Donald Trump winning the 2016 Presidential election came as shock to many that November. Clinton supporters were sure the man who mocked a disabled reporter and called Mexican’s rapists would lose in a sweeping defeat to the former Secretary of State and news anchors nationwide stood stone-faced on live television as the numbers came. But, according to a new book (already making headlines with comments from former Trump Chief Strategist Steve Bannon), the person who was most shocked by Trump’s victory, may have been Donald Trump and his team.
In Michael Wolff’s new book, “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” he claims that Donald Trump never thought he would win and never wanted to.
“His ultimate goal, after all, had never been to win. ‘I can be the most famous man in the world,’ he had told his aide Sam Nunberg at the outset of the race. His longtime friend Roger Ailes, the former head of Fox News, liked to say that if you want a career in television, first run for president. Now Trump, encouraged by Ailes, was floating rumors about a Trump network. It was a great future. He would come out of this campaign, Trump assured Ailes, with a far more powerful brand and untold opportunities. ‘This is bigger than I ever dreamed of,’ he told Ailes a week before the election. ‘I don’t think about losing, because it isn’t losing. We’ve totally won.'”
Wolff, a well known media critic and columnist, was granted unprecedented access to President Donald Trump’s White House and conducted over 200 interviews with Trump’s staff, colleagues and the Commander-in-Chief himself. In what Wolff describes as, “true Trump fashion,” many of the interviews were off the record and then some information was causally allowed back on — but many parameters regarding what was confidential and what was not, were never discussed. This ultimately allowed Wolff the ability to uncover new and surprising information.
In a recent story published by New York Magazine, Michael Wolff adapted his book to paint a broad and condensed version of his tell-all book. He notes that Kellyanne Conway spent the morning of Election Day calling her friends and allies to blame the chairman of the Republican National Committee, Reince Priebus, for what she was sure would be a major loss for Donald Trump. She would refuse to take any of the blame, even though she was hours away from holding the title of the first woman to successfully run a US Presidential campaign.
Wolff goes on to write, “Shortly after 8 p.m. on Election Night, when the unexpected trend — Trump might actually win — seemed confirmed, Don Jr. told a friend that his father, or DJT, as he calls him, looked as if he had seen a ghost. Melania was in tears—and not of joy.”
The loss came as a shock to the entire Trump administration, according to Wolff, and the confusion and anger from inside the new President-elect’s team seeped into Inauguration Day. Wolff reports that Donald Trump was not happy that morning: “He was angry that A-level stars had snubbed the event, disgruntled with the accommodations at Blair House, and visibly fighting with his wife, who seemed on the verge of tears. Throughout the day, he wore what some around him had taken to calling his golf face: angry and pissed off, shoulders hunched, arms swinging, brow furled, lips pursed.”
From Michael Wolff’s article: “Trump did not enjoy his own inauguration. He was angry that A-level stars had snubbed the event, disgruntled with the accommodations at Blair House, and visibly fighting with his wife, who seemed on the verge of tears.”
Sounds about right: pic.twitter.com/0V89Sa8OvR
— Stephen Schwartz (@AtomicAnalyst) January 4, 2018
In Wolff’s new book, which will be released later next week, he goes on to describe the unique relationship between Donald Trump and his daughter, Ivanka, the myriad of reporters and dignitaries that President Donald Trump was forced to interact with during his first 100 days in office and the surprising and often times unimaginable remarks he made.
It’s clear that President Donald Trump made a name for himself by being brash and straight-talking, but something tells us this is not the kind of straight-talking he was hoping for.