Big parts of the explosive new Trump book might not be true, according to the author himself

AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster

Michael Wolff, author of "Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House."

• "Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House" set the political world ablaze.
• It contains vivid, detailed, and embarrassing accounts of Donald Trump and those around him.
• But author Michael Wolff says he can't be sure that all of it is true.

The author of the explosive new book about Donald Trump's presidency admitted that he isn't certain that it's all true.

Michael Wolff, the author of "Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House," included a note at the start which casts significant doubt on the reliability of the specifics contained in the rest of its pages.

A number of his sources, he says, were definitely lying to him, while some offered accounts that flatly contradict those of others.

But they were nonetheless included in the vivid account of the West Wing's workings, in a process Wolff describes as "allowing the reader to judge" whether they are true.

AP

Donald Trump, seen at a meeting in the White House the day after elements of Michael Wolff's book began to be reported.

In other cases, he said, he did use his journalistic judgment and research to arrive at what he describes "a version of events I believe to be true."

Here is the relevant part of the note, from the 10th page of the book's prologue:

"Many of the accounts of what has happened in the Trump White House are in conflict with one another; many, in Trumpian fashion, are baldly untrue. These conflicts, and that looseness with the truth, if not with reality itself, are an elemental thread of the book.

"Sometimes I have let the players offer their versions, in turn allowing the reader to judge them. In other instances I have, through a consistency in the accounts and through sources I have come to trust, settled on a version of events I believe to be true."

The book itself, reviewed by Business Insider from a copy acquired prior to publication, is not always clear about what level of confidence the author has in any particular assertion.

Lengthy, private conversations are reported verbatim, as are difficult-to-ascertain details like what somebody was thinking or how they felt.

Wolff attributes his book to "more than two hundred interviews" with people including Trump and "most members of his senior staff." According to Axios, Wolff has dozens of hours of tapes to back up what he said.

Claims contained in the book have been widely reported by the media in the US and further afield.

They include assertions that Trump never wanted to be president, that all of his senior staff considered him an idiot, that he tried to lock the Secret Service out of his room, and that he eats at McDonald's to avoid being poisoned.

Business Insider rounded up some more of the most eye-catching claims in this article.

Donald Trump, who sought to block publication of the book but was too late, tweeted on Thursday that it is "full of lies, misrepresentations and sources that don't exist."

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders described the book as "complete fantasy."

Asked to rebut specific points, she said: "I'm not going to waste my time or the country's time going page by page and talking about a book that is complete fantasy and just full of tabloid gossip."

Other people mentioned in the book have also rubbished claims made about them.

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, whom the book said warned Trump that he might be under surveillance from British spies, issued a statement describing the claim as "categorically absurd" and "simply untrue."

Anna Wintour, the former Vogue editor, also dismissed the claim that she lobbied Trump to be his ambassador to the UK as "laughably preposterous."

Other journalists have also urged caution. Some cited Wolff's track record - questions were raised about his 2008 book on Rupert Murdoch - and others compared his claims with their own knowledge of the Trump White House.

Wolff has not directly responded to concerns about his work, but has used his Twitter account to repost messages of support.