Fraud: Wolff Admits He's Not Sure His Own Book Is True
BY BENJAMIN ARIE
JANUARY 5, 2018 AT 11:40AM
A scathing book about the inner workings of the Trump White House is setting the political world on fire… but it turns out that it might belong in the fiction section.
"Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House," by Michael Wolff, sent shock-waves through the Trump administration and the media when excerpts from its pages showed the president at war with his own advisers, especially former campaign chief Steve Bannon.
Wolff's tome quoted Bannon as making insulting and deeply critical statements about Donald Trump and his adult son, Don Jr. The president lashed out on Twitter, burning all bridges with his former adviser and making his distaste for Bannon's words known.
Now, however, it looks like there could be much more to the story. Michael Wolff, the author of the title that set off the political fireworks, has admitted that he isn't sure which parts of his own book are true — and that much of it may be exaggerated or blatantly false.
"Michael Wolff […] included a note at the start that casts significant doubt on the reliability of the specifics contained in the rest of its pages," reported Business Insider reported. "Several of his sources, he says, were definitely lying to him, while some offered accounts that flatly contradicted those of others."
Incredibly, the author of a book that is being treated as factual by much of the media admitted to "looseness with the truth," and basically guessing about which accounts were accurate and which were invented out of thin air.
"Many of the accounts of what has happened in the Trump White House are in conflict with one another; many, in Trumpian fashion, are baldly untrue," Wolff wrote in the book's prologue.
"These conflicts, and that looseness with the truth, if not with reality itself, are an elemental thread of the book," he continued, essentially admitting that his own book should be taken with a grain of salt. "Sometimes I have let the players offer their versions, in turn allowing the reader to judge them."
Many of the claims made in the explosive book seem to be lifted off the pages of the tabloids.
"They include assertions that Trump never wanted to be president, that all of his senior staff considered him an idiot, that he tried to lock the Secret Service out of his room, and that he ate at McDonald’s to avoid being poisoned," summarized Business Insider.
"Fire and Fury" is scheduled to be publicly available today, but many outlets received advance copies of the book or portions of its chapters. Whether media outlets missed this author’s note about accuracy or simply chose to ignore it isn't clear.
Trump used Twitter on Thursday evening to bash both the book and his former friend, Steve Bannon.
"I authorized Zero access to White House (actually turned him down many times) for author of phony book!" the president declared. "I never spoke to him for book. Full of lies, misrepresentations and sources that don't exist."
Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
I authorized Zero access to White House (actually turned him down many times) for author of phony book! I never spoke to him for book. Full of lies, misrepresentations and sources that don't exist. Look at this guy's past and watch what happens to him and Sloppy Steve!
3:52 AM - Jan 5, 2018
43,396 43,396 Replies 22,406 22,406 Retweets 91,262 91,262 likes
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Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders echoed that stance while speaking to the media. "I'm not going to waste my time or the country's time going page by page and talking about a book that is complete fantasy and just full of tabloid gossip," she insisted.
Several journalists pointed to Wolff's shaky past relationship to the truth, including a 2008 book about Rupert Murdoch that was criticized as inaccurate by The New York Times, hardly a Trump ally.
If any serious news source consistently invented stories, filled in gray areas by guessing, and admitted to not even knowing if their own reporting was accurate, they wouldn't be around for very long — CNN notwithstanding.
Yet that's exactly what this book does, by its author's own admission. The media, hungry for anything that could be used to smear Trump, swallowed it hook, line, and sinker. Is anyone surprised?
https://conservativetribune.com/wolff-admits-unsure-book-true/ |
