Washington, Jan 5 (EFE).- The President of the United States said Thursday night that a controversial book on him and his tenure is full of lies.
“Fire and Fury”, scheduled to go on sale on Friday, is “full of lies, misrepresentations and sources that don’t exist,” Donald Trump said on Twitter, adding that he never spoke with its author, journalist Michael Wolff, for a book.
“I authorized Zero access to White House (actually turned him down many times),” Trump said.
In the book, based on interviews with senior officials in the White House, it is alleged that Trump’s aim was not to defeat Hillary Clinton and become president but to strengthen his brand.
It also goes on to detail the chaos in the West Wing during the initial months of Trump’s tenure.
“Look at this guy’s past and watch what happens to him and Sloppy Steve!” read Trump’s tweet, alluding to his former strategist Steve Bannon, with whom he has clashed for having criticized his son in the book.
Bannon, considered Trump’s main link with the populist movement that propelled him to power, fell out of favor with the president after it came to light on Wednesday that he had described Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with Russians in 2016 as “treasonous”.
The US president suggested that the publication of the book attempted to hide his good management of the economy.
“The Fake News Media barely mentions the fact that the Stock Market just hit another New Record and that business in the U.S. is booming…but the people know!” Trump tweeted.
Trump then went on to say “Can you imagine if ‘O’ was president and had these numbers – would be biggest story on earth! Dow now over 25,000,” making a reference to his predecessor Barack Obama.
The publishing house behind the book, Henry Holt & Company, will allow some retailers to start selling the book on Friday instead of Jan 9, according to the broadcaster CNN and The Wall Street Journal.
“Due to unprecedented demand, we are moving the on-sale date for all formats of ‘Fire and Fury,’ by Michael Wolff, to Friday, January 5, at 9 a.m. ET, from the current on-sale date of Tuesday, January 9,” a spokesperson from the publishing house told CNN.
The announcement come shortly after several media entities reported that Trump’s lawyer Charles Harder urged Wolff and his publishing house to “immediately cease and desist from any further publication, release or dissemination” of the new book, from which several extracts were published in the New York Magazine on Wednesday.
White House spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders did not clarify Thursday whether the president’s legal team planned to sue the author and the publishing house, but expressed hope that the book would not be published.