🎧 Michael Wolff on Trump's Coming 'Self-Destruction': 'He Will Pay the Price'
The 'All or Nothing' author, under attack from the president, on misguided Dems, Musk and media panic: 'Just because you don't abide by the law doesn't mean you're going to get away with it'
This past week, Donald Trump took to Truth Social, his “social media platform of one,” says author Michael Wolff, to call Wolff’s latest tell-all book a “total FAKE JOB, just like the other JUNK he wrote.” That was followed by another post in which Trump threatened legal action against “Fake books and stories” that rely on anonymous sources. “At some point I am going to sue some of these dishonest authors and book publishers,” the post read. “They are made up, defamatory fiction, and a big price should be paid for this blatant dishonesty. I'll do it as a service to our Country. Who knows, maybe we will create some NICE NEW LAW!!!”
Ever since Wolff, my longtime friend and colleague, began chronicling Trump’s rise to power, first through a Trump interview I assigned him at The Hollywood Reporter in 2016, and a subsequent four books, our 45th and 47th president has made his displeasure about him known. Trump tried, unsuccessfully, to block publication of 2018’s Fire and Fury — only for it to become a #1 New York Times bestseller. Now Trump’s ire is focused on Wolff’s new book, All or Nothing, a juicy recounting of what happened inside Trump’s campaign during the 2024 campaign, filled with fly-on-the-wall accounts from Trumpworld insiders about Melania Trump (almost always missing), his legal team (“Where is my Roy Cohn?” Trump bemoans), JD Vance (Elon Musk and Peter Thiel made their support contingent on his choice as VP candidate), and the saga of Jared and Ivanka (in exile in Miami until Trump won again), among others.
“Trump understands that many people, if not all of his people spoke to me,” Michael tells me, “which might augur an internal witch hunt about this, which I suspect is sort of going on . . . I think it’s everyone rushing to cover their ass.”
Still these are changed times, and not only has the GOP fallen in line behind Trump, so has the media in many ways, along with its owners, billionaires and CEOs fearful of the president’s wrath.
Michael picked up the phone the other day and found himself on the receiving end of a fuming Trumpworld figure: ‘When this person from the Trump administration called me up to issue me veiled threats, I said, ‘What are you going to do, block my merger?’” He adds, “I’ve been writing about Trump when you thought, well, what can the President of the United States do to an author in America? We are pretty safe. Has that changed?”
Below, Michael details how the President views those maybe-Nazi salutes, his visit with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, if the transformation of Gaza into the “Riviera of the Middle East” will happen, his exact prediction for when Trump and Musk blow up and what’s so very wrong with the very down-on-its-heels and shell-shocked Democrats.
Also don’t miss learning which Democratic star Michael says was the only one Trump was actually afraid to run against (no, it wasn’t Gavin Newsom), and also his paranoia that Michelle Obama would jump in. Also, Michael lauds the one big news outlet he feels is continuing to cover Trump without fear, while detailing his own worry over a “panicked” media in the world of conglomerates.
As for the end game for Trump? Wolff minces no words that the headlines and chaos of the last month are not sustainable: “He will pay the price shortly.”
Our conversation is edited for structure and length below; you can hear the whole thing on The Ankler podcast.
The First Month in Office
JM: Even you, as this chronicler of Donald Trump, are you surprised by what has happened in the past four weeks?
MW: No, not really. I mean, I think it's the same, just more of the same. And that’s a Donald Trump thing. You just double down on what you’ve done in the past, and it is actually necessary to double down because that's the way you're holding attention. I mean, Donald Trump is only interested in headlines. Everything is expressed in headlines. Headlines do the job. If there is any point to what he’s doing, it will be done by the headlines. Headlines and headlines are what keeps him at the center of attention. But that only works if you . . . You just can’t do the same thing. You can’t run at the same pitch. You have to keep scaling it up, which is where he is now. That is what we’re seeing, that element of what can we do next? What is bigger?
JM: Well, one of the things you note in All or Nothing is that he actually doesn't like to govern and that being the President, having won, is not the enjoyable part of this experience. It is the winning or the chase.
MW: And the attention. The attention, the attention, always, always that. But those other issues, is he interested in policy? Of course not. Is he interested in building coalitions, what you do in government? Of course not. Is he interested in the workings of the bureaucracy? Of course not, which is why we can just fire and get rid of it all.
JM: Is it your understanding that Elon Musk is doing this with his support or doing it unilaterally?
MW: Well, my interpretation of the Elon phenomenon at this point would be that he’s useful to Trump. I mean, so Elon is setting himself up for the blame, which will surely come. And then also, Trump has gotten himself into a bit of a bind with Elon because the press keeps saying that they will inevitably fall out. Therefore, he has to do the opposite of what the press says he will do. Therefore, that has now bound him to Elon for the moment. But also, let's remember that Elon kind of occupies the position that Steve Bannon did in the early part of the first Trump administration. Elon was on the cover of Time magazine [where it said] he's the real president. So I think if you're looking for a measure here [of how long he lasts] . . .