A tell-all book has says US President Donald Trump flounders from crisis to crisis like “a 12-year-old in an air traffic control tower”.
The book, written by an anonymous author identified only as “a senior official in the Trump administration”, also describes the president as an “elderly uncle running pantsless” who often left senior White House staff “waking up in the morning ‘in a full-blown panic’”.
According to extracts of A Warning published in the Washington Post, officials considered resigning en masse last year in a “midnight self-massacre” to sound a public alarm about Trump’s conduct.
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The Washington Post says the book paints “a chilling portrait of the president as cruel, inept and a danger to the nation he was elected to lead”.
However, the White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham derided the book as a “work of fiction”. Grisham added: “The coward who wrote this book didn’t put their name on it because it is nothing but lies.”
The Justice Department has warned the publisher and the author’s agents, that the anonymous official may be violating a nondisclosure agreement.
The book’s author says Trump moves from one crisis to the next, “like a twelve-year-old in an air traffic control tower, pushing the buttons of government indiscriminately, indifferent to the planes skidding across the runway and the flights frantically diverting away from the airport”.
Turning to Trump’s early morning Twitter rants, the author writes: “It’s like showing up at the nursing home at daybreak to find your elderly uncle running pantsless across the courtyard and cursing loudly about the cafeteria food, as worried attendants tried to catch him.
“You’re stunned, amused, and embarrassed all at the same time. Only your uncle probably wouldn’t do it every single day, his words aren’t broadcast to the public, and he doesn’t have to lead the US government once he puts his pants on.”
It also claims that that if a majority of the Cabinet agreed to remove Trump from office under the 25th Amendment, Vice President Mike Pence would support them.
However, Pence, who describes the book as “appalling”, told reporters: “I never heard anything in my time as vice president about the 25th Amendment. And why would I?”
Describing Trump as misogynistic, the author says: “I’ve sat and listened in uncomfortable silence as he talks about a woman’s appearance or performance.”
He also accuses Trump of putting on a Hispanic accent while complaining about migrants crossing the US-Mexico border.
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