President Trump Donald John TrumpHR McMaster says president's policy to withdraw troops from Afghanistan is 'unwise' Cast of 'Parks and Rec' reunite for virtual town hall to address Wisconsin voters Biden says Trump should step down over coronavirus response MORE reportedly floated the idea of expanding Medicare to cover everyone and intially appeared disinterested in repealing ObamaCare, according to a bombshell book about his first year in office.

Michael Wolff writes in "Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House" that the president "probably preferred the notion of more people having health insurance than fewer people having it."

"He was even, when push came to shove, rather more for ObamaCare than for repealing ObamaCare," Wolff writes in his book, which was released midnight Thursday and has been attacked and dismissed as "fake news" by the White House.

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Wolff wrote that Trump was disinterested in the details of the GOP's repeal-and-replace legislation and went along with the plan so he could move on to other issues.

Trump frequently lamented in public that he wished he started with tax reform before ObamaCare repeal and often expressed his impatience with repeal efforts, which took up nearly a year before Republicans threw in the towel after a failed Senate vote.

"I want to get to taxes," Trump said at a speech in March in Nashville.

"I want to cut the hell out of taxes. But before I can do that — I would have loved to put it first, to be honest — there is one more very important thing that we have to do, and we are going to repeal and replace horrible, disastrous ObamaCare."

Trump also faced widespread mockery in February when he noted how difficult health-care reform was.

"It's an unbelievably complex subject. Nobody knew health care could be so complicated," he said.

Trump also asked aides about "Medicare for all," Wolff said in the book, one of Sen. Bernie Sanders Bernie SandersMcConnell accuses Democrats of sowing division by 'downplaying progress' on election security The Hill's Campaign Report: Arizona shifts towards Biden | Biden prepares for drive-in town hall | New Biden ad targets Latino voters Why Democrats must confront extreme left wing incitement to violence MORE's (I-Vt.) key issues in his 2016 presidential campaign.

"Why can't Medicare simply cover everybody?" Trump reportedly asked.

Trump criticized Sanders's Medicare-for-all bill when it was introduced in September, calling it a "curse on the U.S."

But Trump has previously made positive comments about single-payer. Trump said earlier this year that Australia, which has a single-payer system, "has better health care than we do."

Trump also advocated for single-payer in his 2000 book "The America We Deserve," writing, "We must have universal healthcare."

Revelations from Wolff's book have consumed Washington's first week of the new year, with questions about it dominating White House press briefings on Wednesday and Thursday.

Trump ripped the "phony book" on Twitter both Thursday and Friday, saying it was "full of lies."