Donald Trump’s biographer says the president egomaniacal campaign to “impose” himself on the American public is blowing up in his face.
“He is doing things... which are fundamentally to his detriment,” author Michael Wolff told his co-host Joanna Coles on the Inside Trump’s Head podcast.
“What Trump has tried to do is impose himself on virtually every aspect of American life or even... world life,” Wolff continued. “And the problem with that is that if this starts to go wrong, everything then begins to remind everyone that Trump is responsible for this. Everything becomes a negative for Donald Trump.”
The 79-year-old president has sought to insert himself into virtually every corner of public life—even in arenas traditionally far removed from the presidency.
Trump is making his presence felt particularly in the sports world this month, showing up to Game 3 of the NBA Finals on Monday and preparing to host a UFC spectacle on the White House lawn for his 80th birthday next week.
But according to Coles—who was in attendance at Monday’s game—the president was met with a “resounding boo” from fans who had flocked to Madison Square Garden for the third matchup between the New York Knicks and the San Antonio Spurs.
Meanwhile, new surveys from YouGov published last week found that 40 percent of Americans strongly disapproved of the White House UFC event and 11 percent somewhat disapproved. Only 12 percent of Americans strongly approved and 15 percent somewhat approved of Trump’s birthday bash, for which he has built a 5,000-seat arena on the White House South Lawn.
“He’s created a set of symbols here that... are going to hurt him rather than help him,” Wolff said. “He shows up at the game in New York and gets booed. He destroys... the White House environment for his own satisfaction and grift.”
“It does feel a little bit like this is all closing in on him,” Coles added, “at least in that moment when he stormed out of the interview with Kristen Welker on NBC’s Meet the Press.”
Trump abruptly ended the interview, which aired Sunday, after Welker confronted him on his rigged election conspiracies, which he mentions at nearly every opportunity and even this week, after Republican candidates underperformed in California’s primaries.
Wolff argued that Trump’s outburst was not a “show of force” against Welker or the media, but rather a display of the president’s inability to rein in his ego.
“This is literally the way he is with everyone,” said the author, who spent nine months in the White House during Trump’s first term. “The people around him—his aides, friends, family, you know, Vance, Rubio, Susie Wiles—everybody faces this: that he won’t stop talking, that you can’t disagree with him, that there really is no debate.”
Wolff argued that Trump lacks the instinct most people have to reflect on mistakes and “double back on his tracks.”
“Why is he putting the UFC on the White House lawn when that is obviously a mistake of just a political perception that you would not want. But he can’t see that,” he said.
When reached for comment, White House Communications Director Steven Cheung sent the Daily Beast a recycled statement: “Michael Wolff is a lying sack of s--t and has been proven to be a fraud. He routinely fabricates stories originating from his sick and warped imagination, only possible because he has a severe and debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted his peanut-sized brain.”
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