White House, John Kelly slam Woodward book as 'fabricated stories' and 'total BS'

Bob Woodward's forthcoming exposé is full of explosive accounts of life inside the Trump administration. But the White House wants you to know it's all untrue.

Excerpts of Woodward's Fear were published by The Washington Post on Tuesday, ahead of the book's release next week. The Post also released a phone call between President Trump and Woodward, in which Trump says Woodward has "always been fair" and blames staffers for never telling him that the reporter wanted to talk.

In Fear, aides say Trump called condemning neo-Nazis after the deadly Charlottesville rally the "biggest f---ing mistake I've made." White House Chief of Staff John Kelly also reportedly called Trump an "idiot" in charge of "Crazytown." White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders responded to the Fear excerpts in a Tuesday statement, saying they're "nothing more than fabricated stories" that came from "disgruntled" ex-employees "told to make the president look bad." The administration's inner workings "aren't always pretty," she said, but they still "deliver unprecedented successes for the American people." A statement from Kelly declared he never called the president an idiot, and that allegations otherwise were "total BS."

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Trump said later Tuesday that Woodward "had a lot of credibility problems" in an interview with the conservative Daily Caller. So instead of looking at Woodward's book when it's published next week, the White House would rather you take a peek at this long list of Trump administration accomplishments, which it attached to its Woodward statement. Kathryn Krawczyk