JUDY WOODRUFF: The Trump White
House has been engaged in an
all-out battle for the past

few days against a new book
that paints a devastating
portrait of the president.

Author Michael Wolff spent
more than a year with inside
access to the Trump campaign and

first year in office
conducting what he says were
more than 200 interviews.

The president waved, but said
nothing, as he left Washington
today, that after a weekend

full of comment.

DONALD TRUMP, President of the
United States: I consider it
a work of fiction, and I think

it's a disgrace.

JUDY WOODRUFF: On Saturday, at
Camp David, Mr. Trump denounced
the book "Fire and Fury":

Inside the Trump White
House," and pointed to
supporters doing the same.

DONALD TRUMP: They
know the author, and
they know he's a fraud.

JUDY WOODRUFF: The
author is Michael Wolff.

He depicts a White House beset
by chaos, staffed by people who
question the president's fitness

to serve.

Economic adviser Gary Cohn is
quoted as saying in an e-mail
that the president is "an idiot

surrounded by clowns," someone
who "won't read anything"
and "gets up halfway through

meetings with world leaders
because he is bored."

Wolff writes that for
National Security Adviser H.R.
McMaster, "He was a dope."

The book also quotes
Treasury Secretary Steven
Mnuchin and former Chief
of Staff Reince Priebus

calling Mr. Trump an idiot.

On Saturday, Mr. Trump hit
back on Twitter, calling
himself a "very stable genius."

He followed up at the Camp
David news conference.

DONALD TRUMP: I had a situation
where I was a very excellent
student, came out, made billions

and billions of dollars, became
one of the top businesspeople,
went to television, and

for 10 years was a tremendous
success, as you probably
have heard, ran for president

one time and won.

JUDY WOODRUFF: On the
Sunday talk shows, several
members of the Trump
administration also defended

the president.

CIA Director Mike Pompeo
rejected Wolff's claims that
the president gets bored during

intelligence briefings.

MIKE POMPEO, CIA Director: Those
statements are just absurd.

This president reads material
that we provide to him.

He listens closely to
his daily briefing.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Others, inside
and outside the administration,
have challenged the validity

of some of what's in the book.

But Wolff says the situation
is so alarming that White House
aides have even talked about

invoking the 25th Amendment
to the Constitution.

In part, it provides for the
vice president to take over
if he and most Cabinet members

deem the president unable
to discharge his duties.

MICHAEL WOLFF, Author, "Fire
and Fury: Inside the Trump
White House": The 25th Amendment

is a concept that is alive
every day in the White House.

JUDY WOODRUFF: To bolster his
case, the author maintains that
he had relatively free access

to the White House.

DONALD TRUMP: I guess sloppy
Steve brought him into the
White House quite a bit, and

it was one of those things.

That's why sloppy Steve
is now looking for a job.

JUDY WOODRUFF: That's former
White House chief strategist
Steve Bannon, who was fired last

summer.

In the book, Bannon says Donald
Trump Jr.'s participation in
a 2016 meeting with a Russian

lawyer was treasonous
and unpatriotic.

Late Sunday, Bannon
apologized in a statement,
pledging unwavering support.

He insisted he had not been
talking about Donald Trump
Jr., but about Paul Manafort,

the one-time Trump
campaign chairman.

Today, Wolff disputed Bannon's
recanting and said there's no
question he was talking about

the president's son.

For more on the explosive
book and the firestorm
it has created, I spoke
with Michael Wolff

a short time ago, and I
asked him how different
he found Donald Trump
from the man he knew

for the past 25 years,
before he became president.

MICHAEL WOLFF: In some
sense, not different at all.

I mean, he is the same
-- I think Steve Bannon
calls him a big warm bear
-- a big warm monkey,

actually, is what
Steve calls him.

He's -- you know, he's, in many
ways, a man full of flattery,
superficial in every respect,

a salesman.

And he is still that, except
that he's the president
of the United States.

JUDY WOODRUFF: You have
been saying, you have
been writing repeatedly
that the people around

the president now, including
his children, are worried about
him, in some cases alarmed

by him.

What are they
worried will happen?

MICHAEL WOLFF: I think almost
anything that he does worries
them, because it is always

unpredictable.

It is always unpredictable.

It's extreme, it's exceptional,
and it is outside the bounds
of what one has traditionally

done as the president
of the United States.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, as you
know -- and we can go through
this -- the president, everyone

around him are pushing back.

The president is saying
this is a book full of
lies by an author, he
says, totally discredited.

The U.N. ambassador, Nikki
Haley, said over the weekend
says she sees the president and

his staff every week, she
never sees anything like this.

How does that square
with what you saw?

MICHAEL WOLFF: It's
absolutely untrue.

I mean, literally, I spent,
you know, the better part of
seven months in close proximity

to everyone in the White House.

And, you know, as I have said
again and again and again, and
I will say once more, I had

no agenda.

I was perfectly willing to write
a book in which Donald Trump
was the unexpected successful

president.

I went into this experience
just waiting to hear what
people would tell me.

And what they told me, the
people closest to the president,
was that things became more

alarming by the day, that
all of them, in some way or
other, were afraid, afraid for

their -- both for their own
careers and for the country.

They were also -- they just
didn't know what to do.

They didn't know what to expect.

They woke up in the morning,
and they were in, you know,
something of a cold sweat.

Almost all of them -- for almost
all of them, it was a countdown
until when they could leave.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well,
let me continue with
some of the pushback.

You quote the former White
House Chief of Staff Katie Walsh
as saying, trying to figure

out what the president wanted
was like trying to figure
out what a child wants.

She now says she was misquoted.

Do you have her on tape?

Can you prove that she said it?

MICHAEL WOLFF: You know, I'm
not going to produce tapes.

I am very comfortable with how I
reported what Katie Walsh said.

And, by the way, I don't
say Katie Walsh coming
out and, in fact, saying
she didn't say this.

I think she said, Steve Bannon
-- she was quoting Steve
Bannon or something like that.

But I will -- and
I will go further.

There is not one person in
close proximity to the president
in the West Wing who has

not used the term that
he is like a child.

Sometimes, it's an 11-year-old,
sometimes a 6-year-old.

Sometimes, it's a 2-year-old.

Always, he is viewed as a
child because he is someone who
needs immediate and absolute

gratification when, where --
and when he wants it, now.

JUDY WOODRUFF: You mentioned
Steve Bannon, a central figure
in the book, somebody you

talked to a lot here.

He did issue a statement
over the weekend, pushed back
especially -- or drew back the

comments that you
said he made about the
president's son, Donald Jr.

Why would he do that, if
he's somebody you rely on?

MICHAEL WOLFF: Well, I mean,
first of all, he didn't.

He didn't say anything that
I quoted as saying him was
untrue or even misquoted.

What he does try to do, in a
very triangulated apology in
which he doesn't apologize, is

say it wasn't about Don Jr.,
it was about Paul Manafort.

Now, there was the quote which
he doesn't deny in which I
quote him as saying that Don

Jr. would be cracked like an
egg on national television.

Well, he doesn't dispute that.

And, in fact, while he
certainly included Paul Manafort
among this group of hapless

people who were -- who Steve
also thought might be committing
treason, it was very much

focused on Don Jr.

He explained that what happened,
that whole meeting in Trump
Tower, came about because

Don Jr. was trying to impress
his father, so his father
would give him more authority

in the campaign.

I absolutely stand my ground.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Given what you
saw in the White House and what
you have reported on, what's

your sense of the
Mueller investigation?

Do you believe that
it will produce proof
that this president
colluded in some way with

the Russians?

MICHAEL WOLFF: You know, I
have no way of knowing that.

I can -- and I can only
report what people in
the White House told me.

And what people in the White
House told me is that, actually,
they tend not to give full

credence to the idea of
collusion, at least a grand
strategy of collusion.

There might be, like Don
Jr., some hapless collusion.

But they all, again to
a man, believe that,
if this investigation
goes to the president's

financial history, then the
president is in trouble and
his family is in trouble.

JUDY WOODRUFF: The conventional
wisdom, Michael Wolff, is that
John Kelly, General Kelly,

has brought a measure of calm
and order to the White House
since he arrived in August.

Could it be the...

MICHAEL WOLFF: Well, let me
just -- let me just stop you
there and go over the history

of the last five days, the
common order of the president
trying to prior -- to restrain

- - impose a prior restraint
on the presentation of
a book, the president
going out and constantly

tweeting about -- I mean,
attacking an author,
attacking his former
subordinates, and then

coming out and saying that
he was, in fact, sane.

I mean, this is not a White
House and not a president that
has been restrained and had

discipline imposed on him.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And yet you
write, you say that the
president and General Kelly have

contempt for each other?

MICHAEL WOLFF: Yes.

And that comes as a surprise?

Yes, anyway, absolutely.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Move on to the
president's daughter Ivanka.

Her husband, Jared, he plays
a major role in this book.

Do you see them still as
influential in this White
House as they were earlier on?

MICHAEL WOLFF: You know, I
think that they are spending
a considerable amount of time

on their own -- on
their own legal issues.

I think General Kelly has
taken significant steps to
contain their influence.

But, yes, they are still
the most influential people
in the Trump White House.

JUDY WOODRUFF: The 25th
Amendment, you have
said that this is a
subject of conversation

in the White House.

This has to do with the vice
president, the majority of
the Cabinet agreeing the vice

president should take
over, if the president
can't discharge his job.

Do you know that that
has been privately
discussed by principals
in the White House now?

MICHAEL WOLFF: Yes, absolutely.

(CROSSTALK)

JUDY WOODRUFF: Who
are now -- yes.

MICHAEL WOLFF: I mean, let's go.

And as I have now -- as I have
outlined, as I have described
this before, it is in the

matter of people say --
because, you know, there's this
constant kind of commentary on

what Trump has done,
how to explain this.

And so I first
started to hear this.

They would say, OK, that
was weird, maybe not 25th
Amendment weird, but weird.

And then it would be, OK,
we're moving closer to 25th
Amendment kind of stuff.

In other words, it becomes
almost a term of art within the
White House of how to measure

whether Trump is at
any given moment.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Two other
quick things, Michael Wolff.

If things are as bad as you
say, as you write that they
are in this administration, why

haven't there been resignations
on principle from the top
levels of this administration?

MICHAEL WOLFF: You know, I mean,
I think it's a good question.

And, certainly, as an
outsider, you would fairly ask
that question of everyone.

The truth is that you find
-- many of the people find
themselves in this situation and

it's -- and begin to see
themselves as the people who can
impose some kind of logic and

order on this White House, that
they almost stand protecting
the president, they stand

between the American
people and the president.

They are there in some -- and
I think that this is unexpected
for them all, because they're

all ambitious people.

They have suddenly become
people with a patriotic duty.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And,
finally, have you heard
from people in the White
House, in the administration

since the book came out?

What are they saying
to you privately?

MICHAEL WOLFF: They are saying
-- the context that I continue
to have -- and a great many

of the people who I spoken to
this book are no longer with
the administration, of course.

But what I do hear, quite
specifically, is the
president is bouncing
off the walls because

of this book.

He really takes it
as a mortal threat.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Michael Wolff,
the book is "Fire and Fury":
Inside the Trump White House."

Quite a book.

Thank you very much.

MICHAEL WOLFF: Thank you.