Trump ‘bullied and humiliated’ Theresa May
Bombshell phone transcripts suggest he berated allies... but tried to impress Putin and Kim
IT SOMETIMES seemed like Donald Trump and Theresa May couldn’t keep their hands off each other, repeatedly being photographed clutching each other’s arms and being tactile, sparking speculation about an unusually warm special relationship between them. On the phone, however, it was a very different story. It’s now claimed that the U.S. President’s feelings for former prime minister Theresa May weren’t so much effusive as abusive. Carl Bernstein — one of the two reporters who broke the famous Watergate scandal — has learned about the transcripts of hundreds of highly-classified phone calls between Trump and other world leaders. What they reveal is a President who fawns sickeningly over America’s foes, subjects allies to ‘raging outbursts’ and grievously insults his predecessors. Former top Trump aides concluded he posed a danger to U.S. national security. ‘He’s toughest [in the phone calls] with those he looks at as weaklings and weakest with the ones he ought to be tough with,’ said an unnamed official. The White House insisted yesterday that Trump is a ‘world-class negotiator’ and has ‘consistently furthered America’s interests on the world stage’. TOM LEONARD reveals the President’s ‘special’ relationship with other world leaders . . .
THERESA MAY
Trump — who once boasted of groping women and who has been accused of an ugly history of misogyny — has allegedly been ‘vicious’ and ‘near-sadistic’ with female leaders, particularly Theresa may, whom he ‘demeaned’ and ‘denigrated’.
Like all bullies, Trump exploited weakness and sensed that mrs may — who stepped down as our pm a year ago — was ‘flustered and nervous’ in their conversations.
Trump’s conversations with her were described as ‘humiliating and bullying’ with the president calling her ‘a fool’ and spineless in her approach to Brexit, Nato and immigration matters.
‘He clearly intimidated her and meant to,’ an unnamed source told Bernstein. ‘He’d get agitated about something with her, then he’d get nasty with her on the phone call.’
He also reportedly told her she was ‘weak’ and ‘lacked courage’.
‘It’s the same interaction in every setting — coronavirus or Brexit — with just no filter applied.’
It’s no secret that all the handholding concealed major rifts, particularly over Brexit. Trump publicly criticised may’s handling of the negotiations and in 2018 said her plans for relatively close trading ties with the European union would ‘kill’ hopes of a trade deal with the US.
John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser, claims in his new memoir that the may government ‘disastrously mishandled’ Brexit, the UK’s exit from the Eu.
Listening in to an April 2018 call between the two leaders about military action against Syria, ‘it was clear [Trump] didn’t like may, a feeling that struck me as reciprocal’, said Bolton.
A source close to mrs may said the new claims about her calls with Trump were ‘complete nonsense’.
The source added: ‘The calls were not always easy, because Theresa sometimes disagreed with him. But to say that she was bullied or got flustered is utter nonsense.’
ANGELA MERKEL
THE German leader never got the holding-hands treatment from Trump, and it was no secret the pair had fundamental differences over NATO and the European union.
‘Some of the things he said to Angela merkel are just unbelievable: he called her “stupid” and accused her of being in the pocket of the russians,’ a source told Bernstein.
She didn’t let the bullying get to her and remained unruffled, to some extent taking the wind out of Trump’s sails.
A German official said Trump’s behaviour towards the Chancellor was ‘very aggressive’ and said the calls ‘are so unusual’ that Berlin took special precautions to ensure the contents remained secret.
only a small circle of German officials were allowed to monitor the calls.
VLADIMIR PUTIN
THE pally personal relationship with russia’s Vladimir putin has long concerned Washington, particularly as evidence has mounted of moscow’s determination to wage covert war on the united States.
on top of what u.S. officials say is clear evidence of Kremlin attempts to subvert the course of the 2016 election and further polarise Americans with ‘fake news’, Trump may have sat on evidence that russian spies were paying bounties to Afghan militants for killing u.S. and British troops.
A source told Bernstein that Trump’s chats with putin at times sounded like ‘two guys in a steam bath’, with the American desperate to impress the russian by boasting of his success.
The chats reportedly consisted of Trump talking mostly about himself, ‘frequently in over-the-top, self-aggrandising terms’ such as boasting of his ‘unprecedented’ success in building the u.S. economy and derisively stressing how much smarter and stronger he was than the ‘imbeciles’ and ‘weaklings’ who preceded him, particularly Barack obama.
He also revelled in his experience running the miss universe pageant in moscow and ‘obsequiously’ courted
Putin’s admiration and approval. Putin ‘just outplays’ him, said a high-level administration official who compared the former KGB officer to a chess grandmaster and Trump to an occasional player of checkers.
While Putin ‘destabilises the West’, said the same source, the U.S. President ‘sits there and thinks he can build himself up enough as a businessman and tough guy that Putin will respect him’.
Insiders said they feared Trump was squandering the ‘advantage that was hard won in the Cold War’ by craving the approval of the leader of a totalitarian state whose waning power and importance he grossly overestimated.
RECEP TAYYIP ERDOGAN
SENIOR White House officials were concerned that Trump’s lack of preparedness when talking to leaders of non-friendly states threatened national security.
Top administration officials were particularly concerned at how often and easily Turkish president recep Tayyip erdogan got through, bypassing the usual national Security Council protocols designed to protect the President, and the way in which he pestered him for ‘policy concessions and other favours’.
officials concluded that the Turkish security services in Washington were relaying details of Trump’s schedule to Ankara so that erdogan could time his calls for maximum effect.
He repeatedly rang Trump when he was on a golf course and the golf-mad president was so keen to talk he would interrupt a game to chat at length.
Such calls had the other advantage of taking place when the President had no advisers to hand.
Two sources told Bernstein that Trump was ‘woefully uninformed’ about the history of the Syrian conflict and the Middle east generally. He was often ‘caught off guard’ and lacked sufficient knowledge to engage on equal terms in policy discussions with erdogan who — said an insider — consequently ‘took him to the cleaners’.
A perfect example, said officials, was Trump’s decision to pull forces out of Syria, which allowed Turkey to attack America’s Kurdish allies and weakened NATO’s role.
EMMANUEL MACRON
TRUMP had an odd relationship with the French president. Many predicted fireworks between the populist conservative American and the elitist, liberal-leaning Frenchman but they then warmly embraced when they met.
Since then, they have been sniping, however. on the phone, Trump delivered highly personal verbal ‘whippings’ as he tired of emmanuel Macron’s pleas to change his mind on Iran and climate change. He berated him over France and other countries’ failure to meet NATO spending targets, trade imbalances with the U.S. and liberal immigration policies.
According to Bernstein’s sources, Trump frequently disparaged fellow leaders of the Western alliance — including Macron, Canada’s Justin Trudeau and Australian PM Scott Morrison — ‘in the same hostile and aggressive way he discussed the coronavirus with some of America’s governors’.
They were ‘free form, fact-deficient, stream-of-consciousness ramblings, full of fantasy and off-the-wall pronouncements’.
MOHAMMED BIN SALMAN
THE U.S. makes many billions from arms sales to Saudi Arabia and, in 2018, Trump issued a fierce defence of Saudi Arabia over the brutal killing of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, in which Mohammed Bin Salman, the autocratic royal heir, was implicated.
According to former national security adviser John Bolton, Trump even wanted to call bin Salman to tell him a favourable statement was coming out.
He reportedly told aides, ‘We’re doing him a hell of a favour’ by effectively saying that, whether he did it or not, ‘we’re standing with Saudi Arabia’.
Bernstein’s sources said bin Salman was near the top of a list of leaders who Trump ‘picks up and calls without anybody being prepared’. Intelligence officials would be mortified and their helpless reaction ‘would frequently be, “oh my God, don’t make that phone call” ’.
KIM JONG-UN
We All know what Trump said about the north Korean leader on Twitter, deriding him as ‘little rocket man’ and continually challenging him to a fight.
In phone calls Trump was less hostile, although no less conceited. He ‘incessantly boasted . . . about his own wealth, genius, “great” accomplishments as President’ and the ‘idiocy’ of his oval office predecessors, said Bernstein’s sources. ‘They didn’t know BS,’ he reportedly said of George W. Bush and Barack obama.
Trump ‘almost never’ reads briefing notes by CIA or national security staff before he speaks to world leaders, even those as dangerous as Kim Jong-Un, said sources. ‘Trump’s view is that he is a better judge of character than anyone else,’ said one.
He hasn’t changed over time, still convinced ‘he could charm, jawbone or bully almost any foreign leader into capitulating to his will, and often pursued goals more attuned to his own agenda than what many of his senior advisers considered the national interest’, said Bernstein.