Quotes from Michael Wolff

Among Trump's first moves as president was to have a series of inspirational photographs in the West Wing replaced with images of big crowd scenes at his inaugural ceremony.

Bannon said he'd tried to push John Bolton, the famously hawkish diplomat, for the job as national security advisor. Bolton was an Ailes favorite, too. "He's a bomb thrower," said Ailes. "And a strange little fucker. But you need him.

But one clear difference was that he had acquired almost no formal sort of social discipline—he could not even attempt to imitate decorum. He could not really converse, for instance, not in the sense of sharing information, or of a balanced back-and-forth conversation. He neither particularly listened to what was said to him, nor particularly considered what he said in response (one reason he was so repetitive).

He came out of his first long meeting with Trump thinking it had been a disconcertingly weird experience. Trump talked nonstop and constantly repeated himself.