During former Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen's tenure, President Trump "abused," "harassed,” and "pestered" her into pursuing outlandish and sometimes outright illegal policies, Washington Post journalists Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig write in their forthcoming book A Very Stable Genius. And in several cases, Trump nabbed those policies directly from Fox Business host Lou Dobbs, an excerpt of the book published Wednesday in The Guardian details:
The president would routinely call Nielsen to say a version of 'Did you see Lou Dobbs? You're totally f--king embarrassing me. This is my issue!'… Sometimes, Trump would refer to one of Dobbs’s proposals and say, 'Kirstjen, just do it. Just do it.' 'But we can't do it,' Nielsen would explain, usually because whatever Dobbs had uttered on TV was against the law.After one flashpoint, Nielsen called Dobbs and politely offered to help his reporting. Hours later, Trump phoned Nielsen. "Did you call Lou Dobbs?" he asked. She said yes. Trump replied: "That's great. Lou says you’re very smart!"
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