January 9, 2019. REUTERS/Leah Millis
- President Donald Trump's staff were perplexed by the company he kept, author Michael Wolff said.
- It led them to nickname the Oval Office 'the Star Wars bar' he told The Times of London.
- The reference was to a locale in the movies beloved of outlaws and bizarre-looking aliens.
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White House staffers got so used to seeing a vast retinue of unlikely figures in President Donald Trump's Oval Office that they nicknamed it the 'Star Wars bar,' according to Michael Wolff, author of a new exposé on the Trump administration.
In an interview with The Times of London published Wednesday, Wolff discussed his new book, "Landslide," which the newspaper has been publishing excerpts of.
In the interview, Wolff claims that he travelled to meet Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort despite the unflattering portrayal of the former president in his two previous books on his time as president.
There, he observed that Trump conducted business in the front lobby, surrounded by supporters and favor-seekers.
"The man can't be alone," Wolff told the publication. "The Oval Office in the Trump years was at any time filled with enormous numbers of people."
Staffers, said Wolff, nicknamed it "the Star Wars bar" because of the odd characters hanging out there.
The nickname is an allusion to the Mos Eisley Cantina in the first "Star Wars" film, where Luke Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi first meet Han Solo.
Here is a clip, showing a variety of aliens with strangely-shaped heads, huge eyes, snouts, and fur:
The official Star Wars website describes it as "a dimly-lit tavern known for its strong drinks, hot tunes, and occasional outbreaks of shocking violence."
Trump during his presidency took a much laxer approach than other presidents to who was allowed in his orbit.
His second chief of staff, John Kelly, at one point tried to restrict the flow of people able to access the president, but with limited success.
During the final few months of his presidency, Sidney Powell, an attorney associated with the QAnon conspiracy theory movement, pillow executive and conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell and Rudy Giuliani were frequent White House visitors as they pursued Trump's bid to overturn the election result.
-Liz Harrington (@realLizUSA) July 6, 2021
Trump's spokeswoman, Liz Harrington, has denied Wolff's claims in the book, tweeting on Tuesday: "All these stories from the Michael Wolff book are not true. Wolff never asked President Trump about them, if he had, he would have refuted them. Fake News!"
Wolff responded, saying that he only included verified accounts in his book, either confirmed by Trump's aides or by multiple other sources.