Donald Trump Jr. said his father "looked as if he had seen a ghost" on the night of the election, and Melania Trump was "in tears—and not of joy." Many of the most controversial quotes in the book came from Steve Bannon, the chief executive of the Trump campaign in its final months and White House Chief Strategist from January to August 2017. Bannon referred to the meeting during the presidential campaign of Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner with Russian officials as "treasonous" and "unpatriotic," described Ivanka Trump as "dumb as a brick", and—referencing the now-completed Special Counsel investigation being led by Robert Mueller—said, "they're going to crack Don Junior like an egg on national TV." Bannon also said that Mueller's investigation would likely uncover money laundering involving Kushner from loans received by his family business from Deutsche Bank. Another quote from Bannon was that lawyer Marc Kasowitz had gotten Trump "out of all kinds of jams [...] on the campaign—what did we have, a hundred women? Kasowitz took care of all of them." Wolff said Trump himself was characterized by "wide-ranging ignorance." For example, Sam Nunberg, a campaign advisor, reportedly tried to explain the United States Constitution to Trump but could not get past the Fourth Amendment. Wolff also claims that Kushner and Ivanka Trump discussed having Ivanka run in a future presidential campaign. Release The book was originally scheduled to go on sale on January 9, 2018, but the publisher, Henry Holt and Company, moved up the release date to January 5 due to "unprecedented demand." An excerpt of the book was released by New York magazine on January 3, 2018. The same day, other media outlets reported on further content of the book; for example, The Guardian reported "explosive" highlights, stating they were based on the full book. That day, preorders of the book made it the number 1 bestseller in the country. Fire and Fury debuted at number one on The New York Times Best Seller list, and within a week had become the fastest selling book in the publisher's history, with over 700,000 orders shipped and 1.4 million orders placed. Reception White House reaction and fallout At her daily press briefing on 3 January 2018, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House Press Secretary, called the book "trashy tabloid fiction" and "filled with false and misleading accounts." The White House released a statement saying that