Trump faces crisis with book questioning his fitness for office
US President Donald Trump faced a new public relations crisis Friday with the publication of a tell-all book that depicts him as mentally unstable and in over his head, after his lawyers failed to block its release.
Publishers responded to a cease-and-desist letter from Trump by moving forward by four days the release of “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House” – an expose by author and political muckraker Michael Wolff that quotes key Trump aides expressing serious doubt about his fitness for office.
“I authorized Zero access to White House [actually turned him down many times] for author of phony book! I never spoke to him for book. Full of lies, misrepresentations and sources that don’t exist,” Trump tweeted Thursday.
“Look at this guy’s past and watch what happens to him and Sloppy Steve!” Trump wrote – a possible reference to Steve Bannon, his former chief strategist, or Steve Rubin, the publisher of Wolff’s book.
The book – which paints Trump as mentally unstable and far out of his depth – includes extensive quotes from Bannon, who also received a “cease and desist” order from Trump’s attorneys.
“Your publication of the false/baseless statements about Mr. Trump gives rise to, among other claims, defamation by libel, defamation by libel per se, false light invasion of privacy, tortious interference with contractual relations, and inducement of breach of contract,” Trump’s lawyers said in the letter to Wolff.
In the book Bannon is quoted accusing Trump’s eldest son Don Jr of “treasonous” contacts with a Kremlinconnected lawyer, and saying the president’s daughter Ivanka, who imagines running for president one day, is “dumb as a brick.”
But it is Trump himself who is cast in the most unfavorable light by a series of his top aides.
The book claims that for “Steve Mnuchin and Reince Priebus, the president was an ‘idiot.’ For Gary Cohn, he was ‘dumb as shit.’ For H.R. McMaster, he was a ‘dope.’ The list went on.”
White House issued a scorched-earth dismissal of the book, its author and his sources.
“I don’t think [Americans] really care about some trash that an author that no one had ever heard of until today, or a fired employee, wants to peddle,” the White House said.