Fire and Fury author, Michael Wolff, describes why he believes he was granted unfettered access to President Trump’s White House while researching his book: “I literally think you go in there and say, ‘I’m writing a book,’ and they go, ‘Oh. A book.’ It’s like a cloak of invisibility.” He also said that he believes West Wing staffers failed to grasp the potential political ramifications because of the timing of the book’s release.
When describing how he got his subjects to speak on the record, he says: “And then also they would do this thing that would be like, ‘Oh, this is off the record.’ And I would say, ‘I would like to use it for the book.’ And they would say, ‘Well, when does that come out?’ And I would say, ‘Next year.’ ‘Oh, oh, yeah, OK, fine.’”
Wolff says that this is not the first time that he has encountered this kind of reaction when writing a book. Wolff recounts a similar experience he had when writing a biography on News Corp. owner Rupert Murdoch. “The distinct feeling that you have when you say that you’re writing a book is that these guys don’t care about you. You’re a kind of non-entity. That’s when I realized, these guys don’t just not read books — they don’t know what books are,” Wolff said.