Trump ‘bullied’ May during phone calls
Donald Trump regularly ‘‘bullied and humiliated’’ Theresa May on phone calls, calling her a ‘‘fool’’ and ‘‘spineless’’ on Brexit, according to officials privy to the conversations.
The United States president reportedly attacked the thenBritish prime minister for her stance on the European Union, Nato, immigration, and other issues the pair disagreed on.
The details of the conversations have been published by Carl Bernstein, one of two reporters who broke the Watergate scandal, quoting White House and intelligence officials who are aware of the contents of Trump’s calls with world leaders.
‘‘He’d get agitated about something with Theresa May, then he’d get nasty with her on the phone call,’’ Bernstein wrote for CNN, quoting an official who described the verbal assaults as ‘‘near-sadistic’’.
‘‘It’s the same interaction in every setting with just no filter applied,’’ one of the sources said.
Trump’s relationship with May was notoriously fraught, with both taking vastly different approaches to issues that once bonded the two countries.
Bernstein’s sources say Trump reserved his most vicious attacks for female leaders. He reportedly denigrated May and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, but was cordial – even reDverential – to strongman leaders Vladimir Putin of Russia and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
‘‘He’s toughest [on the phone] with those he looks at as weaklings and weakest with the ones he ought to be tough with.’’
While the insults were ‘‘water off a duck’s back’’ for Merkel, May became ‘‘flustered and nervous’’ on the calls. ‘‘He clearly intimidated her and meant to," they said.
The claims made to Bernstein, a former reporter who together with Bob Woodward revealed scandals that led to the resignation of Richard Nixon as president, are similar to some made in former national security adviser John Bolton’s new book. However, the phone calls described to CNN cover a far longer period than Bolton’s White House stint and are more comprehensive, according to Bernstein.
When asked to comment, Downing Street referred reporters to its website, which lists brief descriptions of the content of some of the calls.
Trump reportedly ‘‘almost never’’ read the briefing materials prepared for him in advance of the calls, Bernstein said.
The news came as a judge in New York issued a temporary restraining order against a book written by Trump’s niece, Mary. Her book, which is due to be published next month, presents an unflattering account of life in the Trump family.
The novel that catapulted Dan Brown to stardom was a tale of deceit and intrigue with a secret relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene at its heart. Now a court has been told by Brown’s former wife that he led his own ‘‘life of lies’’, siphoning money from their joint accounts to buy presents for a Dutch horse trainer who was one of his four lovers.
In a lawsuit filed in New Hampshire, Blythe Brown says that the author of
engaged in ‘‘unlawful and egregious conduct’’ during their marriage and ‘‘secretly siphoned’’ off some of their money ‘‘to conduct sordid, extramarital affairs’’.
The couple married in 1997 and divorced last December. Blythe Brown, a painter and art historian who is 12 years older than her former husband, is suing him for misrepresenting their shared wealth in a sworn financial affidavit that formed part of their divorce agreement and for intentionally and negligently inflicting emotional distress.
Before their separation,
put his annual earnings at