Jonathan Swan, a White House reporter for Axios in Washington, D.C., told Michael Wolff, author of Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, to remove his name from future printed editions of the sensational book.
Swan said in a tweet Wednesday, “Hey @MichaelWolffNYC: it must be fun to write and say whatever you want under the banner of ‘non-fiction,’ with zero fact-checking or basic decency. I have no idea why you put me in your author acknowledgments but please remove my name for the next edition.”
The tweet came in response to a new interview Wolff gave to theSkimm, a women’s lifestyle publication, wherein he said that United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley appears to have “embraced” a suggestion in his book that she is having an affair with President Trump.
“I would say she seems to have embraced it,” said Wolff. “Well, I don’t know. All she does is hammer on this fact. I mean, if I were being accused of something, and I am not accusing her of anything. She hasn’t tried to avoid this, let’s say.”
Hey @MichaelWolffNYC: it must be fun to write and say whatever you want under the banner of “non-fiction,” with zero fact-checking or basic decency. I have no idea why you put me in your author acknowledgments but please remove my name for the next edition. https://t.co/fNkqff4IeY
— Jonathan Swan (@jonathanvswan) January 31, 2018
The book doesn’t explicitly say that Haley and Trump are having an affair but it does say they have spent a lot of time together aboard Air Force One and in a separate interview recently on HBO’s “Real Time,” Wolff said he was sure Trump is engaged in an affair, but that he did not have definitive proof.
Haley herself denied the rumor in an interview with Politico.
Swan, who declined to comment for this article, is mentioned in the acknowledgments of Fire and Fury.
“Many friends, colleagues, and generous people in the greater media and political world have made this a smarter book,” Wolff wrote. He then listed several influential people in Washington and reporters, including Swan.
Wolff’s book has been widely criticized for several documented factual inaccuracies, some of which Wolff has conceded were valid.
