Book depicts White House in chaos

White House chief of staff John Kelly frequently lost his temper and referred to President Donald Trump as “unhinged” and an “idiot,” author Bob Woodward writes in his new book “Fear: Trump in the White House.”

Kelly, in a statement Tuesday, denied the claims as simply “not true.”

The book describes a president obsessed, angry and paranoid about the Russian investigation of special counsel Robert Mueller.

Woodward cites as his sources hundreds of hours of interviews with mostly unnamed Trump aides and others.

“He’s an idiot,” Kelly is quoted as saying. “It’s pointless to try to convince him of anything. He’s gone off the rails. We’re in Crazytown. I don’t even know why any of us are here. This is the worst job I’ve ever had.”

The Post reports that a recurring theme of the book is the efforts of Trump aides to control his impulses, hiding papers so Trump can’t sign them and talking the president down from what were viewed as bad ideas.

Kelly saidthat “the idea I ever called the President an idiot is not true . ... As I stated back in May and still firmly stand behind: ‘I spend more time with the President than anyone else, and we have an incredibly candid and strong relationship. He always knows where I stand, and he and I both know this story is total BS.’ ”

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders called the book “nothing more than fabricated stories, many by former disgruntled employees, told to make the president look bad.”