BOOK CALLS TRUMP ‘IDIOT,’ ‘LIAR’
WASHINGTON— An incendiary tell-all book by a reporter who helped bring down US President Richard Nixon set off a firestorm in the White House with its descriptions of current and former aides calling President Donald Trump an “idiot” and a “liar.”
The book by Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward is the latest to throw the Trump administration into damage-control mode
with explosive anecdotes and concerns about the commander in chief.
In the book, “Fear: Trump in the White House,” aides disparaged Trump’s judgment and claimed they plucked papers off his desk to prevent him from withdrawing from a pair of trade agreements.
The Associated Press ( AP) obtained a copy of the book on Tuesday, a week before its official release.
Removing documents
Trump decried the quotes and stories in the book on Twitter as “frauds, a con on the public,” adding that Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly had denied uttering quoted criticisms of the president in the book.
He also denied accounts in the book that senior aides snatched sensitive documents off his desk to keep him from making impulsive decisions.
Woodward claims that Gary Cohn, the former director of the National Economic Council, boasted of removing papers from the president’s desk to prevent Trump from signing them into law, including efforts to withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement and from a deal with South Korea.
Later on Tuesday, Trump was back on Twitter denying the book’s claim that he had called Attorney General Jeff Sessions “mentally retarded” and “a dumb southerner.”
Trump insisted he “never used those terms on anyone, including Jeff,” adding that “being a southerner is a GREAT thing.” Sessions has been a target of the president’s wrath since recusing himself from the Russia investigation.
‘Crazytown’
The publication of Woodward’s book has been anticipated for weeks, and current and former White House officials estimate that nearly all their colleagues cooperated with the famed Watergate journalist.
The White House, in a statement from press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, dismissed the book as “nothing more than fabricated stories, many by former disgruntled employees, told to make the president look bad.”
Woodward did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The book quotes Kelly as having doubts about Trump’s mental faculties, declaring during one meeting, “We’re in Crazytown.” It also says he called Trump an “idiot,” an account Kelly denied on Tuesday.
The book says Trump’s former lawyer in the Russia probe, John Dowd, doubted the president’s ability to avoid perjuring himself should he be interviewed in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian election interference and potential coordination with Trump’s campaign.
‘Practice session’
Dowd, who stepped down in January, resigned after the mock interview, the book says.
“Don’t testify. It’s either that or an orange jumpsuit,” Dowd is quoted telling the president.
Dowd, in a statement on Tuesday, said “no so-called ‘practice session’ or ‘reenactment’” took place and denied saying Trump was likely to end up in an orange jumpsuit.
Mattis is quoted explaining to Trump why the United States maintains troops on the Korean Peninsula to monitor North Korea’s missile activities. “We’re doing this in order to prevent World War III,” Mattis said, according to the book.
The book recounts that Mattis told “close associates that the president acted like—and had the understanding of—‘a fifth- or sixth-grader.’”
Mattis said in a statement: “The contemptuous words about the President attributed to me in Woodward’s book were never uttered by me or in my presence.”
A Pentagon spokesperson, Col. Rob Manning, said Mattis was never interviewed by Woodward.
“Mr. Woodward never discussed or verified the alleged quotes included in his book with Secretary Mattis” or anyone within the defense department, Manning said.
Woodward reported that after Syria’s Bashar Assad launched a chemical weapons attack on civilians in April 2017, Trump called Mattis and said he wanted the Syrian leader taken out, saying: “Kill him! Let’s go in.”
US Ambassador Nikki Haley denied on Tuesday that Trump had ever planned to assassinate Assad. She said people should take what was written in books about the president with “a grain of salt.”