Trump-Bannon book: Seven most explosive claims made about the White House

Seven key quotes and takeaways from an explosive new book

American politics have been set ablaze by a new book going behind the scenes of the Trump administration.

A lengthy excerpt from Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House vividly depicts the power clashes and growing pains of an administration headed by an unprecedented President. It contains some explosive allegations.

The White House has already dismissed the book as a collection of falsehoods, with press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders calling it “trashy tabloid fiction” that is “filled with false and misleading accounts from individuals who have no access or influence”.

In a separate statement, Mr Trump dismissed former campaign architect and top aide Steve Bannon, who has some of the more astonishing quotes, as someone who had “lost his mind”.

But the book has Washington buzzing. Here are seven of the pieces you should know about, with block quotes from the book in italics:

Its author, Michael Wolff, is said to have enjoyed unusually broad access to Mr Trump and his administration

He conducted conversations over a year and a half with Mr Trump and his aides, followed by more than 200 interviews, according to a sourcing note appended to the article.

Given the “lack of ground rules placed on his access,” the note said, Mr Wolff was able to take advantage of “something like a semi-permanent seat on a couch in the West Wing”.

“In true Trumpian fashion, the administration’s lack of experience and disdain for political norms made for a hodgepodge of journalistic challenges,” the note says.

“Information would be provided off-the-record or on deep background, then casually put on the record. Sources would fail to set any parameters on the use of a conversation, or would provide accounts in confidence, only to subsequently share their views widely.

“And the President’s own views, private as well as public, were constantly shared by others”.

It doesn’t look great for the President, and it may have detonated a key alliance

Many of the claims in the story reflect poorly on Mr Trump, portraying a chaotic administration and a President who as a candidate never truly believed he would one day occupy the White House.

Mr Trump has survived plenty of allegations that might have toppled a different politician, so it’s hard to assess what the long-term consequences might be.

But one was immediately clear: the end of an amicable relationship between Mr Trump and Mr Bannon, a onetime top adviser who positioned himself as the keeper of Mr Trump’s nationalistic campaign promises.

That relationship was already strained by Mr Bannon’s championing of conservative Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore, who prevailed over Trump-backed moderate Luther Strange in the Republican primary.

While Mr Trump ultimately broke with much of his party to back the scandal-stricken Mr Moore, much of the blame for Mr Moore’s loss to a Democrat — nearly unthinkable in deep-red Alabama — fell on Mr Bannon.

That blame mounted higher after the release of the book, with both Donald Trump Jr and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s office piling on. And while Mr Trump’s claim that Mr Bannon “has nothing to do with me or my presidency” is easily debunked, it’s a sign that the White House wants to wash its hands of the former strategist.

It says Mr Bannon accused aides of “treasonous” behaviour

This is the quote that is likely responsible for much of the White House’s emphatic response.

As special counsel Robert Mueller has explored potential linkages between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. A subject of much scrutiny has been a Trump Tower meeting involving Mr Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, his son Donald Trump Jr, his then-campaign manager Paul Manafort and a Russian lawyer whom an intermediary had characterised as having damaging information on presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

Mr Bannon has already criticised Mr Trump’s handling of the Russia investigation, saying in September that the President’s decision to fire former FBI director James Comey — paving the way for Mr Mueller’s appointment — was the worst mistake “in modern political history”. According to Mr Wolff’s account, he had similarly harsh words about the Trump Tower meeting.

“Even if you thought that this was not treasonous, or unpatriotic, or bad shit, and I happen to think it’s all of that, you should have called the FBI immediately,” Mr Bannon is quoted as saying.

It claims Mr Trump and his aides didn’t believe he would win

On the eve of Mr Trump’s victory, Mr Wolff writes, the candidate and his staff shared the consensus of political prognosticators who assumed a loss was imminent:

Even though the numbers in a few key states had appeared to be changing to Trump’s advantage, neither Conway nor Trump himself nor his son-in-law, Jared Kushner — the effective head of the campaign — ­wavered in their certainty: Their unexpected adventure would soon be over. Not only would Trump not be president, almost everyone in the campaign agreed, he should probably not be.

And in Mr Wolff’s telling Mr Trump was fine with that outcome, exploring the idea of a new television network and trumpeting the “far more powerful brand” his run would help establish. But election night brought a reassessment, Mr Wolff writes:

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.

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.

After the excerpt came out, a spokeswoman for Melania Trump said the book belonged “in the bargain fiction section”, adding that the now-First Lady was “confident he would win and was very happy when he did”.

It alleges Mr Trump hated his inauguration

One of the first of the Trump administration’s many disputes with the media concerned his inauguration: namely, the White House claiming without evidence that it had broken attendance records. Setting aside the question of size, Mr Woolf writes that Mr Trump didn’t have a very good time

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.

It reports the President had to be dissuaded from elevating his son-in-law

Accustomed to running his business empire as a family business, Mr Trump allegedly had to be talked down from making Mr Kushner his chief of staff. As Mr Wolff writes, Mr Kushner — who has since become a top White House aide — was considered despite being a political neophyte.

It was Ann Coulter who finally took the president-elect aside. “Nobody is apparently telling you this,” she told him. “But you can’t. You just can’t hire your children”.

It states Mr Trump couldn’t articulate coherent policy goals

Parts of the excerpt focus on the alleged travails of deputy chief of staff Katie Walsh, who struggled to instill order in a turbulent West Wing.

After writing that Mr Trump came to be seen as someone who “didn’t read” and “was no more than semi-­literate”, Mr Woolf quotes Ms Walsh saying dealing with Mr Trump was “like trying to figure out what a child wants”. A longer quote gives another example of the purported indecision:

In early March, not long before she left, she confronted Kushner with a simple request. “Just give me the three things the president wants to focus on,” she demanded. “What are the three priorities of this White House?”

It was the most basic question imaginable — one that any qualified presidential candidate would have answered long before he took up residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Six weeks into Trump’s presidency, Kushner was wholly without an answer.

“Yes,’ he said to Walsh. “We should probably have that conversation.”