How Michael Wolff Wrote the Book

Hollywood Reporter: “After the election, I proposed to him that I come to the White House and report an inside story for later publication — journalistically, as a fly on the wall — which he seemed to misconstrue as a request for a job. No, I said. I’d like to just watch and write a book. ‘A book?’ he responded, losing interest. ‘I hear a lot of people want to write books,’ he added, clearly not understanding why anybody would. ‘Do you know Ed Klein?’– author of several virulently anti-Hillary books. ‘Great guy. I think he should write a book about me.’ But sure, Trump seemed to say, knock yourself out.”

“Since the new White House was often uncertain about what the president meant or did not mean in any given utterance, his non-disapproval became a kind of passport for me to hang around — checking in each week at the Hay-Adams hotel, making appointments with various senior staffers who put my name in the ‘system,’ and then wandering across the street to the White House and plunking myself down, day after day, on a West Wing couch.”