — more than anyone else’s... It was, said Walsh, 'like trying to figure out what a child wants.'"
Steve Bannon on Russia...
"The three senior guys in the campaign thought it was a good idea to meet with a foreign government inside Trump Tower in the conference room on the 25th floor – with no lawyers," Bannon told Wolff, according to The Guardian, referring to the meeting between Jared Kushner, former campaign manager Paul Manafort, Donald Trump Jr., and a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower in summer 2016. "Even if you thought that this was not treasonous, or unpatriotic, or bad shit, and I happen to think it’s all of that, you should have called the FBI immediately."
After this bombshell, Trump's lawyer sent Bannon a "cease and desist" letter over his "disparaging" comments.
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