First lady Melania Trump looks on as President Donald Trump speaks with reporters after arriving for a New Year's Eve gala at his Mar-a-Lago resort. Photo / AP
The explosive new book about President Donald Trump published on Friday in the US calls the president a "chronically" unfaithful husband and recounts an emotional private conversation between Donald and Melania Trump over publication of nude pictures of her.
Author Michael Wolff writes in Fire and Fury that then-candidate Trump promised his wife he would not win the election after she became inconsolable following publication of nude modeling pictures of her taken early in her career, the Daily Mail reported.
Melania Trump confronted her husband after the release of the outtake shots, taken when she was a little-known Slovenian model named Melania Knauss.
An "inconsolable" Melania confronted her husband. 'Is this the future? She told him she wouldn't be able to take it,' according to Wolff's telling.
The photographs were published in July 2016, although Wolff does not say when the confrontation took place.
It is the latest sensational revelation from the book, which Trump tried to ban with a cease-and-desist letter sent by the lawyer who acted for Hulk Hogan against Gawker, but which was published on Friday morning four days early in response.
Trump hit out at the book as "phony" on Friday, having lambasted it as "full of lies, misrepresentations and sources that don't exist" on Thursday night.
Meanwhile Wolff thanked him for the publicity which saw the book shoot to the top of the Amazon charts and generate lines at bookstores.
The First Lady had previously denied an early extract which claimed she wept on election night when it was clear he was winning and that it was "not tears of joy".
The newly-published book goes further, saying that Trump made one promise he could keep to his wife, calling him a "chronically unfaithful" husband, during the confrontation.
"Trump responded in his fashion - We'll sue! – and set her up with lawyers," according to the book. "But he was unaccustomedly contrite, too," Wolff writes. "Just a little longer, he told her. It would all be over in November."
Trump "offered his wife a solemn guarantee: there was simply no way he would win," Wolff continues. "And even for a chronically - he would say helplessly - unfaithful husband, this was one promise to his wife that he seemed sure to keep."
Wolff offers no further corroboration for his claim that Trump was unfaithful, nor did he specify to which of Trump's three marriages he was referring.
Trump's first marriage, to Ivana, ended because of his public affair with Marla Maples, with his mistress telling the New York Post it was "the best sex I ever had".
On Friday Wolff told NBC's Today show he had spent a total of three hours with Trump in the campaign and after inauguration. That contradicted Trump's claim on Thursday night that Wolff had "zero access".
The White House has slammed the book as full of "lies".
The book also claims that "everybody other than Melania" assumed the photos could be "traced back to Trump himself". The photos had been part of a photo shoot that had been published in a celebrity magazine called Suzy.
The New York Post published the outtakes during the campaign.
Another passage describes a time, "coming back on a plane with a billionaire friend who had brought along a foreign model", where Trump was "trying to move in on his friend's date".
Trump urged a stop in Atlantic City, according to the telling, where he would give a tour of the casino he owned, although the friend said it would be full of "white trash".
The model wanted to know what the expression meant.
"They're people just like me," Trump said, "only they're poor."
In another section, Wolff details how Trump would go about using jealousy and revenge to get his pals' wives into bed with him.
"In pursuing a friend's wife, he would try to persuade the wife that her husband was perhaps not what she thought," by having her secretly listen in on speakerphone for a meeting that Trump would have with her husband in his office.
Trump would have his secretary ask the husband to come by his office where he would engage in "more or less constant sexual banter," the book alleges.
"Do you still like having sex with your wife? How often? You must have had a better f*** than your wife?" Wolff's book suggests Trump would ask his friends whose wives he would pursue.
"Tell me about it. I have girls coming in from Los Angeles at three o'clock. We can go upstairs and have a great time. I promise," Trump would continue to goad.
All along, Trump "would have his friend's wife on speakerphone, listening in," according to the book.
Other passages in the book reveal claims about his "perplexing" marriage to Melania, including that the pair could go days without seeing other - even when they were both at Trump Tower at the same time.
Excerpts from Michael Wolff's new book Fire and Fury claim that Trump and his wife spent very little time together and that she often didn't know where he was prior to him becoming President.
"Donald Trump's marriage was perplexing to almost everybody around him - or it was, anyway, for those without private jets and many homes," Wolff writes.
"He and Melania spent relatively little time together. They could go days at a time without contact, even when they were both in Trump Tower.
"Often she did not know where he was, or take much notice of that fact. Her husband moved between residences as he would move between rooms."
The book claims Melania also didn't know much about his business empire and that she feigned interest in it.
Trump, who has been married twice before, often referred to Melania as his "trophy wife" in front of other people. It further claims he had been absent for much of his 12-year-old son Barron's life.
Melania was supposedly worried, according to the book, that her husband becoming President would destroy the sheltered life she had built for herself, which was mostly focused on raising Barron.
Trump, who quickly dubbed the book "false and fake", took to Twitter late Thursday to say he turned down access to the author of the controversial book.
"I authorized Zero access to White House (actually turned him down many times) for author of phony book! I never spoke to him for book," Trump tweeted.
"Full of lies, misrepresentations and sources that don't exist. Look at this guy's past and watch what happens to him and Sloppy Steve!"
It comes after previously released excerpts had claimed Melania wept when Trump swept to Presidential victory, ensuring she would take on the First Lady role.
The book claimed the future FLOTUS was visibly upset on election night as things turned around for the Trump campaign.
"Melania was in tears - and not of joy," Wolff writes of the future FLOTUS's reaction on election night.
The author also noted that it looked like Trump himself "had seen a ghost" following the results.
According to Wolff the idea was that Trump would win by losing.
"Once he lost, Trump would be both insanely famous and a martyr to Crooked Hillary," the author wrote.
And it wouldn't work out well just for Trump. His daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner would be "international celebrities" after the campaign.
His campaign's Chief Executive Steve Bannon would become "the de facto head of the tea-party movement" and Kellyanne Conway, Trump's campaign manager, would go on to be a "cable-news star", Wolff wrote.
"Melania Trump, who had been assured by her husband that he wouldn't become president, could return to inconspicuously lunching," Wolff said.
The book also says Melania seemed "on the verge of tears" during her husband's inauguration.
Her White House spokeswoman, Stephanie Grisham, forcefully denied the claims earlier this week.
"The book is clearly going to be sold in the bargain fiction section," Grisham said.
"Mrs Trump supported her husband's decision to run for president and in fact, encouraged him to do so.
"She was confident he would win and was very happy when he did."
It is no secret Melania delayed moving to Washington in 2017 until son Barron was out of school for the summer.
Since taking over the role of First Lady, she has participated sporadically in public engagements.
The book also insinuates that the President and First Lady have separate bedrooms, being the first, first couple to do so since John and Jackie Kennedy. Trump, Wolff said, wanted a lock for his room, much to the chagrin of the Secret Service.
One of Trump's personal lawyers demanded on Thursday that the book be shelved because of what he said were maliciously false claims against the president.
White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters on Thursday that the book is "full of false and fake information" and that Trump "clearly believes that it shouldn't be" published.
One of the key sources for the book was former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon, who the president is now "furious" and "disgusted" by, according to Huckabee Sanders.
The press secretary also suggested that Bannon would no longer be invited socially to the White House.
• Steve Bannon described Don Jr's Trump Tower meeting with Russians as 'treasonous and unpatriotic' and thinks he will 'crack like an egg' under the pressure of the Russia investigation
• Bannon said there's 'zero' chance Donald Trump didn't know about the meeting and said Don Jr likely 'walked them to his father's office'
• First Lady Melania Trump openly wept on the night her husband won the election - and the tears 'were not of joy'
• The whole campaign from the top down thought Trump would lose and everyone had planned for defeat, with Trump himself planning a TV network because he would be 'the most famous man in the world'
• Trump and Melania sleep in separate bedrooms and he demanded a lock on his bedroom door against the wishes of the Secret Service
• Trump orders McDonald's so he's not poisoned, told staff not to touch his toothbrush and strips his own bedsheets
• Trump regularly sits in bed eating a cheeseburger at 6.30pm while calling his friends and watching three TVs
• Rupert Murdoch called Trump a 'f***ing idiot' after a phone call and billionaire backer Tom Barrack said 'he's not only crazy, he's stupid'
• Trump's aides say he doesn't read and 'for all practical purposes is no more than semi-literate'
• Trump would try to bed his friends' wives by goading their husbands to cheat while the wife listened in on speakerphone
• White House Communications Director Hope Hicks dated married Corey Lewandowski and Trump later told her: 'You're the best piece of tail he'll ever have.'
• The president called acting attorney general Sally Yates a 'c***' after she refused to enforce his immigration ban
• Sean Spicer, then press secretary, said 'you can't make this s*** up' after his first briefing and went on adopt the phrase as his personal mantra
• Trump tells the same stories three times in ten minutes and forgot a succession of old friends' names at a Mar-a-Lago party
• He called Jared Kushner a 'suck-up' and said he should never have let Ivanka and her husband move to Washington
• Among his verdicts on his staff: Bannon 'looked like s***', Reince Priebus was a midget and Kellyanne Conway was a crybaby
• Among his staff's verdicts on him: 'dope', 'dumb as s***', 'hopeless idiot', 'just a f***ing fool', 'lost his mind', 'incapable of functioning in his job'
• Trump wondered what a 'golden shower' was after reading reports about the notorious Russian dossier
• Trump offered to marry Morning Joe's Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough - and mocked Jared Kushner for saying he'd do it
• Ivanka Trump jokes with friends about her father's hair secrets: He had a scalp reduction, combs over from the sides, and uses Just for Men badly
Voter turnout was about 13% of 100 million eligible voters.