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Hello and welcome to Trumpcast. I'm Virginia Heffernan. My guest is the Except No Substitutes writer Michael Wolfe,

who laid to waste any idea that Trump might be tolerably okay and not catastrophic in the Oval Office with his book Fire and Fury about the first year of this administration.

Now Michael has out a portrait of Trump agonisties in Siege, which tells the story of the Trump White House under investigation by Robert Mueller.

Wolfe has said he doesn't do stock political reporting but rather character studies and that's just why we need him.

Also, people talk to Wolfe and sometimes they seem to just want to vent to him or confess to him no matter the risks.

We're going to talk about Ivanka, Jared, Hope Hicks, Robert Mueller. And of course that's Sikko in the White House whose name is right now slipping my mind.

Michael, thanks for coming back to Trumpcast. Thank you for having me.

You were here for Fire and Fury with my departed colleague and Trumpcast founder Jacob Lysford.

I was indeed.

That was very successful and surprising shocking book Fire and Fury. And I think you followed it up with something great here too in the form of Siege, the new book.

Thank you.

Okay, well I just said this before we went on but you have a very recessive quiet manner compared to the people you spend time with.

Well, you know you have to, I mean one of the things is that everyone has always said, well how do you get them to talk like this? How do you get?

And the truth is you just don't say anything.

It's amazing. I'll just like pour anything into that vacuum myself. And so I'm sure that say Steve Bannon does the same thing.

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