CANNES – In the age of Donald Trump, bluster and bravado have become second nature in the White House. Author and journalist caught the ire of the American president when he came out with a book titled Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House chronicling how clueless this administration really is.
Interviewed by Goodby Silverstein & Partners Co-Founder and Co-Chairman Jeff Goodby in a session titled “Fire and Fury: The New Normal?” Wolff basically explained how he became privy to information within the White House without asking too many questions. Goodby, a man perhaps most famous for coming up with the “got milk?” ads and Adweek’s Co-Executive of the Decade with partner Rich Silverstein, said that Wolff has essentially turned everyone into news bingewatchers.
Wolff relayed that in June 2016, The Hollywood Reporter asked if he would like to interview then-presidential candidate Donald Trump. Though having no interest in politics, Wolff relented and agreed to do the story. In one of their earliest meetings, Wolff said that when he asked Trump what he thought of the Brexit vote, the candidate seemed clueless until Wolff explained what “Brexit” entailed.
Over the course of seven months in the White House, Wolff just took note of happenings daily while mostly in the West Wing. Different from members of the Washington Press Corps, Wolff bared that his style of reporting, borne of magazine journalism, came out of advice he got to “just show up and hang around.”
When Goodby asked if people were just opening up to Wolff or bitching to him, the author noted how people would often go through cycles of certainty to puzzlement to incredulity to anger and finally to “what the fuck did we do here?” He also shared that 100% of the people around Trump felt that way. Since none of those people knew how to run an Executive Department of the US government, Wolff found it extraordinary that they were not prepared for the microscopic examination that they ended up against.
Wolff said that initially, his title for his book was going to be “The Great Transition,” a very generic one because he had no idea where his story was going to go. As he wrote what was in front of him, Wolff ended up writing how the people around Trump were reacting to him. Before the book was released, Wolff had to face a cease and desist order from the White House who got advance word that it would not paint the president in a positive light.
As their conversation went on, Wolff told Goodby that Trump would habitually want to fire people around him, including special counsel Robert Mueller, who was charged with investigating Russian intereference in the 2016 presidential elections.
Among the things Wolff noticed was that despite all his bravado in front of cameras and people, the president was almost tender in private moments, something Wolff credits to Trump being a perpetual salesman for the past 50 years.
Wolff also shared that he feels that US Vice-President Mike Pence will eventually become president when Trump is removed, and that the former is the most boring person alive. Goodby asked Wolff about the possibility that Trump is subpoenaed, and Wolff agreed this might happen. Finally, the author stated that he is currently working on a TV show from Jay Roach that tells the stories in the book in a dramatic way.
