Quotes from Michael Wolff

the central issue of the Trump presidency, informing every aspect of Trumpian policy and leadership: he didn't process information in any conventional sense—or, in a way, he didn't process it at all.

On the most basic level, he simply could not link cause and effect.

Trump didn't read. He didn't really even skim. If it was print, it might as well not exist.

Most especially, he was miserable because of Donald Trump, whose cruelties, always great even when they were casual, were unbearable when he truly turned against you.

So clear was his inability to take any criticism or to participate in any honest argument about policy that the attempt was almost never made.

Men who demand the most loyalty tend to be the least loyal pricks,

They take everything I've ever said and exaggerate it," said the president in his first week in the White House during a late-night call. "It's all exaggerated. My exaggerations are exaggerated.

Insecurity was soothed by entitlement.

he lied about his height to keep from having a body mass index that would label him as obese),

López Obrador, a left-wing populist poised to challenge Trump, the right-wing populist.

For Trump and his most dedicated confederates there was only one truly reliable issue: illegal immigration. In Trump's short political history, the issue had never failed to inspire and activate core voters.

But from the start it also was apparent that the Trump administration could just as easily turn into a country club Republican or a Wall Street Democrat regime. Or just a constant effort to keep Donald Trump happy.

this was the fundamental hypothesis of the senior staff, shared by Walsh and everyone else: Trump must know what he was doing, his intuition must be profound.

In 1996, his second wife, Marla Maples, was caught one night with a Trump bodyguard on the beach near Mar-a-Lago under the lifeguard stand. This, Bannon was aware, had been a primal blow for Trump.

Melania sometimes spoke Slovenian with Barron, particularly when her parents were around—and they were frequently around—infuriating Trump and causing him to bolt from any room they were in.

Trump, the unserious candidate, had, however incomprehensibly, become a more or less serious one. And somehow, because of his prior unseriousness, and his what-you-see-is-what-you-get nature, the braggart businessman, with his bankruptcies, casinos, and beauty pageants, had avoided serious vetting.

the organizational premise of the Trump White House: the family would always prevail.

also be the easiest one to achieve, since virtually every Republican was already publicly committed to voting for repeal. But Bannon,

If Ryan could be counted on to handle Congress, thought the president, well, phew, that takes care of that.

He was a clown-prince version of Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Trump believed, offering catnip to deep American ire and resentment, that one man could be bigger than the system.

most of all don't let him piss off the intel community," said one national Republican figure to Kushner. "If you fuck with the intel community they will figure out a way to get back at you and you'll have two or three years of a Russian investigation, and every day something else will leak out.

alarm signals first went off among his new campaign staff: he seemed to lack the ability to take in third-party information. Or maybe he lacked the interest; whichever, he seemed almost phobic about having formal demands on his attention

Trade it out so in the end everyone got something, and the better dealmaker got a little more.

You'll be fine. It's only a little jail time. I do this all the time.