President Trump is not dealing well with the latest rounds of criticism about his intelligence and competence from Bob Woodward's new instant best-seller, Fear, and an anonymous op-ed in The New York Times, Gabriel Sherman reports in Vanity Fair. "The president has had it," a former West Wing official told the magazine. "When books like this come out, he tends to shut down and calls up people he sees on TV saying good things about him." Donald Trump Jr. is reportedly telling people he's concerned that his father isn't sleeping because his of obsession with the anonymous op-ed writer and nagging suspicion it could be almost anyone.
"Besides family, one of the only people Trump continues to trust is Stephen Miller," his senior policy adviser, Sherman writes, quoting a Republican close to the White House as explaining: "The op-ed has validated Miller's view, which was also Steve Bannon's, that there's an 'administrative state' out to get Trump." Bannon apparently believes this amounts to a coup, and Trump agrees, a person familiar with Trump's thinking told Sherman: "Trump believes there's a coup."
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