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- Former President Donald Trump has agreed to at least 12 book interviews over the next few weeks.
- Advisers worry that Trump could imperil monetizing his own book by doing so many interviews, per Politico.
- “He remains the hottest name in politics and he’s the interview that everyone wants,” Jason Miller said.
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As former President Donald Trump continues to adjust to life without Twitter, he has reportedly agreed to at least a dozen book interviews in the coming weeks, according to Politico.
Trump already sat down for a couple of book interviews, according to Politico reporters Meredith McGraw and Gabby Orr, but he’s now planning on granting even more.
“We are not discussing particulars of any individual book interviews that President Trump is giving but it’s safe to say that he remains the hottest name in politics and he’s the interview that everyone wants,” Jason Miller, one of Trump’s closest remaining advisers since leaving the White House, told Politico. “We’re tracking nearly three dozen post-presidency books where he will be the star.”
Several of the authors named by Politico are working on sequels to their previous books about Trump. The former president has also insulted many of these authors personally, but four people in his orbit who spoke with Politico said he still plans on meeting with them again.
Some of those authors include Michael Wolff, Maggie Haberman and Jeremy Peters of The New York Times, ABC’s Jonathan Karl, and The Washington Post’s Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker.
Trump called Haberman a “Hillary flunky,” described Rucker and Leonnig as “two nasty lightweight reporters,” and pegged Wolf as “a total loser.”
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Wolff’s book “Fire and Fury” kicked off a series of damaging and, at times, embarrassing books on Trump while he was in office. The author later said he couldn’t be certain everything in his book was true, but it became the publisher’s fastest selling book ever.
Meanwhile, the White House reporters who wrote about Trump demonstrated rigorous sourcing and broke several major developments, such as when Rucker and Leonnig reported that he called top US national security officials “a bunch of dopes and babies.”
One of the Trump advisers who spoke with Politico cautioned that Trump could end up backing out of some of the interviews, which would be at his post-presidency Mar-a-Lago abode in Florida.
One of the concerns among those close to Trump is whether doing this many sit-downs could harm the profitability of his own tell-all book, if he were to write one, according to Politico.
Trump has published more than a dozen books of his own, and has hinted at doing a post-presidency memoir, but some major publishing executives are reportedly cautious about agreeing to a deal out of a fear of alienating their staff.
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