Trump Doesn't Recognize 'Old Friends,' Staffers Call Ivanka His 'Real Wife': Tell-All Book More shocking claims about the inner workings of President Donald Trump's White House were released Thursday from author Michael Wolff By Dave Quinn Dave Quinn Dave Quinn is the Deputy News Director at PEOPLE. He has been working at the brand since 2016, and is the author of the No. 1 New York Times best-selling book, Not All Diamonds and Rosé: The Inside Story of the Real Housewives from the People Who Lived It. People Editorial Guidelines Published on January 4, 2018 11:07AM EST More shocking claims about the inner workings of President Donald Trump‘s White House were released Thursday from author and Hollywood Reporter columnist Michael Wolff. In an essay for THR, Wolff alleges that Trump has had trouble recognizing old friends, and that staffers refer to Trump’s daughter Ivanka as his “real wife” and White House Communications Director Hope Hicks as his “real daughter.” The allegations are just a few also found in Wolff’s upcoming book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House (out Jan. 9), which chronicles his extensive time spent at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and which included more than 200 interviews with Trump and senior staff over a period of 18 months. Mikhail Metzel / Getty Images Amazon “At Mar-a-Lago, just before the new year, a heavily made-up Trump failed to recognize a succession of old friends,” Wolff writes — a seeming hint that the president’s memory may be fading. (Back in November, Joe Scarborough made similar claims on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, saying that people close to the president have said he has shown early signs of dementia). RELATED STORY: Kellyanne Conway Put Finger-Gun to Her Head, Sean Spicer Swears and More from New Book on ‘Insane’ Trump White House As for Ivanka, Wolff claims that part of the “insanity” and “foolishness” happening in the West Wing has been the president’s “inability to deal with his own family,” and that giving Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner, leadership roles “was to compound his own boundless inexperience in Washington, creating from the outset frustration and then disbelief and then rage on the part of the professionals in his employ.” Kris Connor/Getty Images Hicks, meanwhile, has become Trump’s “most powerful White House advisor,” Wolff alleges. The 29-year-old confidant’s primary function? “To tend to the Trump ego,” Wolff writes — “to reassure him, to protect him, to buffer him, to soothe him.” “With [First Lady] Melania a nonpresence, the staff referred to Ivanka as the ‘real wife’ and Hicks as the ‘real daughter,’ ” Wolff claims. The author also asserts that “it was Hicks who, attentive to [Trump’s] lapses and repetitions, urged him to forgo an interview that was set to open the 60 Minutes fall season. Instead, the interview went to Fox News’ Sean Hannity who, White House insiders happily explained, was willing to supply the questions beforehand. Indeed, the plan was to have all interviewers going forward provide the questions.” Andrew Harrer-Pool/Getty RELATED VIDEO: PEOPLE Writer Natasha Stoynoff Breaks Silence, Accuses Donald Trump of Sexual Attack Thursday’s report comes a day after Wolff’s preview piece for the book was published in New York magazine, after contents were leaked by The Guardian. Wolff claimed (among other things) that Ivanka wants to be “the first woman president,” that First Lady Melania “was in tears — and not of joy” when Trump won the presidential election in November 2016, and that the president’s former chief strategist and onetime close ally Steve Bannon called a Trump Tower meeting between Trump associates and a Russian lawyer “treasonous.” Trump responded to Bannon’s reported comments on Wednesday, stating that his former ally “has nothing to do with me or my presidency” and that “when he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind.“ Close Read more: Politics Politician Families