This Is What Happens After Trump’s Public Meltdown: Author

President Donald Trump’s speech at the White House Correspondents Dinner will only feed his delusions—despite a flop of a performance, his longtime biographer Michael Wolff claims.

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Wolff revealed that Trump’s closest aides hardly tell him the truth about his public reception. He predicts that Trump’s senior staff told him “‘you were fantastic’” as he left the stage, which the president will now believe to be true.

Wolff, a regular target of the White House and Trump family, did give the president props for even appearing at the Friday night event. Coles was much less impressed with Trump, saying he appeared “desperate” as he botched jokes in front of his media nemeses.

“Sometimes I get something like almost a little flash of fondness, could it be for Donald Trump? I mean, I hate this White House Correspondents’ crowd,” Wolff told Coles. “I hate them for their self-satisfaction, for their shared references, for their shared jokes, for their profound lack of originality at any level. So the idea that Donald Trump would go in there and say, you know, ‘I basically I don’t give a s–t about you.’”

Wolff continued, “And the interesting thing is that so many other politicians and presidents certainly have tried to adapt to what the White House press corps wants, what the press wants. And Donald Trump, even in his symbiotic relationship with the press, has just never done that.”

Coles offered a counterpoint, saying, “He loves the press. He couldn’t exist without the press. He spends all day watching himself on television.”

“But he has never done what they want him to do,” Wolff responded. “He has never become what they want him to be, which every other politician has.”

Wolff acknowledged that “I feel this is a somewhat awkward position to suddenly be defending Donald Trump… but, you know, he doesn’t grovel.”

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Coles agreed, but noted, “He came across as desperate.”

“I understand he’s charismatic. I understand he’s funny. I understand he can hold people’s attention. This was a night where he looked desperate,” she said. “He was flailing. We’ve said he feels desperate. You know, the White House is leaking. He’s stuck in a war he can’t do anything about. And he read like an old Catskill comedian who was on his last desperate material.”

Wolff noted that a room full of beltway journalists was always going to be a tough crowd.

He added: “Context is everything: He’s got one audience, and this is not it.”

The author said it was “interesting” that Trump even bothered to show up to the event, given he had not attended since 2015, snubbing the association’s invitation every year of his presidency.

“This was a statement of ‘I have no insecurities when it comes to you people who I only have contempt for, who in the past I probably have felt insecure around,’” he explained.

Given that multiple jokes did not land, something Trump awkwardly addressed mid-speech, Coles predicts that “whoever wrote his speech will be fired.”

“Donald Trump knew he bombed in the room,” she continued. “I disagree with you about him trying to reach beyond the room. I think he was actually, as you say, swaggering that he was bigger than everybody, but actually he knows that the war is going wrong, the price of gas is up at the pump, that inflation is up and that he is in last chance saloon and he’s going to lose the midterms.”