The big picture: White House officials have finally obtained a copy and are now poring over it, but as the day rolled on yesterday, staff met to discuss strategies to push back — all while President Trump’s mood worsened and TV coverage shifted from Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings to the book.

By last evening, some key officials thought the best strategy would be to go after Woodward personally by highlighting criticisms of his reporting and sourcing from the books he wrote on Barack Obama and George W. Bush.

Senior officials know they have a problem with Woodward. “The problem is his credibility,” a source with direct knowledge told me. “They know they can’t give him the Michael Wolff treatment.” Wolff, who authored the bombshell “Fire and Fury” was notoriously averse to basic fact-checking — and could be more easily dismissed. Woodward, by contrast, has hundreds of hours of tapes and made every effort to talk to all the main players.