Michael: Alright Kevin, if you had to describe the Trump White House as portrayed in Michael Wolff's Siege, but as a family dinner, what would it be? Kevin: Oh, easy. It's the one where Dad is yelling at the TV, one son-in-law is quietly making deals under the table, the other 'son' got uninvited but is shouting advice through the mail slot, and the whole house is on fire. And everyone is tweeting about it. Michael: That's... disturbingly accurate. And it's exactly the chaotic, high-stakes world we're diving into with Michael Wolff's Siege: Trump Under Fire. This is the sequel to his explosive bestseller Fire and Fury. Kevin: Right, and Wolff is a character himself. He's a veteran journalist known for getting incredible insider access, but also for a narrative style that some critics say blurs the line with sensationalism. He's been both praised for his vivid reporting and slammed for his sourcing. Michael: Exactly. And that tension is what makes this book so fascinating. It's a front-lines report from a presidency that felt like it was unraveling in real-time. So let's start with the man at the center of it all, and his very strange ideas about how to run the country.

Michael: The book opens with this fundamental question: what does a president, specifically this president, want from a lawyer? And the answer is not what you'd think. Trump wasn't looking for legal counsel. He was looking for a fixer. Kevin: A fixer? What does that even mean in the context of the White House? Michael: Think less about interpreting the law and more about making problems disappear. Wolff writes that Trump constantly invoked two names as his ideal lawyers: Roy Cohn and Bobby Kennedy. Kevin: Wow. Roy Cohn, the infamous, disbarred lawyer for McCarthy and the mob, and Bobby Kennedy, his brother's political enforcer. That's quite a spectrum. Michael: It is, but to Trump, they represented the same thing: absolute, unquestioning loyalty. A lawyer's job, in his view, was to be a hatchet man. He would literally tell his staff, "Don't bring me problems, bring me solutions," and to his lawyers, it was a constant refrain of "Make it go away, make it go away." Kevin: So he literally doesn't want legal advice? He wants a guy who can make legal threats, scandals, and investigations just... vanish? Michael: Precisely. And when his lawyers, like John Dowd, would try to explain the realities of the Mueller investigation—that a subpoena was coming, that this was a serious legal process—Trump would just get furious. He saw it as weakness, as them failing to protect him. This is the core of what Steve Bannon, a key source for Wolff, called Trump's "semi-criminal enterprise" mindset. Kevin: Hold on, Bannon called it a semi-criminal enterprise? That’s his own guy! Michael: Bannon's full quote is even more telling. He later says, "I think we can drop the 'semi' part." Because this mindset extended beyond lawyers. Look at Trump's relationship with David Pecker, the head of AMI, which publishes the National Enquirer. Kevin: The king of tabloids. I can see the connection. Michael: It was a deeply symbiotic relationship. Pecker and Trump were both outsiders who understood media as a weapon and a tool. For years, AMI operated on a "catch and kill" basis for Trump. When a story came up that could damage him, like former Playboy model Karen McDougal's claims of an affair, AMI would buy the exclusive rights to her story for a hefty sum—in her case, $150,000—and then bury it. They'd "catch" the story to "kill" it. Kevin: That sounds incredibly unethical, and probably illegal from a campaign finance perspective, right? Michael: That's exactly what investigators from the Southern District of New York started looking into. The whole system depended on a small, tight circle of people willing to operate in this gray area. You had Pecker at AMI, you had the Trump Organization's CFO Allen Weisselberg, and at the center of it all, you had Michael Cohen. Kevin: The ultimate fixer. Michael: The ultimate fixer, who eventually found himself in the crosshairs. The Stormy Daniels payment of $130,000 was the deal that broke the system. Pecker got spooked and wouldn't do it, so Cohen paid it himself, with the understanding he'd be reimbursed by the Trump Organization through phony legal fees. When that unraveled, the entire house of cards started to fall. And as Trump saw his fixers flipping, he reportedly said, "The Jews always flip," referring to Cohen and Pecker. Kevin: That's just... astonishing. It really does sound more like a mob organization than a presidential administration. The loyalty is everything, until it isn't. Michael: And that's the Trumpian operating system. It's built on personal loyalty, not institutional process. But what happens when you have two different people defining what that loyalty should look like? That brings us to the two princes of the Trump court: Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner.

Kevin: Yeah, the book paints this incredible picture of two guys constantly whispering in his ear, but telling him completely different things. Let's talk about Bannon and Kushner. Michael: They represent two completely different forces. Bannon is the populist ideologue. He's the self-proclaimed leader of a global movement, the guy who wants to burn down the establishment. For him, every fight is existential. It's about saving the soul of the country. Kevin: And Kushner? Michael: Kushner is the smooth, transactional operator. He's the pragmatist, the dealmaker. He's not interested in ideology; he's interested in managing the chaos to advance what he sees as rational, achievable goals—which, Wolff strongly implies, often align with his family's business interests. Kevin: So it's like Bannon wants to burn the ship down to prove a point, and Kushner is trying to patch the holes with gold leaf he got from a Saudi prince? Michael: That's a perfect analogy. And we see this clash play out perfectly during the 2018-2019 government shutdown over the border wall. For Bannon, the Wall was everything. It was the central promise, the symbol of the entire movement. When Trump was wavering on shutting down the government, Bannon and a "rump group" of hardliners—Corey Lewandowski, David Bossie—were pushing him to declare a national emergency. Kevin: Which sounds dramatic and powerful, very much a Bannon move. Michael: Exactly. It was political theater. It was about showing strength to the base, even if the Wall never got built. But then you have Jared and Ivanka. They come in and reframe the whole thing. They convince Trump to give an Oval Office address not about a national security crisis, but a "humanitarian crisis." Kevin: Which completely deflates the emergency argument. Michael: It becomes, as Bannon called it, a "nothing burger." It showed how Kushner's instinct was always to de-escalate, to manage, to find a deal. This same dynamic played out in foreign policy. Bannon wanted an economic war with China. Kushner, with guidance from Henry Kissinger, was building back-channels to North Korea and, most controversially, to the Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, or MBS. Kevin: And Wolff connects this directly to Kushner's family business, right? The infamous 666 Fifth Avenue building. Michael: Absolutely. The Kushner family was in deep financial trouble with that building, and they were desperately seeking a bailout from foreign investors, including entities from Qatar and Saudi Arabia. So when Kushner is in the White House, shaping Middle East policy and becoming MBS's primary defender after the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, it raises enormous red flags. Wolff portrays Kushner as seeing the world as a series of deals to be made, whether for the country or for his family. Kevin: It's a fundamental clash of worldviews. Bannon is playing for history, and Kushner is playing for the bottom line. Michael: And Trump is caught in the middle, swayed by whoever was last in his ear. This constant internal tug-of-war created the perfect storm for when the outside world came knocking. And nobody knocked louder than Robert Mueller.

Kevin: So this internal chaos, this battle of the princes, it must have made the White House incredibly vulnerable to external pressure. Michael: It was a pressure cooker. Wolff describes a White House consumed by paranoia. There's a stunning story from early in the administration where the Chief of Staff, Reince Priebus, walks into Bannon's office, takes his credit card, and comes back a few minutes later saying, "You now have legal insurance." They knew from the very beginning that they were all in legal jeopardy. Kevin: Wow. They were lawyering up from week one. Michael: And the ultimate stress test of this entire chaotic system was the Helsinki summit in July 2018. This is where the internal dysfunction collides head-on with global reality. Kevin: The infamous meeting with Putin. Michael: Infamous is the word. Just days before the summit, Mueller's team indicts twelve Russian intelligence officers for hacking the DNC. The stage is set for Trump to confront Putin. Instead, he meets with him privately for two hours, with only translators present. Then he comes out for a press conference and, standing next to Putin, sides with the Russian president over his own intelligence agencies. Kevin: I remember watching that. It was shocking. He basically said he believed Putin's denial. Michael: He said, "President Putin... was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today." Bannon's assessment in the book is brutal. He said Trump "looked like a beaten dog." The fallout was immediate and catastrophic. The White House was in full-blown panic mode. Kevin: What was going on in that private meeting? The book must have theories. Michael: That's the thing—no one knew. Trump refused to brief his own national security team. The speculation ran wild. But the public performance was damaging enough. It led to that bizarre walk-back the next day, where Trump claimed he misspoke and meant to say he didn't see any reason why it wouldn't be Russia, instead of would be. Kevin: A classic non-apology apology. This is the 'Siege' right here. He's under fire from his allies, the media, and it seems, even from himself. Michael: It's the moment the consequences become undeniable. The chaos isn't just a management style anymore; it's a national security issue. And this is the state of the White House as the Mueller report is about to land. Trump is lashing out, considering pardoning everyone, and asking his aides, "Am I safe?" Kevin: Which is the one question nobody could answer. Michael: Exactly. And when Attorney General William Barr finally releases his summary of the Mueller report, it's a political bombshell. No conspiracy, but no exoneration on obstruction. Trump claims "complete and total exoneration," but Wolff's book ends on a much more ominous note.

Michael: Ultimately, Wolff's book argues the siege wasn't just external. The greatest threat came from within—from Trump's own psychology, his demand for a loyalty that bordered on complicity, and the warring factions he empowered. He may have survived the Mueller report, but the book's central thesis is that the chaos is the point. It's who he is. Kevin: The book received mixed reviews, with some calling it riveting and others questioning the sourcing. But it feels like Wolff captured the feeling of that time, the sense that the normal rules of politics had been completely suspended. Michael: He did. And even though Trump wasn't indicted, Wolff leaves us with the sense that he was, in a way, found guilty of being Donald Trump. His nature would always lead him to the brink of personal and political destruction. Kevin: It makes you wonder, was this a unique moment in history, a perfect storm of personality and politics? Or did it reveal something deeper and more permanent about the nature of power and media in the 21st century? Michael: That's the million-dollar question. It's a story that's still unfolding. We'd love to hear what you all think. Join the conversation on our social channels and let us know your take on this chaotic period. Kevin: This is Aibrary, signing off.