Tell I When Donald Trump Moved In, Our Amagansett House Fought Back

The Calm That Outscreams the Chaos

Victoria Wolff

Oct 02, 2025

A house is supposed to be a sanctuary—safe, calm, restorative—in theory. Circumstances, alas, disrupt that, more often than not. In my case, dramatically. My husband, Michael Wolff, makes his living by his proximity to some truly horrible, even evil people—who often come into our house. Quite the opposite of Feng Shui. He has written about the monsters of our time. And both in spirit and in fact, they become a constant presence. Donald Trump’s voice on the speaker phone, Jeffrey Epstein’s Bentley idling at the curb, Steve Bannon and Roger Ailes meeting at our house for dinner. Both Bannon and Ailes made terrible fun of Donald Trump. (I baked Baba au Rhum.)

Roger Ailes, who had recently resigned from Fox News following allegations of sexual harassment, was in poor health and had to be carried by several bodyguards to our kitchen, where I had a nice fire going in the hearth. A Jabba-the-Hutt like figure, presumably used to oversized furniture, he had to squeeze into one of our almost comically small leather club chairs (sized for small people in a small NYC apartment.) With malice as well as intelligence and humor, he told stories about Fox News, and its craven cast of characters. His particular bête noir was the ghastly Megyn Kelly, who had in his telling betrayed him: “She thinks she’s Grace Kelly, but she’s Suzanne Sommers with a law degree." Bannon ate like no one had ever fed him before.

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