Sebastian Gorka, the authoritarian white nationalist former Trump adviser wrote an op-ed in The Hill today which tries to smear Michael Wolff's entire book, but in actuality verifies that Wolff was granted mucho access to the White House and the entire administration.
Gorka's piece is off the wall, but I did like his opening line: "When I worked in the White House, I was viewed as strange by many of my colleagues on Sean Spicer’s press team."
"Strange" isn't the word I'd use to describe Gorka, but it's quite illuminating just the same. He explains that if a journo belonged to Trump's fake news club, he wouldn't talk to you which is almost the entire free press covering the news outside of Fox News.
And then he let's the cat out of the bag.
As a result, you’d never see Jim Acosta coming out of my office or Maggie Haberman buying me an espresso at Peet’s around the corner from the West Wing. So, when I met Michael Wolff in Reince Priebus’ office, where he was waiting to talk to Steve Bannon, and after I had been told to also speak to him for his book, my attitude was polite but firm: “Thanks but no thanks.” Our brief encounter reinforced my gut feeling that this oleaginous scribe had no interest in being fair and unbiased.
Seb essentially verifies that Wolff was cleared to interview and interact with everyone at the Oval Office. And that includes Donald Trump, who is now calling it a fake book.
But Wolff's secret sauce is that he recorded most people he interviewed including Steve Bannon.
And Wolff spent eighteen months interviewing 200 of the players.
Axios reports, "Michael Wolff has tapes to back up quotes in his incendiary book — dozens of hours of them."
That makes it all the more difficult for some of his claims to be refuted. And outside of Trump surrogates going on-air to attack the book, the main players are remaining pretty quite so far.
I doubt they'd want those tapes leaked to the press.
