Quotes from Michael Wolff

There was, curiously, general agreement in the West Wing that Donald Trump, the media president, had one of the most dysfunctional communication operations in modern White House history.

All news was to some extent fake—he understood that very well, because he himself had faked it so many times in his career. This was why he had so naturally cottoned to the "fake news" label. "I've made stuff up forever, and they always print it," he bragged.

every single lawyer who had worked on Trump's first impeachment was conveniently unavailable.

in the larger Trump view, it was during the cold war that time and circumstance gave the United States its greatest global advantage. That was when America was great.

In practice, the new foreign policy, an effective Trump doctrine, was to reduce the board to three elements: powers we can work with, powers we cannot work with, and those without enough power whom we can functionally disregard or sacrifice. It was cold war stuff. And, indeed, in the larger Trump view, it was during the cold war that time and circumstance gave the United States its greatest global advantage. That was when America was great.

Trump would shortly become a Gorsuch fan. But before settling on Gorsuch, he wondered why the job wasn't going to a friend and loyalist. In the Trump view, it was rather a waste to give the job to someone he didn't even know.

As always, Trump's regard or scorn was infectious. If you were in favor, then whatever and whomever he associated with you was also in favor. If you weren't, then everything associated with you was poisonous.

Fooling some of the people all of the time defined Trump's hard-core base.

To have worked anywhere near him is to be confronted with the most extreme and disorienting behavior possible. That is hardly an overstatement. Not only is Trump not like other presidents, he is not like anyone most of us have ever known.

Much of the left—which had resoundingly and scathingly rejected the intelligence community's unambiguous assessment of Edward Snowden as a betrayer of national secrets rather than a well-intentioned whistle-blower—now suddenly embraced the intelligence community's authority in its suggestion of Trump's nefarious relationships with the Russians.

people might conclude that this was just more proof that you obviously couldn't hold Trump responsible for executing on anything, much less an attack on the U.S. Capitol.)

The White House, realized former naval officer Steve Bannon after a few weeks, was really a military base, a government-issue office with a mansion's façade and a few ceremonial rooms sitting on top of a secure installation under military command.

unspoken agreement among them: not only would Donald Trump not be president, he should probably not be. Conveniently, the former conviction meant nobody had

Theory 4: But then there was the those-that-know-him-best theory, some version of which most Trumpers would come to embrace. He was just star-fucking.

some had idly speculated about how long he would go on if he could command time as well as language. The consensus seemed to be forever. The sound of his own voice, his lack of inhibition, the fact that linear thought and presentation turned out not at all to be necessary, the wonder that this random approach seemed to command, and his own replenishing supply of free association—all this suggested that he was limited only by everyone else's schedule and attention span.

he had no interest in personnel problems, since they put the emphasis on other people.

Trump is less a person than a collection of terrible traits.

It's worse than you can imagine. An idiot surrounded by clowns.

Trump, in Bannon's view, was a chapter, or even a detour, in the Trump revolution, which had always been about weakness in the two major parties. The Trump presidency - however long it lasted - had created the opening that would provide the true outsiders their opportunity. Trump was just the beginning.

There was some argument about this, because he could read headlines and articles about himself, or at least headlines on articles about himself,

Shortly after eight o'clock that evening, when the unexpected trend—Trump might actually win—seemed confirmed, Don Jr. told a friend that his father, or DJT, as he called him, looked as if he had seen a ghost. Melania, to whom Donald Trump had made his solemn guarantee, was in tears—and not of joy.

The candidate who billed himself as a billionaire—ten times over—refused even to invest his own money in it.

Exhausted though he might be, he's got to keep going, show strength, willpower, normalcy—that's his prescription

son-in-law Kushner had been marked not just for ignominy, but for slow torture by ridicule, contempt, and ever-more amusing persiflage. These people are nothing. They are media debris. For goodness' sake!