In an interview with the Vassar Political Review published Monday, Michael Wolff confessed to being “barely a journalist,” and said his job “has nothing to do with truth.” Wolff’s book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House caused a stir at the beginning of this year.
The book made several damaging allegations against Trump, including a rumored affair with United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, and demolished former White House staffer Steve Bannon’s credibility.
When the Vassar Political Review‘s Andrew Solender asked Wolff whether he considers himself a “political journalist,” the writer emphatically denied the term.
“No, never. I’m not a political journalist. I’m not, frankly, all that much interested in politics. I’m a writer. I’m barely a journalist, actually. I am a writer,” Wolff said.
Not two minutes later, the author claimed, “I’m probably the most prolific journalist in the country. You know, millions upon millions upon millions of words.”
Wolff later opened up completely about his shoddy relationship with the truth.
“Well, even truth – I have no monopoly on the truth. Somebody at the [Columbia School of Journalism] called me the other day and asked if I could speak to their investigative journalism class. I said, ‘I would be delighted to but I know nothing about investigative journalism.’ I wouldn’t even know what that is,” the author said.
“I am an observer: I investigate nothing. All I do is look and write what I see and what I hear, and my job – which has nothing to do with truth – is to take what I see and what I hear and write that in a way that readers can come as possible – as close as I came – to the experience of doing this,” Wolff said.
If his job has “nothing to do with truth,” it has everything to do with persuasion. “I want to be able to turn what I see into something that a reader says ‘oh, I see that too,'” the author added. How revealing.
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