If you were a fly on the wall of the Trump White House, what would you see? Journalist Michael Wolff had that singular opportunity, and gives us a window into what it is like working for Trump both on the campaign trail and during his first year in office. In Fire and Fury, Wolff divulges scene after scene of dysfunction, power plays, and PR disasters, relying on both first-hand observations and scores of interviews with White House staffers.

Even in the several months leading up to the election, the Trump campaign headquarters at Trump Tower was a rather uninspiring sight. It was not filled with enthusiastic supporters eager and optimistic to see Trump as commander-in-chief, as one might expect. Even among Trump’s campaign managers, the widespread assumption was that Trump would not—and perhaps should not—become president. 

A basic confidence in one’s ability to win an election is usually critical to a candidate’s success, but Trump himself didn’t think he could pull off a win against Hillary. He was often comparing his sub-par team to Clinton’s all-star squad, discounting the possibility they had any real chance. 

Trump’s wife, Melania, was one of the early believers that Trump could win, but the prospect worried her. She got a foretaste of what a Trump presidency would mean for her when the New York Post got ahold of some photos of a nude Melania from when she was a young model. She preferred the sheltered, quiet existence to the harsh, unmerciful political limelight—but Trump consoled Melania with the guarantee that the unwanted media attention would cease in November.

Because Trump and his team did not expect to win, they did not feel obligated to modify their behavior or attitudes. Trump was unteachable even though he knew little of history and politics, and he was convinced that he was surrounded by losers and idiots who bore responsibility for his lagging numbers. Political aide Sam Nunberg recalled an exchange in which he tried to teach Trump about the Constitution. He made it to the Fourth Amendment when Trump became impatient and began rolling his eyes.

It seemed like everyone involved was going to be happier when the election was over: Trump would get the fame he wanted and be able to blame his loss on a wily, wicked Hillary; Melania would return to a normal, quiet life away from unwanted media attention; Campaign manager Kellyanne Conway and others would land jobs with cable news; the Republican National Convention would be free from the maverick who enjoyed rocking the establishment boat.

To the tearful disappointment of Melania and the shock and horror of Trump, however, Donald Trump won the presidency.

Trump took a line out of the liberal playbook when he consistently lambasted the intelligence community. In a strange twist, liberals and the intelligence community were aligned in their horror of Trump’s criticism. Through Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, an unofficial liaison and buffer between Trump and the seasoned conservative politicians and elites, the establishment Republicans warned Trump that it is the kabal-esque “deep state” operating in the shadow of the U.S. Intelligence’s wings that really holds the reins.

Trump’s son-in-law Kushner became the liaison between Trump and the Republican establishment. One of the mainstays of the republican establishment is the intelligence community. Whether Trump realized it or not, he was on thin ice, and it wouldn’t bear the weight of criticism much longer. As the GOP godfathers would tell Kushner, the intelligence community is a large sleeping dog that Trump needs to stop poking and jabbing, or he would have to deal with a slew of new stories getting leaked to the press. Thus Kushner made mollifying the situation with the CIA a top priority for the new administration.

Trump’s inaugural address reverberated with Steve Bannon’s typical bellicose bravado. It was full of warnings to enemies that things would be changing in Washington. Given Trump’s frequent incendiary comments, it might surprise some to learn that Trump deeply desires the approval of others, which made the idea of keeping some people at arm’s length instead of schmoozing them a difficult one. Bannon reminded Trump that there was war on. Trump needed to hit back at the opposition, but the narcissistic side of his personality was begging to be liked and admired by the public and media. Bannon assured Trump that friendships would emerge along the warpath as he held a hardline.

Trump was disappointed with the lackluster reception from veteran politicians and the cold shoulder he got from Hollywood at the inauguration. But his salesman’s spirit of optimism allowed him to reframe the experience as a win by arguing that the turnout was much bigger than the media was willing to admit.

Trump showed a penchant for perverting or ignoring the truth, and a staff that stood by his right to appeal to alternative facts—or “alternative information” as Kellyanne Conway would later put it. It seemed to many that Trump was perfectly okay with drawing from a questionable body of information and dismissing inconvenient facts as he came across them. He seemed intent on recasting reality to his liking. People wondered if the slew of angry tweets that, at best, maintained a loose relationship with reality would continue when the president-elect became president. The answer was that the new president had no intention of changing. 

Steve Bannon’s modus operandi is plotter and peremptory striker: know the enemies’ moves before they do. On the day of the inauguration, he went to the west wing and scoped out his office, asking that most of the furniture—including the chairs where guests would sit—be removed. He wouldn’t be entertaining long chats with anyone. He isolated himself and it seemed he knew better than others in the administration that there was not just a war against the establishment and the media afoot, but also a battle for the heart of the White House. He intended to win it.

Bannon had an obscure, spotty career and no experience in the public sector before becoming the White House’s Chief Strategist. Everyone wondered how someone could emerge from relative obscurity to become one of the most influential people in the United States.

From the mid-90s onward, Bannon seemed to make a habit of joining distressed, floundering, even scandalized companies and making matters worse instead of better. He was the entrepreneur who never quite made it. His career was less of entrepreneur and more that of an opportunist eager to separate rich idiots from their money.

He was introduced to billionaire Robert Mercer at the screening of a documentary about Reagan standing up to the Soviets. Bannon ingratiated himself with Mercer and his daughter, Rebekah. Through his connection with Mercer, Bannon took over management of Breitbart News when Andrew Breitbart died in 2012. Through this position, Bannon became a familiar name in the Tea Party movement. Trump became the candidate that Breitbart supported. Trump’s idiosyncrasies, vices, and policy positions mattered far less than his billions did. Trump was the next rich guy in whom Bannon saw opportunity.

Between August 15 and January 17, Bannon headed up operations for the Trump campaign from Trump Tower, rarely leaving the building for those months. He was witty, intelligent, and pushed the ultimately successful strategy of appealing to disgruntled working class whites in swing states. 

No one in the White House wanted to talk about Russia. They had expected that, like other media-driven hype stories, this story that the Russians were somehow involved in rigging the presidential election would blow over—but it didn’t. The public took it seriously and wouldn’t let it go.

Bannon said it was just another conspiracy with no strong basis. It became another divisive issue with both sides accusing the other of buying in to fake news. The media was convinced that something was not quite right—and quite possibly seriously wrong. Still, evidence had yet to surface.

In many ways, the Russia question was far more than finding an answer: it was strength-testing a green administration.

But then news did surface: three different stories came out on the same day, March 1, suggesting that various members of Trump’s administration had dealings with Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador. The Washington Post reported that the new attorney general, Jeff Sessions, had met with the ambassador on several occasions, and had lied about it in his confirmation. The Times story strengthened links between the Trump campaign and Russia’s interests in swaying results. The New York Post revealed that Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, also had connections with the Russians.

Trump’s tweets in response to the stories—maintaining that Obama himself was responsible for wiretapping his campaign, and that there was an elaborate plot to bring him down—took a PR disaster from bad to worse. This deluge was a pivotal moment for the Trump administration; his team had begun to lose their desire to defend him. Trump continued to bewilder them, and doing damage control was an exhausting affair.

In the course of vying for control of Trump’s agenda, Bannon has made some enemies. Jared and Ivanka Kushner are both advisers to Trump, a duo presence referred to within the White House—sometimes not-so-affectionately—as “Jarvanka.” When Jarvanka is not present, their malefactors will refer to them condescendingly as “the kids,” a jab at their lack of life experience in general and political experience in particular. Bannon often insinuated that they care about their own interests more than Trump’s.

The decision to fire Comey illustrates the tensions between warring factions within the administration. Jared and Ivanka suggested that Trump go through with it, and Bannon joined Priebus in the rebuttal—in part to isolate the couple, no doubt. Jared and Ivanka had their own dog in the fight: they were concerned that the Kushner family finances were going to get caught in the webs that the Trump administration firmly believed the DOJ and FBI were spinning. Bannon maintained that it would smell like scandal and make the Russia insinuations look like a comparatively small matter. It appeared that Bannon and Priebus had managed to talk Trump down from his fire and fury. However, Jared and Ivanka managed to get their father riled up again and listed the reasons why it would be strategic for Trump to listen to his initial gut-reaction to fire Comey.

In the end, Jared and Ivanka prevailed. Bannon ruefully remarked that Trump didn’t realize what the consequences of firing Comey would be.

These insights are just an introduction. If you're ready to dive deeper, pick up a copy of Fire and Fury here. And since we get a commission on every sale, your purchase will help keep this newsletter free.

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