Supposedly Bannon signed him in some days. Some days, he reportedly had a higher clearance–the ‘blue pass’–than any other reporter. (I’m not seeing that in a reputable story–just in tweets and on message boards, so no link yet.)
The entire thing came about, apparently, because of an Accident of Graphics: Wolff wrote a not-very-positive story on Trump that was published in June 2016 in The Hollywood Reporter. But the cover made Trump look “cool,” or so Hope Hicks thought:
I don’t see the cover itself on the Hollywood Reporter site, so here it is:
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/sites/default/files/custom/trumpconversation.jpg
…if the cover artist had depicted Trump as a buffoon–to match the tenor of the actual story–then Wolff would never have gotten his pass to the White House. Because, of course, neither Hope Hicks, nor Trump, actually read the story. But since the cover made Trump look ‘cool,’ Hicks and Trump assumed that anything Wolff wrote, or might write, would also make Trump look ‘cool.’
Thus the importance of the graphic arts in world history.