MSNBC’s Katy Tur told “Fire and Fury” author Michael Wolff Monday that his controversial book “feels true,” adding, “congratulations on the book, and congratulations on the president hating it." The book contains widely disputed accounts of the Trump White House that are being challenged by Trump and other senior White House officials.
Tur’s praise specifically for Trump hating the book was a far cry from her past insistence that she is a neutral bystander when reporting on politics. She told NPR’s Terry Gross in September that she doesn’t vote because she wants to be neutral when covering candidates.
“I think that if I was voting, I would feel like I had a horse in the race, and I don't have a horse in the race,” she claimed. “My job during this campaign season was to tell you what was going on as accurately as I could and without bias, without coloring it with a desire that I might have, internally, for a different outcome.”
Turr did somewhat challenge Wolff during the interview, pointing out that while “a lot of it did feel true” there “were a lot of factual errors as well.”
She asked about Office of Management and Budget director Mick Mulvaney’s claim that he'd been misquoted in the book.
"I just want to say, that's completely ridiculous," Wolff replied.
"[Trump advisor] Tom Barrack is saying that he's misquoted, [former deputy chief of staff] Katie Walsh is saying she's misquoted. Are they all lying?" Tur asked.
"They are all lying," Wolff insisted.
Tur also asked Wolff why he won’t release tape recordings he claims to have of conversations with White House staffers that back up his claims.
"If people are questioning it, why not produce the evidence?" she asked.
"Because that's not what," Wolff began, "I’m not in your business."
"My evidence is the book. Read the book," he concluded. "If it makes sense to you, if it strikes a chord, if it rings true, it is true.
The veracity of Wolff’s writing has been called in to question many times in the past. Wolff’s book is rife with grammatical and factual errors which have been caught by Buzzfeed, The New York Times, and others.