‘Trump’s White House is chaotic, dysfunctional’
WATERGATE REPORTER’S BOOK Chief of staff Kelly said Trump was an ‘idiot’
The Donald Trump White House has been afflicted by an “administrative coup d’etat” and a “nervous breakdown”, with senior aides removing official papers from the president’s desk so that he couldn’t see or sign them, an explosive new book by veteran journalist Bob Woodward reveals.
Woodward’s book Fear: Trump In The White House, obtained by The Washington Post on Tuesday, is drawn from hundreds of hours of interviews with firsthand participants and witnesses that were conducted on “deep background”, and meeting notes, personal diaries and government documents.
Despite Woodward’s efforts, he could not interview Trump for the book. Trump spoke to Woodward, best known for his expose of the Watergate scandal, in August, after the manuscript was completed. In a transcript of their conversation posted on the Post’s website, Trump says Fear will be a “bad book”.
According to the Post’s report, the book describes how former White House chief economic adviser Gary Cohn once stole a letter off Trump’s desk to prevent him from signing it and pulling the US out of a trade agreement with South Korea.
Woodward writes that Cohn said he removed the letter to “protect national security”, adding that Trump did not notice it was missing. Cohn resorted to a similar move to keep the US in Nafta, its trade agreement with neighbours Canada and Mexico.
The book reveals an administration in a state of “nervous breakdown”, with Trump often throwing insults at his aides.
Among the targets of Trump’s slurs were former chief of staff Reince Priebus (a “little rat”), commerce secretary Wilbur Ross (“past his prime”) and former national security adviser HR McMaster (dresses like a “beer salesman”).
Attorney general Jeff Sessions came in for brutal invectives. Trump reportedly called him “mentally retarded” and a “dumb Southerner” who “couldn’t even be a one-person country lawyer down in Alabama”.
Trump’s aides were equally biting in their views about their boss. The president once asked defence secretary Jim Mattis why the US should maintain a heavy military presence on the Korean peninsula. Pat came the reply: “We’re doing this in order to prevent World War 3.” Later, Mattis would tell his associates that Trump “acted like — and had the understanding of — ‘a fifth- or sixth-grader”. White House chief of staff John Kelly would frequently lose his temper, telling colleagues that Trump was “unhinged”, an “idiot” and that he has “gone off the rails”.
The book also deals with the probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, led by special counsel Robert Mueller. Trump reportedly is paranoid about the investigation, calling it a “goddamn hoax” and repeatedly debated with his personal attorneys whether he should testify before Mueller.
His attorney, John Dowd, was against it, holding a practice session in which Trump lost his cool and launched “a 30-minute rant”. Trump seemed convinced he had done a good job, but Dowd said if he testified, it was “an orange jumpsuit”, referring to the uniform prisoners wear in US jails.
The Mueller investigation also embarrassed Trump on some occasions. The book says that during a telephone conversation, his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fatah al-Sissi referred to it and said: “Donald, I’m worried about this investigation. Are you going to be around?”
According to Woodward, Trump would later tell Dowd that the conversation was like a “kick in the nuts”.