vostok
Well-Known Member

Donald Trump was "befuddled" by his election win, did not enjoy his inauguration and was
scared of the White House, according to a new book.
Journalist Michael Wolff's Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House also purports
to lift the lid on Ivanka Trump's secret presidential ambitions.
The book details Mr Trump's regard for media titan Rupert Murdoch,
though the admiration was apparently not mutual.
The White House said the book was full of "false and misleading accounts".
Michael Wolff says his work is based on more than 200 interviews and that he took up
"something like a semi-permanent seat on a couch in the West Wing" following
the president's inauguration for a close-up insight into the fledgling administration.
Here are 11 of the book's revelations, with commentary from the BBC's Anthony Zurcher.
1. Bannon thought Don Jr meeting 'treasonous'
According to the book, former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon thought a meeting
between Donald Trump Jr and a group of Russians was "treasonous".
The Russians had offered Donald Trump Jr damaging information on Hillary Clinton at the June 2016 meeting.
Wolff writes that Bannon told him of the meeting:
"The three senior guys in the campaign thought it was a good idea to meet with a foreign government
inside Trump Tower in the conference room on the 25th floor - with no lawyers.
They didn't have any lawyers. Even if you thought that this was not treasonous, or unpatriotic,
or bad s***, and I happen to think it's all of that, you should have called the FBI immediately."
Bannon reportedly said the Justice Department investigation into links between the Trump campaign
and Moscow would focus on money laundering, adding:
"They're going to crack Don Junior like an egg on national TV."
Anthony Zurcher: In just a few sentences, Bannon manages to detonate a bomb under the
White House's efforts to downplay the significance of that fateful June meeting in Trump Tower
and their attempt to dismiss Robert Mueller's inquiry as a partisan witchhunt.
It's bad, Bannon is saying, and even more unforgivably it was stupid.
Taking aim at Mr Trump's own family in the most personal terms makes it all the more biting.
2. Trump 'befuddled' by his victory
In an article for NYMag adapted from his book, Wolff describes the amazement
- and dismay - in the Trump camp at his November 2016 election win.
"Shortly after 8pm 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.
There was, in the space of little more than an hour, in Steve Bannon's not unamused observation,
a befuddled Trump morphing into a disbelieving Trump and then into a horrified Trump.
But still to come was the final transformation: Suddenly, Donald Trump became a man who believed
that he deserved to be, and was wholly capable of being, the president of the United States."
AZ: This is decidedly different from what has been recited by the Trump circle since election night.
While campaign hands - at least the less-than-dedicated ones - may have been positioning themselves
for a soft landing after a defeat, Mr Trump and his close allies believed in their success.
A "horrified Trump" was never part of the script.

3. Trump 'angry' at inauguration
Wolff writes:
"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. 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."
But the first lady's office rejected the claims.
Communications director Stephanie Grisham said in a statement: "Mrs Trump supported her husband's
decision to run for President and in fact, encouraged him to do so. She was confident he would
win and was very happy when he did."
AZ: These words tell the same story as the viral video clip of a stone-faced Melania forcing a smile
when the president looks her way. It also explains why Mr Trump was so insistent about the
success of his inauguration and the size of his crowds.
He felt slighted and aggrieved and was acting accordingly.

4. Trump loved 'pursuing' friends' wives
According to another excerpt from the book, obtained by US media, Mr Trump used to boast that
sleeping with his friends' wives made "life worth living".
"In pursuing a friend's wife, he would try to persuade the wife that her husband was perhaps
not what she thought," Wolff quotes a Trump friend as saying.
He would invite the wife to secretly listen on speakerphone to a conversation that Mr Trump
would have in his office with her husband, according to the book.
Mr Trump would allegedly engage in sexual banter with the husband in the hope
that he might say something indiscreet, asking questions such as:
"Do you still like having sex with your wife? How often?"
5. Trump found White House 'scary'
Wolff writes:
"Trump, in fact, found the White House to be vexing and even a little scary.
He retreated to his own bedroom -
the first time since the Kennedy White House that a
presidential couple had maintained separate rooms. In the first days,
he ordered two television screens in addition to the one already there, and a lock on the door,
precipitating a brief standoff with the Secret Service,
who insisted they have access to the room."
AZ: For much of his adult life, Mr Trump has lived according to his own rules,
as a real-estate tycoon whose wealth allowed his every whim or idiosyncrasy to be accommodated.Adjusting to the White House - which Bill Clinton
once referred to as the "crown jewel of the federal penitentiary system"
and Harry Truman called "the great white jail" -
must have been quite a shock.