In an interview with @donlemon airing tonight, Michael Wolff says that @KellyannePolls @seanspicer, in addition to Bannon and Hope Hicks, arranged interviews for him in the White House. pic.twitter.com/ZtMdEYc4Eu
— Yashar Ali (@yashar) January 8, 2018
Michael Wolff, the author of the new White House tell-all “Fire and Fury,” said Monday both current and former top White House officials encouraged other aides “to cooperate” in interviews for the book.
“Everybody was told to speak to me,” Wolff said in an excerpt from his interview set to air in full on CNN’s “Tonight with Don Lemon.” {mosads}
“[Stephen] Bannon told people to cooperate, Sean Spicer told people to cooperate, Kellyanne Conway told people to cooperate, Hope Hicks,” he said respectively about the president’s former chief strategist, former press secretary, senior adviser and current communications director.
Wolff said he conducted more than 200 interviews for his new book, “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” which paints President Trump as an unstable leader leading a White House in chaos.
“Why are they saying its fake?” Lemon asks.
“Because they are liars,” Wolff responds. “He doesn’t tell the truth because he doesn’t know what the truth is.”
In a statement to The Hill, Spicer said it was Wolff who has a problem with truth and lies.
“Considering his track record, chalk this up to another made up story by Michael Wolff. There is not a single staffer that I asked to cooperate with or meet with him,” Spicer said.
Conway and Hicks did not immediately respond to requests to comment on Wolff’s remark.
Wolff claims in his book that “every single” person around Trump questions “his intelligence and fitness for office.”
Trump has repeatedly blasted the book as “full of lies.” Some White House officials have fiercely pushed back on the claims, while others have questioned some of Wolff’s broad statements.
Wolff acknowledges in the book’s introduction that certain parts of the book reflect “a version of events I believe to be true” but that are sometimes based on conflicting accounts.
Many of the bombshells in the book come from quotes by Bannon.
The book quotes Bannon blasting Donald Trump Jr., calling him “treasonous” and “unpatriotic” for attending the now infamous June 2016 Trump Tower meeting with a Russian lawyer.
Bannon, who also made disparaging remarks about Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, later only walked back his remarks about the president’s eldest son and said those comments were directed toward former campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
The White House, however, rejected Bannon’s statement of “regret.”
—Updated at 8:07 p.m.