Latest news with #MichaelWolff
Yahoo
13 hours ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
What Trump Really Thinks of Laura Loomer: Biographer
MAGA activist Laura Loomer checks all the right boxes for President Donald Trump, even though many of his closest advisers seem intent on keeping her at arm's length. 'She's, what, 30 years old? She looks the part. She's on television often for Donald Trump,' Trump biographer Michael Wolff told The Daily Beast Podcast this week. 'That's the trifecta. I mean, what's not to like from Donald Trump's point of view?' Wolff, author of Fire and Fury, said 'everybody is trying to keep Laura Loomer out,' except for Natalie Harp, the devoted Trump aide who's been referred to as the 'human printer' and 'nutter conduit' to Trump. 'She and Laura Loomer have bonded in some way of friendship or just convenience and that's how Laura Loomer comes in,' Wolff said. 'She calls Natalie. She's in. And the president likes her.' 'She's good television, so that's amusing to him,' he added. Loomer, a far-right influencer and conspiracy theorist with more than 1.7 million followers on X, once called herself a 'proud Islamophobe.' Trump has previously described her as 'terrific' and 'very special.' But the 32-year-old has butted heads with Trumpworld figures, both publicly and privately. Last month, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson called her the 'world's creepiest human' when she defended Trump's decision to bomb Iran. Behind the scenes, Trump's aides see her as an 'uncontrollable and toxic force,' who the president nonetheless calls several times a month, The New York Times recently reported. Nobody in Trump's West Wing inner circle would speak to the newspaper on the record about Loomer. 'My point of access to the White House is Donald Trump,' she told The Times in an interview. 'And that's really hard for people to comprehend.' She recounted telling her boyfriend that 'President Trump comes first,' and 'if you can't handle that, then go find somebody else.' Wolff's latest podcast appearance honed in on the women Trump surrounds himself with, who often fit a similar mold; young, conventionally attractive and fiercely loyal. Wolff claims these aides serve as a kind of 'comfort blanket system' for the president. Among them is Harp, who invited Loomer into the 2024 Trump campaign's inner circle, Wolff wrote in his latest book, All or Nothing: How Trump Recaptured America. Colleagues referred to Harp as the 'human printer' because she followed Trump around with a portable printer so she could hand him hard copies of news he likes, The Times reported. White House communications director Steven Cheung has repeatedly slammed Wolff as a 'lying sack of s--t' who 'routinely fabricates stories originating from his sick and warped imagination.' New episodes of The Daily Beast Podcast are released every Thursday. Like and download on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app. And click here for email updates as each new episode drops.
Politico
a day ago
- Business
- Politico
‘Those days are over': Trump books draw lackluster sales
'Everyone is desperately looking for the next Michael Wolff or James Comey for next year, but it's not clear there could ever be one again,' said one concerned publisher, referencing two of the authors with biggest book successes of Trump's first term. 'There's definitely a slump, and it's across all of nonfiction,' added a book agent. 'Part of it is that we were just actually tired of this, and we're exhausted, and we don't want to spend 30 bucks and six or eight hours of our time feeling worse.' (Publishing insiders and authors were granted anonymity for this story because they didn't have authorization to speak from their employers or wanted to speak candidly about the state of the industry.) The latest example is '2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America,' by political journalists Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager and Isaac Arnsdorf. '2024' sold roughly 6,000 hardcover copies in the first week of publication, according to data released last Wednesday from NPD BookScan. Yet even with that sales figure, it hit the New York Times bestseller list at No. 4. (The Times bestseller list does not disclose its data sources.) It has become somewhat easier to get on to the Times bestseller list because it measures comparable sales across the board. One point of comparison: In a similar week in July 2017, the No. 4 book on the Times nonfiction list was former Sen. Al Franken's book, which had been out for weeks and still sold almost 11,000 copies that week. Dawsey and Pager referred a request for comment to a publicist for their publisher, who said she was 'very happy' with sales, while Arnsdorf didn't respond to a request for comment. Their agent Elyse Cheney said the numbers, including all formats, 'far exceed' the BookScan figure but declined to give exact numbers. A person with direct knowledge of the sales said they were more than double 6,000 including all formats, and that e-book and audio sales were almost as high as print sales. (BookScan data is not a full account of a book's success as it captures around 70 percent of hardcover sales and does not track e-book and audio uploads.) 'They are three great reporters, but they have a difficult time finding an audience, because at the end of the day, they play it pretty straight,' said another book agent. 'A fundamental question in our divided politics, and it's just as true for publishing — who are you marketing to? Are you selling a book to the MSNBC crowd or the Fox News crowd? There's very little in between.' To wit: 'Butler: The Untold Story of the Near Assassination of Donald Trump and the Fight for America's Heartland,' by conservative journalist Salena Zito, came out the same week as '2024' and sold about 23,000 hardcover copies, according to BookScan numbers, hitting No. 1 on the Times bestseller list. Zito said in a statement that she was 'deeply humbled by this ranking' and 'grateful to President Trump, who interviewed with me dozens of times for the book and generously encouraged people to read' it. Trump posted about the book on social media, including sharing a preorder link before its publication. 'That's a book that's being published to the MAGAs. So those books are always different in their numbers,' said a book agent. This follows other second-term Trump books experiencing lackluster sales. 'Trump in Exile,' by the Wall Street Journal's Meridith McGraw, has sold roughly 2,000 copies since its release last August, according to BookScan. Axios' Alex Isenstadt's 'Revenge: The Inside Story of Trump's Return to Power,' published in March, has sold around 3,000 copies so far, according to BookScan. McGraw and Isenstadt declined to comment. Author Michael Wolff became one of the masters of the Trump genre with 2018's 'Fire and Fury,' which sold more than 25,000 copies during its first week on sale in 2018 and went on to sell more than 900,000. But the writer sold only around 3,000 print copies during the equivalent first week publicity campaign for his latest installment 'All or Nothing: How Trump Recaptured America,' published in March. (It has now sold around 11,000 copies, according to BookScan.) As these books have posted middling sales figures, publishers are finding it hard to justify signing big advances for new Trump books. That's made it more difficult for political journalists to get lucrative book deals. 'Editors are not spending anywhere near the amount of money that they did this time eight years ago,' said one of the book agents. 'The days of just writing a book to write a book and checking the box for someone's career — those days are over.' 'We are taking on fewer projects in the space because the ones that we do take on, they basically have to rise to a mid six- or seven-figure deal,' said the agent. The person said that they talk with publishers who speak of 'a lot of fatigue in the market' and that there has to be 'a clear path on either breaking news or a 'wow factor' for a book to get that kind of money today.' The skepticism in the marketplace for political nonfiction, particularly Trump books, has led publishers and agents to try to get authors who are big brand names with built-in fan bases like Ezra Klein or Jake Tapper. Both have seen significant success this year with their books 'Abundance' (co-written with Derek Thompson) and 'Original Sin,' respectively. 'Abundance' has sold roughly 146,000 copies since its publication in March, according to BookScan. Tapper, one of the most prominent CNN anchors, was attached to Axios' Alex Thompson's Biden book project after his book deal had been cancelled. 'Original Sin,' which focused more on the 46th president than the 47th, became a No. 1 Times bestseller for two weeks and was on the bestseller list for almost two months. It has sold about 97,000 copies since its publication in May, according to BookScan. 'You gotta have podcasts or TV, unfortunately, these days,' said one of the book agents. Authors are well aware of readers' news exhaustion after a decade of Trump dominating the political conversation. 'Trump as an angry president yelling at clouds is not news anymore,' said one author of a recent political book. 'News is what sells books.' Trump's first term saw multiple major sellers besides 'Fire and Fury.' Bob Woodward's 'Fear' sold 1.1 million copies in all formats in its first week, and Simon and Schuster called it the bestselling book in company history. 'The Room Where It Happened,' the explosive 2020 memoir by former national security adviser John Bolton, and 'A Higher Loyalty,' by former FBI Director James Comey, each logged more than 600,000 sales within their first few years of publication. '[Trump] is so familiar to everyone by now, and people are less shocked by new revelations because it enforces their own ideas about who he is or they just don't care,' said an author of a recent Trump book. There have been some other bright spots for the industry this year. NBC News' Jonathan Allen and The Hill's Amie Parnes registered success with their 2024 election book 'Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House,' which entered the Times list at No. 1 and has been optioned to become a feature film. The authors said in a statement they 'are proud of our unmatched behind-the-scenes reporting on the last three presidential elections and deeply humbled by the response' to their latest work. Dawsey, Pager, Arnsdorf, McGraw, Isenstadt, Allen, Parnes and Alex Thompson all previously worked for POLITICO. Still, the broader shift in the market's appetite for Trump books is clear. During the Biden presidency, books by former Trump aides similarly failed to generate much interest. (Biden books didn't tend to sell well, either.) The author of the recent Trump book said they didn't even ask their publisher how many copies it sold. 'I didn't go into it being like, 'I'm going to make a bunch of money off of it,'' said the author. 'I had a good advance, and I went into it for the experience of it, and as a reporting exercise, and a chance to put a mark on a certain moment in time that I knew really well and covered really closely.'
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
The secret recordings that could blow open Trump's true relationship with Epstein
'I have been beating this horse for a very, very long time,' says Michael Wolff. 'And suddenly now everybody's [saying] 'oh yeah, Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein'. Why people did not see that this was a story a long time ago is just amazing to me. It is confusing that it could have been out there in plain view, and ignored for so long.' Five years before Epstein's death in 2019, Wolff, best known as the author of four bestselling books on Trump's presidency, began recording hundreds of interviews with the financier, and attended exclusive events at his flat in New York. For years, no publisher or broadcaster has dared to touch the explosive cache – which he claims runs close to 100 hours of tape, split over some 30 sessions together. Author and Trump expert Michael Wolff says he has collected around 100 hours of tape that reveal Trump and Epstein's relationship - Sky UK Instead, Wolff has released only snippets of the recordings to date. But now, thanks to the mounting speculation about the extent of Trump's relationship with Epstein, the tapes have become some of the most in-demand material in America. Epstein died by suicide while awaiting trial for sex trafficking, accused of procuring prostitutes – some underage – for his friends and acquaintances. Trump's Maga base have long clamoured for the release of classified documents about his case, believing they could incriminate establishment figures, in particular Bill Clinton (who has denied all knowledge of Epstein's crimes). Jeffrey Epstein and former president Bill Clinton in 2002 - Netflix Having been friends with Epstein for years before a bitter falling out in 2004, Trump took full advantage of the situation, repeatedly suggesting that there was explosive material possessed by authorities which would come to light if he was re-elected, and hinting Epstein might not have taken his own life. Yet as Trump has backed away from his promises of disclosure on Epstein, Maga commentators have started to turn on him. The disgraced former general Mike Flynn, a sometime ally who has become a political commentator, posted on social media reminding the president – in capital letters – that the 'EPSTEIN AFFAIR IS NOT GOING AWAY'. Having stoked Epstein conspiracy theories for years, including indulging the idea he kept a so-called 'client list' used to blackmail co-conspirators, Trump and his team may now find that their strategy comes back to bite them. Protesters in Houston, Texas, in July demanding for the Epstein files to be released - RONALDO SCHEMIDT/AFP '[Threatening disclosure] was a typical Trump blow-hard kind of thing,' Wolff says. According to his reportage, Trump and Epstein were at one time even closer than had been previously thought. Trump and Epstein, wealthy and connected men of similar ages, mixed in similar fields and socialised together frequently. They were on several occasions spotted at the same parties. In 2002, Trump called Epstein a 'terrific guy' in a New York Magazine profile, adding that 'he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.' In audio files previously released on Wolff's Fire and Fury podcast, Epstein said he had been Trump's 'best friend' for 10 years; Wolff has also said Trump's nickname for Epstein was 'Jeffy'. 'From 1988/89 through to 2004 Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump were the best friends,' Wolff, 71, says over the phone from his home in the Hamptons. 'These were Eighties guys, from a moment when having money forgave anything and everybody idolised anybody who had money. Having money gave you this extraordinary entitlement. This was the last blush of what it is to be a playboy. They had the money, the planes, the total disregard of middle class rules. [...] 'They had the same interests. They did the same things, pursued the same activities, pursued very often the same women. Someone called me the other day and said 'you don't mean Trump was interested in little girls?' I said 'no … but they [Trump and Epstein] were both obsessed with models. 'They started modelling agencies, invested in modelling agencies. Trump has his beauty pageants, Epstein had the Victoria's Secret stuff [Epstein was an advisor to Les Wexner, the Victoria's Secret boss].' 'They had the same interests. They did the same things', says Michael Wolff - Davidoff Studios Photography/Archive Photos Wolff says the friendship centred on Palm Beach, Florida, where Epstein and Trump were neighbours. 'Epstein had this set of a dozen Polaroids of Trump around Epstein's swimming pool,' Wolff recalls. He alleges the images were held in Epstein's safe, which the FBI seized when they raided his homes in New York and Palm Beach in July 2019. 'I remember three of them vividly. Two of the pictures had topless girls sitting in Trump's lap, and one where Trump has a stain on the front of his [trousers] and three or five topless girls are pointing at it and laughing. These guys defined each other. Epstein is the best window through which to understand Trump.' Last week, a report in The Wall Street Journal alleged that Trump sent Epstein a card on his 50th birthday in 2003, with a drawing of a naked woman and inscribed 'may every day be another wonderful secret'. Trump immediately denied doing so, claiming: 'it's not my language … it's not my words.' He added he did not 'draw pictures of women'. In the wake of the story, the White House has banned the WSJ from covering an upcoming trip to Scotland due to the 'fake and defamatory conduct' and Trump has moved to sue the Rupert Murdoch-owned publication for $10bn. The president has spoken of being subjected to a 'witch hunt'. On Monday, White House communications director Stephen Cheung said Trump once kicked Epstein out of his club for being a 'creep' and called allegations about him 'recycled, old fake news'. After decades of friendship, in 2004, Trump and Epstein had what Wolff describes as an 'acrimonious' falling out over a real estate deal, so were not close during Epstein's alleged crimes at the so-called 'Epstein Island', Little St James in the US Virgin Islands. It was after that that criminal accusations first started to gather around Epstein, culminating in a 13-month prison sentence for prostitution in 2008. In 2014, Epstein approached Wolff, a highly respected New York journalist who had been the media columnist of Vanity Fair, with a view to being written about. Wolff had just begun writing about Trump, work which would form the basis of Fire and Fury, the first of his accounts of the president's time in the White House. Wolff's book 'Fire and Fury' about Trump's first presidency - NurPhoto 'Epstein said 'you can ask me anything, I have nothing to hide, and you judge for yourself whether I'm honest,'' Wolff recalls. After a couple of 'pretty damn interesting' conversations, Wolff began attending the events Epstein held at his mansion on the Upper East side, thought to be one of the largest private residences in New York. 'It was kind of extraordinary,' Wolff says. 'The people there were amazing. From Bill Gates to Ehud Barak [former Israeli prime minister] to Larry Summers, just one person after another.' Prince Andrew? 'Yeah,' Wolff says. 'Epstein conducted these things at his dining table. People came in from morning until night. There were very few women, it had a men's club feel to it. But it was kind of irresistible, frankly, and I confess to having a good time. The subjects were foreign policy, the economy. No girls, that was never a topic. From left to right: Melania Trump, Prince Andrew, Gwendolyn Beck and Jeffrey Epstein at a party at the Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach in 2000 - Davidoff Studios Photography/Archive Photos 'Then in 2015, when Trump started to run [for the presidency], Epstein started to talk about his relationship with Trump, which was eye-opening. I was starting to write about Trump, so it was very valuable. In 2017, [Epstein] became friends with Steve Bannon and they bonded over their mutual obsession slash hatred of Trump. They talked about Trump all the time.' As the authorities closed in on Epstein prior to his arrest in 2019, he remained in touch with Wolff. In a piece from 2020, The Last Days of Jeffrey Epstein, Wolff details the acrimony between Epstein and Trump. Epstein refers to Trump as a 'moron,' and makes derogatory claims about his leadership style. 'He lets someone else be in charge, until other people realise that someone else is in charge. When that happens, you're no longer in charge.' After the fall-out over their property deal, Wolff says Epstein came to believe it was Trump – who had close relations to the Florida law enforcement – who turned Epstein in before he was jailed for soliciting prostitutes in 2008. In the same piece, Wolff quotes Bannon telling Epstein he was the 'only person' he was afraid of during Trump's first presidential campaign, implying he believed the financier knew dangerous secrets about Trump. 'As well you should have been,' Epstein is reported to have replied. It was during Trump's presidency that Epstein was arrested. Wolff's own relationship with Epstein had a macabre denouement. 'The last message he wrote appears to be to me,' Wolff says. 'He died on Saturday morning and I got the message on Friday evening. I had written a note through his lawyers asking how he was doing. The message was 'pretty crazy. But still hanging around – no pun intended'. Then he died with the bedsheet around his neck a few hours later. It was very weird.' The circumstances of Epstein's death have become a lightning rod for conspiracy theorists. He was found in the early hours of Aug 10 2019, hanging off the side of his cell's bed. The official ruling was a suicide by hanging, but Epstein's lawyers challenged that account. Two guards who were meant to check on him had fallen asleep, and two CCTV cameras in front of his cell malfunctioned at the critical moment. Surveys have suggested that only 15 per cent of Americans believe Epstein died by suicide. A protester outside Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse during the trial of Ghislaine Maxwell in 2021 - BRYAN R. SMITH/AFP When the US Department of Justice finally released a tape of events that evening two weeks ago, analysts found that nearly three minutes had been cut out. 'It seems implausible that he could have killed himself in the way they say he would have had to have killed himself,' Wolff says, 'but equally implausible that he would have been murdered and all of the people, the FBI agents and assistant US attorneys would either know something or keep quiet about it. I don't know.' In the years since Epstein's death, Wolff has tried to draw attention to what he claims was the true extent of his relationship with Trump. But he has not gained much traction. 'I've been trying to place this stuff for a long time.' Wolff says, describing how he has pitched larger treatments of his 'endless amounts of recordings' countless times, only for the plug to be pulled at the last minute. 'It's so compelling that everyone's always interested, but executives decide it's too complicated and controversial. Because as soon as you start to deal with Epstein as a person with multiple dimensions, instead of just this evil guy, it freaks everybody out.' Virginia Giuffre was one of the most prominent and outspoken alleged victims of Jeffrey Epstein until her death this year - Mark Kauzlarich/Bloomberg He says he thinks partly the press has not been willing to further confront Trump's friendship with Epstein. 'There has been, among the respectable press, a view that this subject is too icky,' Wolff says. 'Good people don't discuss this. He's the president of the United States, how can you link him to the president of the United States without evidence… It has something to do with the fact that there is not the language in the post MeToo world to discuss sex. You have to talk about sex, you have to make distinctions between girls and women, talk about the complicated idea of consent of victims. It's very hard in the recent climate. 'People don't know how to approach this,' he adds. 'They think it's going to be too hot to handle, the Right wing is going to yell at us and the Left wing is going to yell at us and the women are going to yell at us and Trump is going to yell at us. We're not going to be a hero to anyone if we tell this story.' To judge by the renewed interest in Wolff's 100 hours of tapes, this time, the weight of public pressure may prove decisive. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Telegraph
2 days ago
- Politics
- Telegraph
The secret recordings that could blow open Trump's true relationship with Epstein
'I have been beating this horse for a very, very long time,' says Michael Wolff. 'And suddenly now everybody's [saying] 'oh yeah, Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein '. Why people did not see that this was a story a long time ago is just amazing to me. It is confusing that it could have been out there in plain view, and ignored for so long.' Five years before Epstein's death in 2019, Wolff, best known as the author of four bestselling books on Trump's presidency, began recording hundreds of interviews with the financier, and attended exclusive events at his flat in New York. For years, no publisher or broadcaster has dared to touch the explosive cache – which he claims runs close to 100 hours of tape, split over some 30 sessions together. Instead, Wolff has released only snippets of the recordings to date. But now, thanks to the mounting speculation about the extent of Trump's relationship with Epstein, the tapes have become some of the most in-demand material in America. Epstein died by suicide while awaiting trial for sex trafficking, accused of procuring prostitutes – some underage – for his friends and acquaintances. Trump's Maga base have long clamoured for the release of classified documents about his case, believing they could incriminate establishment figures, in particular Bill Clinton (who has denied all knowledge of Epstein's crimes). Having been friends with Epstein for years before a bitter falling out in 2004, Trump took full advantage of the situation, repeatedly suggesting that there was explosive material possessed by authorities which would come to light if he was re-elected, and hinting Epstein might not have taken his own life. Yet as Trump has backed away from his promises of disclosure on Epstein, Maga commentators have started to turn on him. The disgraced former general Mike Flynn, a sometime ally who has become a political commentator, posted on social media reminding the president – in capital letters – that the 'EPSTEIN AFFAIR IS NOT GOING AWAY'. Having stoked Epstein conspiracy theories for years, including indulging the idea he kept a so-called 'client list' used to blackmail co-conspirators, Trump and his team may now find that their strategy comes back to bite them. '[Threatening disclosure] was a typical Trump blow-hard kind of thing,' Wolff says. According to his reportage, Trump and Epstein were at one time even closer than had been previously thought. Trump and Epstein, wealthy and connected men of similar ages, mixed in similar fields and socialised together frequently. They were on several occasions spotted at the same parties. In 2002, Trump called Epstein a 'terrific guy' in a New York Magazine profile, adding that 'he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.' In audio files previously released on Wolff's Fire and Fury podcast, Epstein said he had been Trump's 'best friend' for 10 years; Wolff has also said Trump's nickname for Epstein was 'Jeffy'. 'From 1988/89 through to 2004 Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump were the best friends,' Wolff, 71, says over the phone from his home in the Hamptons. 'These were Eighties guys, from a moment when having money forgave anything and everybody idolised anybody who had money. Having money gave you this extraordinary entitlement. This was the last blush of what it is to be a playboy. They had the money, the planes, the total disregard of middle class rules. [...] 'They had the same interests. They did the same things, pursued the same activities, pursued very often the same women. Someone called me the other day and said 'you don't mean Trump was interested in little girls?' I said 'no … but they [Trump and Epstein] were both obsessed with models. 'They started modelling agencies, invested in modelling agencies. Trump has his beauty pageants, Epstein had the Victoria's Secret stuff [Epstein was an advisor to Les Wexner, the Victoria's Secret boss].' Wolff says the friendship centred on Palm Beach, Florida, where Epstein and Trump were neighbours. 'Epstein had this set of a dozen Polaroids of Trump around Epstein's swimming pool,' Wolff recalls. He alleges the images were held in Epstein's safe, which the FBI seized when they raided his homes in New York and Palm Beach in July 2019. 'I remember three of them vividly. Two of the pictures had topless girls sitting in Trump's lap, and one where Trump has a stain on the front of his [trousers] and three or five topless girls are pointing at it and laughing. These guys defined each other. Epstein is the best window through which to understand Trump.' Last week, a report in The Wall Street Journal alleged that Trump sent Epstein a card on his 50th birthday in 2003, with a drawing of a naked woman and inscribed 'may every day be another wonderful secret'. Trump immediately denied doing so, claiming: 'it's not my language … it's not my words.' He added he did not 'draw pictures of women'. In the wake of the story, the White House has banned the WSJ from covering an upcoming trip to Scotland due to the 'fake and defamatory conduct' and Trump has moved to sue the Rupert Murdoch-owned publication for $10bn. The president has spoken of being subjected to a ' witch hunt '. On Monday, White House communications director Stephen Cheung said Trump once kicked Epstein out of his club for being a 'creep' and called allegations about him 'recycled, old fake news'. After decades of friendship, in 2004, Trump and Epstein had what Wolff describes as an 'acrimonious' falling out over a real estate deal, so were not close during Epstein's alleged crimes at the so-called 'Epstein Island', Little St James in the US Virgin Islands. It was after that that criminal accusations first started to gather around Epstein, culminating in a 13-month prison sentence for prostitution in 2008. In 2014, Epstein approached Wolff, a highly respected New York journalist who had been the media columnist of Vanity Fair, with a view to being written about. Wolff had just begun writing about Trump, work which would form the basis of Fire and Fury, the first of his accounts of the president's time in the White House. 'Epstein said 'you can ask me anything, I have nothing to hide, and you judge for yourself whether I'm honest,'' Wolff recalls. After a couple of 'pretty damn interesting' conversations, Wolff began attending the events Epstein held at his mansion on the Upper East side, thought to be one of the largest private residences in New York. 'It was kind of extraordinary,' Wolff says. 'The people there were amazing. From Bill Gates to Ehud Barak [former Israeli prime minister] to Larry Summers, just one person after another.' Prince Andrew? 'Yeah,' Wolff says. 'Epstein conducted these things at his dining table. People came in from morning until night. There were very few women, it had a men's club feel to it. But it was kind of irresistible, frankly, and I confess to having a good time. The subjects were foreign policy, the economy. No girls, that was never a topic. 'Then in 2015, when Trump started to run [for the presidency], Epstein started to talk about his relationship with Trump, which was eye-opening. I was starting to write about Trump, so it was very valuable. In 2017, [Epstein] became friends with Steve Bannon and they bonded over their mutual obsession slash hatred of Trump. They talked about Trump all the time.' As the authorities closed in on Epstein prior to his arrest in 2019, he remained in touch with Wolff. In a piece from 2020, The Last Days of Jeffrey Epstein, Wolff details the acrimony between Epstein and Trump. Epstein refers to Trump as a 'moron,' and makes derogatory claims about his leadership style. 'He lets someone else be in charge, until other people realise that someone else is in charge. When that happens, you're no longer in charge.' After the fall-out over their property deal, Wolff says Epstein came to believe it was Trump – who had close relations to the Florida law enforcement – who turned Epstein in before he was jailed for soliciting prostitutes in 2008. In the same piece, Wolff quotes Bannon telling Epstein he was the 'only person' he was afraid of during Trump's first presidential campaign, implying he believed the financier knew dangerous secrets about Trump. 'As well you should have been,' Epstein is reported to have replied. It was during Trump's presidency that Epstein was arrested. Wolff's own relationship with Epstein had a macabre denouement. 'The last message he wrote appears to be to me,' Wolff says. 'He died on Saturday morning and I got the message on Friday evening. I had written a note through his lawyers asking how he was doing. The message was 'pretty crazy. But still hanging around – no pun intended'. Then he died with the bedsheet around his neck a few hours later. It was very weird.' The circumstances of Epstein's death have become a lightning rod for conspiracy theorists. He was found in the early hours of Aug 10 2019, hanging off the side of his cell's bed. The official ruling was a suicide by hanging, but Epstein's lawyers challenged that account. Two guards who were meant to check on him had fallen asleep, and two CCTV cameras in front of his cell malfunctioned at the critical moment. Surveys have suggested that only 15 per cent of Americans believe Epstein died by suicide. When the US Department of Justice finally released a tape of events that evening two weeks ago, analysts found that nearly three minutes had been cut out. 'It seems implausible that he could have killed himself in the way they say he would have had to have killed himself,' Wolff says, 'but equally implausible that he would have been murdered and all of the people, the FBI agents and assistant US attorneys would either know something or keep quiet about it. I don't know.' In the years since Epstein's death, Wolff has tried to draw attention to what he claims was the true extent of his relationship with Trump. But he has not gained much traction. 'I've been trying to place this stuff for a long time.' Wolff says, describing how he has pitched larger treatments of his 'endless amounts of recordings' countless times, only for the plug to be pulled at the last minute. 'It's so compelling that everyone's always interested, but executives decide it's too complicated and controversial. Because as soon as you start to deal with Epstein as a person with multiple dimensions, instead of just this evil guy, it freaks everybody out.' He says he thinks partly the press has not been willing to further confront Trump's friendship with Epstein. 'There has been, among the respectable press, a view that this subject is too icky,' Wolff says. 'Good people don't discuss this. He's the president of the United States, how can you link him to the president of the United States without evidence… It has something to do with the fact that there is not the language in the post MeToo world to discuss sex. You have to talk about sex, you have to make distinctions between girls and women, talk about the complicated idea of consent of victims. It's very hard in the recent climate. 'People don't know how to approach this,' he adds. 'They think it's going to be too hot to handle, the Right wing is going to yell at us and the Left wing is going to yell at us and the women are going to yell at us and Trump is going to yell at us. We're not going to be a hero to anyone if we tell this story.'
The Independent
3 days ago
- Politics
- The Independent
Laura Loomer hits the ‘trifecta' in Trump's loyalty test and that's why he keeps her around, biographer says
The seamlessness with which far-right activist Laura Loomer fits in with President Donald Trump 's inner circle has made her an easy ally to keep around, a former Trump biographer says. Loomer, 32, has created controversy with her Islamophobic claims but her abiding devotion to the president has led to her having an apparent sway in the firing of some senior officials. It's been widely reported that many of Trump's closest officials are not fans of Loomer, who they see as unpredictable, and aides have attempted to keep Loomer at arms-length from the president. But Michael Wolff, the author of four books about Trump's presidency, says Loomer has the 'trifecta' of what the president wants in an ally. 'She's, what, 30 years old? She looks the part. She's on television often for Donald Trump,' Wolff said on the Daily Beast Podcast this week. 'That's the trifecta. I mean, what's not to like from Donald Trump's point of view?' Loomer, who has the polished, conservative look of other women in Trump's orbit, has shown an unwavering devotion to the president despite having no official role in the administration. That combination serves as a 'comfort blanket system' for Trump, Wolff said. 'He sees that she's very television,' he continued. 'I think she just comes in and she just amuses him.' Loomer appears to be aware of that, too. Speaking to the New York Times earlier this month, Loomer asserted that she maintains a slim figure and always looks her best for the president. That includes purchasing a new outfit anytime she's meeting him. That means she fits right in with the crowd of women that Trump likes to surround himself with, conventionally attractive young women, while also going to bat for him any chance she gets. She's a fierce defender of Trump, using her X platform to call out any person in the administration she believes is not completely loyal to the president. Last week, she went as far as to blame Attorney General Pam Bondi for the Epstein Files debacle and called for Trump to fire her. Her influence with the president has even led to some changes in staffing. In April, Loomer reportedly gave Trump a list of disloyal National Security Council staffers who were subsequently fired.
