Quotes from Michael Wolff

calamity of their own making.

Flynn was "a colonel in a general's uniform," according to one senior intelligence figure.)

and the almost samizdat sharing, or gobsmacked retelling, of otherwise private and deep-background conversations

The aide went on giddily talking about the special bond golfing dads have with their sons until it was clear that he was getting the Trump freeze—an ability to pretend you didn't exist while at the same time intimating that he might kill you if you did.

Trump as the man nearly everyone knew him to be: erratic, unfocused, impetuous, likely not of sound mind.

Look, Kasowitz has known him for twenty-five years. Kasowitz has gotten him out of all kinds of jams. Kasowitz on the campaign—what did we have, a hundred women? Kasowitz took care of all of them. And now he lasts, what, four weeks? He's in the mumble tank.

in a world increasingly swayed by private wealth and personal brands.

television host directing the president to do whatever might most compel a television audience—took the game a big step further.

Acting, in his view, was the greater and more important legal skill.

The president did not truly listen to anybody. The more you talked, the less he listened.

His strategic belief was that there was no reason not to heap excessive puffery on a prospect. But if the prospect was ruled out as a buyer, there was no reason not to heap scorn and lawsuits on him or her.

Trump did not enjoy his own inauguration. He had hoped for a big blowout.

And then he delivered a scornful critique of Robert Mueller: "What an asshole." And there, perhaps, Trump had something of a point. If this was the result—a pass on conspiracy and equivocation on obstruction—how could you not have hastened it along, or, worse, how could you have fostered the exact opposite impression?

the Trump bubble. Trump was incapable of admitting vulnerability—any at all.

Pelosi, Bannon felt, saw the greater truth: the Trump administration would undo itself.

But now, the new president-elect—after the most astonishing upset in American history—was on tenterhooks waiting for Murdoch.

eager to walk back, by whatever increment possible, Trump's hard-line immigration policies and rhetoric. Ryan and others had devised a simple method for accomplishing this kind of objective: you agreed with him and then ignored him. There was happy talk, which Trump bathed in, followed by practical steps, which bored him.

Kushner's analysis was the same as nearly everyone's who spent a significant amount of time around the president. He was childlike—a hyperactive child at that. There was no clear reason for why something caught his interest, nor was there any way to predict his reaction or modulate his response to it. He had no ability to distinguish the important from the less important. There seemed to be no such thing as objective reality.

Trump admired her not because she had the political skills to protect him, but for her pliant dutifulness. Her job was to devote herself to his care and feeding.

The issue was not that he might act precipitously and recklessly because he didn't understand the consequences of doing so. The issue was that he could not comprehend the actual choices that needed to be made in order to act; indeed, he could not even stay in the room long enough to decide on a course of action. For Trump, the fog of war would waylay him before the first command could be given.

Donald Trump believed he had vastly more power, authority, and control than in fact he had, and he believed his talent for manipulating people and bending and dominating them was vastly greater than it was. Pushing this line of reasoning just a little further: senior staff believed the president had a problem with reality, and reality was now overwhelming him.

Trump demanded subservience, but when he got it he was suspicious of the person providing it.

based on conversations that took place over a period of eighteen months with the president,

elevated, liberal media would necessarily take down. Trump, goaded by Bannon, would continue to do the things that would delight conservative media and incur the wrath of liberal media. That was the program. The more your supporters loved you, the more your antagonists hated you. That's how it was supposed to work. And that's how it was working.