A political journalist known for critiquing the Trump administration says a member of former President Donald Trump’s own team caught him in a lie after his rambling post-verdict speech following his hush-money trial.
In an episode of the Fire and Fury podcast, his inaugural podcast, Michael Wolff tells James Truman that the former commander-in-chief utilized his trial for entertainment purposes, adding that being inside the courthouse was “exciting [and] quite dramatic.”
In typical Trump fashion, Wolff says the former president was left to speak to the cameras outside the courtroom while his team waited outside. “So he gives the speech, and by the time [his team members] are out waiting for the caravan, he says to somebody, ‘You know I’m hearing from everybody that’s the best speech I’ve ever given.’ Now, one of the people there then said to me, ‘That’s interesting, because we were with him and he hadn’t heard from anybody,’” Wolff said.
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“All of the people around Donald Trump… everybody’s a grifter. And Trump, clearly, at the center of this is the grifter-in-chief,” he said.
Wolff said Trump is the type of person who does “completely preposterous” things and gets away with them, unlike most people. Then, he compared the spectacle of the former president to the telethons of Jerry Lewis.
“Any sense that he’s put in a position where he’s going to be offstage is a dangerous place for him to be,” Wolff added. “Onstage: He’s in the role. He’s Donald Trump.”
When he’s not performing, Wolff said, Trump is totally incoherent.
The podcast hosts described Trump as a flashy person, like a “Rat Pack kind of guy.” They also said the media should report on him as if he is preparing for a UFC match, not from a political standpoint. They said the presumed 2024 Republican presidential candidate actually stages theatrics for “self-given imperial grandeur” during political events.
“Donald Trump. You can’t take your eyes off of him,” Wolff said. “You don’t want to take your eyes off of him.”
He also recalled how the late Roger Ailes of Fox News labeled Trump as “Vegas 1965” and as the type of guy who earned money to get women.
“So, he’s more Austin Powers than James Bond,” Truman chuckled.
“The idea that would be turned on its head into something that you could not brag about, share with the locker room talk and that this would now go to literally indicting him and diminishing him in every possible way, I think that was not just painful to him, but I think confusing,” Wolff said. “The times changed and they changed underneath him, at least in Manhattan, and he was resentful.”
Wolff declared that if Trump went to prison, it would make him even more famous.
“I think that if he did go to jail, he would figure out a way to make that his stage,” Wolff said, adding that it would create even more fear out of the lawmakers and people who would be responsible for incarcerating Trump. “That would be the effect that they would make him even more famous. Jail would become an extraordinary platform for him.”
