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U.S. president Donald Trump has slammed the controversial book writen by Journalist Bob Woodward, insisting he’s “the exact opposite” of the book’s portrayal of him, complaining on Twitter that people can “get away with” such depictions and suggested changing libel laws.
Bob Woodward, best known for his reporting on the Watergate scandal, has left Donald Trump in a huff. His book paints a damning picture of chaos within the White House.
The book draws on hundreds of hours of taped interviews with current and former aides and officials to paint a damning portrait of the Trump administration.
Read more: Bob Woodward’s book describes a dysfunctional Trump White House
Almost everyone agrees that my Administration has done more in less than two years than any other Administration in the history of our Country. I’m tough as hell on people & if I weren’t, nothing would get done. Also, I question everybody & everything-which is why I got elected!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 5, 2018
The already discredited Woodward book, so many lies and phony sources, has me calling Jeff Sessions “mentally retarded” and “a dumb southerner.” I said NEITHER, never used those terms on anyone, including Jeff, and being a southerner is a GREAT thing. He made this up to divide!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 5, 2018
What the book claims
Excerpts from the 420-page book, to be released next week, have been published by various US news outlets. In the book, Woodward reports:
Top administration staff enacted an “administrative coup d’etat” by frequently hiding documents, or secretly preventing Trump from acting on impulses and causing disaster.
Chief of staff John Kelly doubted the integrity of Trump’s mental faculties, declaring during one meeting, “We’re in Crazytown” and calling Trump an “idiot.”
Trump wanted to order the assassination of Syrian President Bashar Assad. Defense Secretary James Mattis assured Trump he would get right on it but then told a senior aide they’d do nothing of the kind.
Mattis told “close associates that the president acted — and had the understanding of — a fifth- or sixth-grader,” after Trump raged about the cost of the US military presence in South Korea.
Trump’s former lawyer in the Russia probe, John Dowd, thought the chances of Trump perjuring himself during an interview with special counsel Robert Mueller were so high that he told him not to testify.
“Don’t testify. It’s either that or an orange jumpsuit,” Dowd is quoted as saying. He later called Trump “a fucking liar.”
Trump called Attorney General Jeff Sessions “mentally retarded” and “a dumb southerner.”