Tramping on Trump

New book lambastes US president

President Donald Trump’s White House is mired in a perpetual “nervous breakdown”, with staff battling to rein in the worst impulses of an angry, paranoid leader, according to the explosive new book by veteran reporter Bob Woodward.

Woodward’s investigation into Trump’s White House carries particular weight coming from the man who, together with Carl Bernstein, authored the Watergate expose that brought down Richard Nixon.

Trump’s White House is described as having undergone “no less than an administrative coup d’etat,” according to The Washington Post, where Woodward is an associate editor and which received an advance copy of Fear: Trump in the White House, set for release on September 11.

Since the Watergate expose appeared in The Washington Post in the early 1970s, Woodward has published powerful, insightful and often embarrassing books on eight US leaders, including George W Bush and Barack Obama, based on extensive access to White House insiders. Woodward is one of the most respected living US journalists, and an authority on modern US presidents who drew praise from Trump himself in 2013 for his work on Obama.

The White House has hit back at “fabricated stories” as the book piled fresh pressure on a president besieged by multiple investigations and a looming election that could damage his Republican Party.

Trump claimed that the quotes in Woodward’s book were “made up frauds”.

Woodward says he spoke with many people currently or formerly working for Trump as he researched the book, discussing not just the president’s personality but also major policy debates regarding North Korea and Afghanistan. – AFP