Trump staffers are ‘mid-tier’ and ‘abject,’ says Michael Wolff

Who would have thought that Michael Wolff would have another book about Donald Trump in him? UK Books editor Sam Leith interviews Wolff on this week’s Book Club podcast. They discuss Wolff’s latest, All or Nothing, which follows the world of Trump from January 6, 2021, to his second inauguration.

Seeing as this is now Wolff’s fourth book bringing to light some things those around Trump would presumably prefer to stay in the dark, Leith asks why anybody even bothers to pick up the phone when they see his name on the caller ID.

Wolff says that it is in part because he has kind of become their friend after having followed Trump and his cohort around for the last ten years; but it is also because those in “Trumpworld” are themselves trying to figure out what’s been going on.

“I irritate people with what I’ve written at certain times, but at other times, they think, ‘Well, yeah, you know, that’s a pretty accurate picture of the crazy town that we have, for better or worse,’” Wolff says.

“There is no one around Donald Trump who thinks, ‘Well, this is normal.’ Everybody understands that this is a departure from anything they might have expected in their careers,” he adds.

Leith then asks Wolff why Trump surrounds himself with a “rotating cast” of “grifters,” “no-marks,” “weirdos” and people who are “very, very tenuously qualified.”

“If you had something better to do, you would not be working for Donald Trump,” Wolff replies.

“This is their opportunity. They would not have had another opportunity, and they are willing to be loyal and abject in a way that someone with other opportunities would not necessarily be,” he says.

Wolff explains that Trump’s attention is focused on the courts, so the campaign is left up to staff whom he believes are on different tiers of qualifications. The high tier of Trump’s campaign would have been the “mid-tier, if that,” in a normal election, and the lower tier was somehow worse. “Everybody is abject, but some people are so abject that even the abject people are embarrassed by them.”

In his book, Wolff compares the mood around Trump and his campaign to a split screen. On one side, there is a man dealing with four indictments and a large chance of “utter catastrophe.” On the other, there is “a singular possibility” of political and legal victory.

Wolff heavily focuses on how Trump’s time on television prepared him to handle conflict.

He reminds listeners that “Trump’s primary accomplishment before politics was to spend fourteen years as the star of a top-rated reality television show. That is where he learned his political trade.”

This allows Trump to view challenges differently. “Everybody else — and politicians certainly — either run from conflict or see it in the most precise and strategic sense. Not Trump,” says Wolff. “It’s every day, whatever conflict there is, embrace it, use it. That is what is going to hold the attention of the public, and the attention of the public will save you.”

Even when asked what he admires about Trump after working with him for the last decade, Wolff brings it back to his talents in television. “I mean, he is like an actor. I can bring you along into my drama, and he does that. I mean, he does that like no other politician probably has ever done that. Now, I’m not sure that we should be admiring that, but it is a kind of genius.”

Trump’s acting is not the only reason he can bring people into his drama, but also because he only “believes in Donald Trump.”

“So think of him as — it’s all about the performance in the moment. Everything that he gets, he gets for the reaction in the moment. So a belief, an overarching scheme of things, an eventual goal, an accomplishment in the future — doesn’t really interest him. It’s now, in the moment. It’s what I say at this moment and the reaction that I get.”

Wolff says that this mentality may have an upside, as it makes it almost impossible for anybody to influence Trump.

“Nobody uses Donald Trump. I mean, maybe you could admire him for that — that he is a truly singular person. He listens to, literally, nobody. Nobody, nobody controls this guy. Quite the opposite. I’m not even sure how anyone could control him because he does not have the capacity to listen to anything.”

Leith then asks Wolff if he has noticed any change in Trump over the last decade. He responds by saying that Trump’s unwillingness to change is “one of the fundamental tenets of his character.”

“He doesn’t change. He doesn’t seek to change. He doesn’t want to change. He doesn’t have the wherewithal to change, nor the interest to change. He does what has always worked for him in the past,” Wolff clarifies.

Wolff’s advice to world leaders on how to engage with Trump is to simply “wait him out.”

Wolff ends the podcast by emphasizing Trump’s uniqueness: “Trump is, I believe, absolutely sui generis. There is no one like him who has ever been, and no one who we can certainly now foresee ever will be like him in the future.”