36 39 juicy leaks from “Fire and Fury”
We couldn’t resist!
For your own fast reference, here are 36 delicious takeaways from Michael Wolff’s forthcoming book, “Fire and Fury.”
We saved the most shattering for last…
Roger Ailes on Trump: “Don’t give him too much to think about.”- Steve Bannon on Ivanka: “Dumb as a brick.”
- Steve Bannon: “The chance that Don Jr. did not walk these jumos up to his father’s office on the twenty-sixth floor is zero,” Bannon said.
- Steve Bannon: The “Kushner [real estate] **** is greasy…goes through Deutsche Bank…it’s all about money laundering.”
- Steve Bannon: Trump called him “disloyal.”
- Steve Bannon: meeting set up by Donald Trump Jr. with Kremlin-linked Russian lawyer during the 2016 campaign as “treasonous” and “unpatriotic … They’re going to crack Don Junior like an egg on national TV,” Bannon is quoted as saying.
- Kellyanne Conway: Trump called her a “crybaby.”
- Michael Flynn on accepting $45,000 for a speech in Russia: “Well, it would only be a problem if we won!”
- Hope Hicks and Trump had a very close relationship; Trump’s inner circle saw her as a surrogate daughter to Trump.
- Henry Kissinger: The White House has become a “war between the Jews and the non-Jews”
- Jared Kushner: Trump called him a “suck-up.”
- Rupert Murdoch on Trump: “A ****ing idiot.”
- Reince Priebus: Trump called him “weak.”
- Sean Spicer: Trump called him “stupid.”
- Ivanka and Kushner agreed that she would be the one to run for president.
- Ivanka described Trump’s hair as a perfectly engineered hairdo that takes many steps to complete.
- Ivanka Trump insisted Kellyanne first be pulled from cable for her “idiotic militancy.”
- Katie Walsh on Trump: “Like a child.”
- As a candidate, Trump couldn’t handle learning about the Constitution — Sam Nunberg: “I got as far as the Fourth Amendment, before his finger is pulling down on his lip and his eyes are rolling back in his head.”
Nobody in his campaign thought he would win. - Trump berated White House housekeeping endlessly for not leaving shirts on the floor.
- Trump didn’t enjoy his own inauguration: “He was angry that A-level stars had snubbed the event.”
- Trump didn’t know who John Boehner was.
- Trump didn’t want to win.
- Trump eats at McDonald’s out of paranoia of being poisoned and because he is a germaphobe.
- Trumpboasted to people that Melania is his “trophy wife.”
- Trump ignored Ann Coulter’s consistent warnings about hiring his kids.
- Trump never reads; multiple staff insist Trump was only ‘semi-literate’.
- Trump offered to marry TV hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski.
- Trump reassured Melania that he would not win the election; on election night, when it was clear Trump was the electoral victor, Melania — who wanted to return to normal life — “was in tears — and not of joy.”
- Trump said Jared and Ivanka should have stayed in New York.
- Trump talked about sex with other women: “Trump liked to say that one of the things that made life worth living was getting your friends’ wives into bed.”
- Trump used the “C” word to express his anger toward then-Deputy AG Sally Yates.
- Trump wondered what a golden shower was after learning of the Steele Dossier.
- Trump would speculate on the flaws of his staff after hanging up the phone with them.
- Trump kept trying to rationalize why someone would be a member of the KKK after Charlottesville racist rally.
- Trump’s aides and appointees spoke derogatorily about him. “For Steve Mnuchin and Reince Priebus, he was an ‘idiot.’ For Gary Cohn, he was ‘dumb as shit.’ For H.R. McMaster he was a ‘dope.’ The list went on.”
- Trump’s lifestyle follows weird routines. “If he was not having his 6:30 dinner with Steve Bannon, then, more to his liking, he was in bed by that time with a cheeseburger, watching his three screens and making phone calls.”
- Trump’s travel ban was passed on a Friday so that people would protest at airports; Bannon: “[T]he snowflakes would show up at the airports and riot.”
- Two weeks ago, Trump couldn’t remember the faces of his friends, and his staff feared he might be booted from office for being unable to perform his duties. “At Mar-a-Lago, just before the new year, a heavily made-up Trump failed to recognize a succession of old friends.”
D.B. Hirsch is a political activist, news junkie, and retired ad copy writer and spin doctor. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.