The Book Club: Michael Wolff
Best of the Spectator
The Spectator
4.4 • 785 Ratings
🗓️ 5 March 2025
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
How Trump Recaptured America, takes Donald Trump and his colourful cast of hangers-on from the aftermath of the 6 January riots to his triumphal return to the White House.
Michael tells me why he thinks people in Trumpworld are still talking to him, how the Donald has changed over the decade he has been reporting on him, why he’s confident American democracy will survive a second Trump presidency – and how world leaders, such as Keir Starmer, are best advised to handle this volatile and unpredictable character.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | On the 27th of March, the Coffeehouse Shots team will be joined by special guests to give you their take on a Spring Statement. |
| 0:05.9 | We will be live on stage at London's Cadogan Hall. To get your tickets today, visit spectator.com. |
| 0:11.6 | UK forward slash spring statement live. We'll see you there. |
| 0:25.5 | Hello and welcome to the Spectator's Book Club podcast. |
| 0:28.0 | I'm Sam Leith, the literary editor of The Spectator. |
| 0:32.1 | And this week, my guest is the magazine writer and reporter Michael Wolfe, |
| 0:36.5 | whose new book is All or Nothing How Trump Recaptured America. |
| 0:39.7 | And it's the fourth in a series of books chronicling the ins and outs of Donald Trump's rise to power, fall from power and rise to power |
| 0:45.5 | again. Now, Michael, I want to start by asking you, because there's so much sort of inside scuttlebutt here |
| 0:51.0 | from Trump World. You know, you published three books before, in not one of which |
| 0:56.0 | you haven't dropped what we call a bucket of the sticky stuff on Trump and everyone who surrounds him. |
| 1:01.7 | Why is it, do you think that at this stage, anybody in Trump's orbit answers the phone when they |
| 1:06.9 | see the words Michael Wolf come up on caller ID? You know, I think that everybody around Trump, |
| 1:14.4 | and I would include myself in that, |
| 1:17.5 | has been on the same journey, |
| 1:20.6 | this exceptionally peculiar journey. |
| 1:23.9 | I mean, there is no one around Donald Trump |
| 1:26.5 | who thinks, well, this is normal. |
| 1:30.2 | Everybody understands that this is a departure from anything they might have expected in their careers. |
| 1:39.0 | And I think that gives people a certain amount of duality. In other words, they are in the Trump business, |
| 1:50.3 | but they are also observers to the Trump business. And that's kind of where I come in, |
| 1:57.0 | because I've been with them from the beginning, or many of them. We've spoken steadily |
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