Quotes from Michael Wolff

People who had the money to bribe, who fundamentally believed that anyone could be bribed, and who had outsize influence on the legal structures that might otherwise restrict bribery, had become major foreign policy players in key parts of the world.

was shady, shoot-from-the-hip, heedless or even unaware of the rules, deceptive, and in it for himself.

Like the entire Saudi leadership, MBS had, practically speaking, no education.

Trump saw the world through the filter of other people's weaknesses.

Sooner or later, Trump felt contempt for anyone who showed him too much devotion.

Salesmen, whose primary characteristic and main asset is their ability to keep selling, constantly recast the world in positive terms. Discouragement for everyone else is merely the need to improve reality for them.

he thought emotionally, not strategically.

He defended himself by ridiculing others.

Kushner became the representative in the White House of the liberal status quo. He was something like what used to be called a Rockefeller Republican and now might more properly be a Goldman Sachs Democrat. He—

To Walsh, the proud political pro, the chaos, the rivalries, and the president's own lack of focus and lack of concern were simply incomprehensible.

He was the winner and now expected to be the object of awe, fascination, and favor. He expected this to be binary: a hostile media would turn into a fannish one.

Typos drove him wild. He might lash out for days when he found one, or when someone else, more likely, pointed out a mess-up in a letter or document prepared under his name—the infuriated concern of someone thinking somebody else's laziness might reveal his own weaknesses. He was spitting furious now because the legal brief was filled with botches, the second time in a week this had happened—the Unites States! In the first line! A violent overthrown!

president might have been involved usually became

You defined yourself by your enemy's reaction. Conflict was the media bait—hence, now, the political chum. The new politics was not the art of the compromise but the art of conflict.

the case against collusion with the Russians and the case for it. It was a case, or the lack of one, not of masterminds and subterfuge, but of senseless and benighted people so guileless and unconcerned that they enthusiastically colluded in plain sight.

His sons, Don Jr. and Eric—jokingly behind their backs known to Trump insiders as Uday and Qusay, after the sons of Saddam Hussein—

He had no ability to plan and organize and pay attention and switch focus; he had never been able to tailor his behavior to what the goals at hand reasonably required.

It was nearly incomprehensible to him that the same people—that is, the media—who had violently criticized him for saying he might dispute the election result were now calling him illegitimate.

But not only didn't he read, he didn't listen. He preferred to be the person talking. And he trusted his own expertise—no matter how paltry or irrelevant—more than anyone else's. What's more, he had an extremely short attention span, even when he thought you were worthy of attention.

The Tea Party movement, with Trump as its remarkable face and voice, had come to power—something like total power. It owned the Republican Party. Publicly breaking Paul Ryan was the obvious and necessary step.

The same person who before the election was regarded as illegitimate by, arguably, the majority of voters now demanded, stamping his feet, that he be seen as legitimate. His argument was a simple inversion: the establishment—the deep state—regards me as illegitimate and violated democratic principles to deny me the White House. But I won; hence, they, not I, are illegitimate.

Nobody had a political background. Nobody had a policy background. Nobody had a legislative background.

were ready to lose with fire and fury. They were not ready to win.

Trump's home in Beverly Hills