Author Michael Wolff said he believes that every major broadcast news network is too intimidated by President Donald Trump to promote his inside account of the 2024 campaign, citing canceled appearances on MSNBC.
Writing in The Hollywood Reporter on Thursday, the journalist and writer behind Fire and Fury—an eye-popping look within Trump’s first White House—argued that the president’s legal threats against the media are working.
Despite positive reviews in print outlets like The New York Times, Wolff said that the same networks that were happy to discuss his previous books about Trump—including ABC, NBC, CBS, and CNN—have steered clear of his fourth, All or Nothing: How Trump Recaptured America.
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Wolff said he even had appearances scheduled with MSNBC, including on host Lawrence O’Donnell’s show, where he “regularly” appears after publishing a book—but the interviews were dropped after the book was condemned by the White House.
He said that his publisher was informed by MSNBC’s chief booker, Jesse Rodriguez, that its standards and legal department was reviewing the book—in itself an “unusual step,” Wolff said. Rodriguez expressed his commitment to getting Wolff back on the schedule and surprise that the process was taking weeks, according to Wolff.
However, Wolff alleged that MSNBC’s new president, Rebecca Kutler, “acknowledged to a senior-most figure in the entertainment community concerned about the blackout (blacklist?), who contacted her on my behalf, that the decision was out of her hands and rested with executives at NBCU and its parent, Comcast, and that the industry was ‘in a new climate.’”
MSNBC said in a statement that the network “firmly” denies Wolff’s account of what Kutler said.
CNN declined to comment, while the other cable networks mentioned by Wolff—ABC, NBC, and CBS—did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The Daily Beast published several bombshells from Wolff’s new book after exclusively obtaining an advance copy last month. The nuggets included Trump’s fear that he would die on Jeffrey Epstein’s plane, that he was “on the verge of cracking” after his assassination attempt, and that he was “bewildered” by Elon Musk’s odd behavior at a campaign event.
The book was met with condemnation from the White House. Trump’s communications director Steven Cheung accused Wolff of being a “lying sack of s---.” The president himself dismissed the book in a lengthy Truth Social post as “a total FAKE JOB”—but conceded that a “small number” of his staff may have been interviewed for it.
As Wolff points out, vehement attacks on the media from Trump and his team are nothing new—but what’s different is the media seeming to “capitulate.”
Wolff’s explanation for the switch-up is the “new climate” of American politics and media, in which Trump, who has always issued threats against the press, was able to receive a $15 million payout from ABC after suing it for defamation.
“I know from some of the same White House sources that informed my book that major media companies are actively seeking advice from Trump insiders about how to appease the White House in an effort to avoid litigation and regulatory interference,” Wolff wrote.
Wolff said he received a “threatening” call from Trump’s top legal adviser, Boris Epshteyn, in the days leading up to the book’s publication. The author said that Epshteyn cited to Wolff both the ABC lawsuit and Trump’s suit against CBS for edits on an interview with Kamala Harris, which is reportedly poised for settlement.
While Wolff said that “all is far from lost,” seeing that it isn’t quite as bad as the media reticence of the McCarthy era, he believes that there is much reason for concern: “Trump, in his war against the media and a free press, is winning.”
Asked for comment on Wolff’s claims of intimidation, the White House recycled the same boilerplate statement condemning the author as a “lying sack of s---” with a “peanut-sized brain.” It did not respond when pressed to specifically address Wolff’s argument.
Reached by phone by the Beast, Wolff said he didn’t have anything to add beyond what he wrote.
