“I haven’t read it, don’t intend to read it,” Vice President Mike Pence told the Wall Street Journal. “What I’ve heard about in the book bears no resemblance to the president that I serve with every day." | Chris Kleponis/Pool/Getty Images Pence calls Wolff book 'Washington fiction'

Vice President Mike Pence said Monday that the incendiary book about the Trump administration that has roiled the White House for the past week is a “work of Washington fiction” that does not ring true to his experience working with the president.

“I haven’t read it, don’t intend to read it,” Pence told the Wall Street Journal. “What I’ve heard about in the book bears no resemblance to the president that I serve with every day. None. It just strikes me that it’s another work of Washington fiction.”


The White House has worked hard over the last week to characterize Michael Wolff’s new book, “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House” as inaccurate and riddled with falsehoods. The book, released last week after a series of excerpts were published online, paints a picture of the West Wing as inept and back-biting and of the president as ignorant, narcissistic and potentially declining in mental state.

Trump administration officials and allies have particularly chafed at the notion that the president’s mental faculties are not at full capacity. They have also disputed the notion that he has approached the day-to-day job of being president with anything less than his full vigor.

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“I have never been around anyone in my life with his energy, with his focus, with his capacity to multi-task. I think that this building has not seen his likes since that one,” Pence said, gesturing at a painting of former President Theodore Roosevelt.

