Donald Trump has furiously denied claims in a new book examining his road to re-election, including that he is hated by wife Melania and of rifts between the US President and his former inner circle.

All Or Nothing: How Trump Recaptured America, written by Michael Wolff, was released in the US on Wednesday and follows several exposés by the journalist, including 2021’s Landslide: The Final Days of the Trump Presidency and Fire and Fury in 2018.

“Wolff’s thesis in his 18 months of covering the [2024 US election] campaign was that the establishment would destroy Trump, or Trump would destroy the establishment,” publisher Crown said.

“All or Nothing is Wolff’s panoramic and intimate picture of that battle … from indictments, to trials, to assassination attempts, to the humiliation and defenestration of a sitting president, to Trump’s staggering victory.”

Trump has predictably called the book “FAKE NEWS” in a lengthy post on his Truth social media platform, describing it as “boring and obviously fictitious book!”.

While Wolff’s sources a secret, the book is certainly not “boring”.

Here are just some of the bombshell claims in All or Nothing:  

Melania mystery?  

Wolff reveals that no one knew Melania Trump’s whereabouts during the election campaign. 

“Nobody can tell you where Melania even actually lives. It may be, on its own peculiar terms, the most successful marriage in America. Or, it may be ready to blow up at any moment,” he writes.

The latter appears the more likely, with Wolff quoting a “Mar-a-Lago patio confidant” as saying the first lady “f–king hates” her husband.

A Mar-a-Lago source reportedly says Melania hates her husband. Photo: TND/Getty

Elon Musk bewilderment  

Trump was reportedly “bewildered” by Elon Musk’s bizarre behaviour at his October rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, which featured Musk excitedly leaping around the stage in a jacket and tight T-shirt.

“What the f–k is wrong with this guy? And why doesn’t his shirt fit?” Trump reportedly said.

Musk was also supposedly unimpressed by meeting JD Vance at the rally.

“I’ve really no interest in speaking to a vice president,” Wolff claims the tech mogul said. 

Mocking Murdoch

After Rupert Murdoch’s apparent decision to distance himself from Trump after the January 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection, the Australian-born media mogul desperately moved to mend fences when it appeared Trump would win.

Wolff – who in 2023 published The Fall: The End of Fox News and the Murdoch Dynasty – reports that Murdoch phoned so often that Trump started cracking jokes about how the 93-year-old “could not remember that he had called him the day before”.

He also says that when Murdoch introduced Trump to his fifth wife, Elena Zhukova, he brightly declared “she’s Russian!” playing on the the fact that he and Trump were both married to Slavic brides.

Wolff says Murdoch’s attempts to re-woo Trump sometimes went awry, as in March 2024 when he thought he’d please the then-candidate by ordering the New York Post to run a headline about Trump attending a wake for a slain New York police officer while at the same time presidents Biden, Obama and Clinton were at a “$25M fundraiser”.

As Wolff writes, Trump “seemed to miss the point of the headline, sorely p-ssed and disbelieving about the $25 million. ‘How could that f–cking be?” he reportedly yelled at aides. “This is fake. It’s gotta be fake. If they’re really doing such good business, what does that mean? It means I have sh-tty people’.”

Wolff has written several books exposing Trump’s inn circle. Photo: HBO

Ivanka antisemitism refusal

Trump’s daughter and son-in-law Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner – both Jewish – apparently refused to sign a statement saying that Trump was not antisemitic.

“As he kept seeming to be incapable of offering absolute support for Israel in the wake of October 7,” Wolff writes.

“Trump, not for the first time, turned to Jared for Jewish cover, explicitly asking him and Ivanka for a public endorsement.”

Wolff goes on to claim that Kushner “kept dodging” a formal endorsement of his father-in-law, apparently saying: “No, Ivanka and I aren’t going to do that. We’re not going to go and put our names on something and get in the middle of things. That’s just not what we’re going to do this time.” 

‘The verge of cracking’

After the assassination attempt in Pennsylvania, Trump “seemed possibly on the verge of cracking”, Wolff claims.

Trump “frequently gave up trying to complete sentences; that he turned left when he should have known it was right; that he elided obvious names, repeated himself beyond the one or two allowances, and erupted in rages that, even for him, seemed irrational”.  

Woman vice president  

Wolff writes that Trump was originally seeking a woman to be his vice president, with two Fox News hosts in the running – Maria Bartiromo and Harris Faulkner.

Musk apparently told Trump that he wouldn’t back him unless JD Vance was on the ticket. 

‘Poison’ celebrations  

Wolff says that Trump celebrates with “poison” in the form of a basket full of chocolate and sweets, including Hershey’s Miniatures and Tootsie Rolls.

Apparently Trump takes “two handfuls” and then asks for them to be removed.  

Trump’s response

In response to All Or Nothing, Trump wrote on Truth Social on the weekend: “He called me many times trying to set up a meeting, but I never called him back because I didn’t want to give him the credibility of an interview.”

He added: “Others in the Administration were also called, they reported his calls, and likewise, did not talk to him. I assume, however, he was able to speak to a small number of people, but not meaningfully.”

Trump denied Wolff  has insider sources.

“It’s a LIE, as is the case with many so-called ‘journalists.’ If he has sources, let them be revealed. Watch, it will never happen,” he said. 

“He is FAKE NEWS, a total LOSER, and no one should waste their time or money in buying this boring and obviously fictitious book!”

White House communications director Steven Cheung used a more imaginative turn of phrase to blast Wolff as a “lying sack of sh-t” who “routinely fabricates stories originating from his sick and warped imagination, only possible because he has a severe and debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted his peanut-sized brain.”