"We really are with the Trump administration at a new and historic level of stupidity," Wolff told a packed TATA stage, on a sunny afternoon. "Everyone around the president thinks he's an idiot."
Fire and Fury ignited a storm of controversy when it came out, at least partly because Donald Trump threatened to take legal action to prevent it being published, which was turned out to be the perfect publicity boost. Wolff said that ill-thought-through decision by the president was all of a piece with the White House's failure to prevent him from hanging out in the West Wing for months, and talking to anyone who came in.
He described the process whereby West Wing staffers went from being fired up by the president, to being ironic about him, to being incredulous, to just putting a finger to their temple and pulling an imaginary trigger. "Everybody who touches Donald Trump, and this has been true for his whole career, comes away burnt. Because he's a shit," Wolff said.
There were two silver linings to his alarming account of a White House in turmoil. The first was that Trump has such a short attention span that it was unimaginable that he could engage in a war; and the second was that he was almost certain to lose the presidency before the end of this term, whether as a result of impeachment, or of legal proceedings. "I do not believe that Trump will run in 2020, I do not believe he will make it to 2020. He will not be in office."
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