Trump, the White House attacked Bob Woodward's new book

The White House on weekday sharply challenged aspects of Bob Woodward’s explosive new book on President Trump’s administration, that paints a devastating portrait of a presidency careening toward a “nervous breakdown.”

Hours once The Washington Post initial reported  many key incidents from Woodward’s book, “Fear,” the administration mounted an active string of public denials, with statements from high advisers — White House Chief of workers John F. Kelly, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and White House press secretary married woman Huckabee Sanders — in addition as from Trump’s former personal professional person John Dowd.

Mattis known as the book “fiction,” and Sanders denounced the book during a statement as “nothing quite invented stories, several by former discontented  employees” while not disputing any of the specifics that are reported  in excerpts.

Trump tweeted the statements weekday evening so, while not providing proof, prompt the book’s unleash was regular to have an effect on the midterm elections in November.“Their quotes were created up frauds, a con on the general public. Likewise alternative stories and quotes. Woodward may be a Dem operative? Notice timing?”

In a statement to The Post, Woodward same, “I stand by my reportage.”

Despite rumors for weeks that Woodward’s latest project would possible paint a inculpative portrait of Trump and his team, the White House found itself caught sick ready weekday as scenes from the book emerged.

The official pushback ab initio was slow — coming back nearly specifically four hours once scenes from “Fear,” which can be printed Sept. 11, began dominating Twitter — and felt professional forma, a lot of Pavlovian LTM than rigorous rebuttals.

White House officers, as an example, recycled a denial from Kelly back in spring — the last time reports emerged of him job the president associate degree “idiot” — within which he claimed that he and Trump have “an unbelievably candid and powerful relationship” which the “idiot” report was “total BS.”

As of weekday afternoon, the White House was still scrambling to acquire a duplicate of Woodward’s book, and a number of other White House aides asked reporters if they were mentioned in “Fear” — and, if so, what they were quoted as speech.

Behind the scenes, White House aides et al. in Trump’s orbit for the most part steeled themselves for what they in camera foreseen would be the president’s all-but-inevitable explosion, that they foreseen would occur as cable news channels switched from coverage of Supreme Court political leader Brett M. Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings to juicy tidbits from the book.

By early weekday evening, Trump was furious and asking those that spoke to Woodward, an outdoor consultant same. This person supplementary that the president has recently been during a significantly paranoid mood — the result, in part, of a tell-all book by former senior consultant Omarosa Manigault Newman and his perceived betrayal by many key aides and confidants in special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s current Russia probe.

“He doesn’t assume he will trust anybody,” the consultant same.

The president urged senior White House aides and cupboard members to talk up if they disagreed with however they were quoted within the book. 

Trump is additionally pissed off with counselor Kellyanne Conway for not conveyance Woodward into the White House to talk directly with the president, a senior White House official same, associate degreed told many advisers weekday that it might are higher had the author acquire the government office for an interview. 

Two outside advisers same Trump had complained for many weeks that he didn’t interview with Woodward — which his workers mustn't have unbroken such requests from him. tho' Woodward, in associate degree August call with Trump, recounted tries to do to talk with him, the president however was upset weekday that — in his mind — he ne'er had an opportunity to sit down down with the author. 

Trump believes he might have explained himself to Woodward and helped form the book, one in all the advisers same, and feels he's isolated and isn’t obtaining the simplest data from his workers.

Kelly has griped unceasingly concerning book comes within the White House and has urged individuals to not get together whereas seeking to stay the president from doing thus, current and former officers same.

West Wing aides and operatives in shut contact with the White House same the administration failed to have a room readied to fight back against Woodward’s excruciating depiction of the Trump presidency or a well-honed response strategy.

The usual pushback to candid books, one White House official same, is to discredit the author — a manoeuvre the White House deployed with mixed success following the publication of Michael Wolff’s “Fire and Fury” and Manigault Newman’s “Unhinged.” however that playbook is unlikely to figure with Woodward, a veteran historiographer of presidencies and a Pulitzer Prize-winning newsperson, the official supplementary. 

Conway, as an example, told others within the White House before weekday that Woodward was credible which his book can be damaging.

A number of current and former White House aides same the book’s depiction rang true, albeit they weren't certain of each detail. “I’m unsure why everyone seems to be acting thus dismayed,” one former senior administration official same. 

Several officers World Health Organization spoke to Woodward same he showed up to interviews with documents and memos, in addition as vivid accounts of scenes within the White House.

Ari Fleischer, a White House press secretary below President martyr W. Bush, defended Woodward during a tweet, speech that as somebody World Health Organization has been on the “receiving end” of 1 of Woodward’s books, and not invariably favourably, he had no reason to doubt the journalist’s reportage and strategies.

“Never once — ne'er — did i feel Woodward created it up,” Fleischer wrote. “Anonymous sources have looser lips and should take liberties. however Woodward invariably plays [it] straight.” 

Much of Trumpworld spent the day approximation — and inform fingers at — World Health Organization Woodward’s sources may well be and ruminating on World Health Organization can be laid-off.

Some speculated that people who have clashed with Kelly would use the most recent disclosures as a cudgel to do to oust him from the White House. Others same they suspected that the president would possibly be indignant by Kelly’s portrayal within the book, in addition as scenes that depict Dowd fretting that Trump cannot sit down with Mueller’s investigators while not lying and probably landing himself in jail. 

Mattis, whose relationship with Trump was already strained, might conjointly face the president’s wrath, these individuals same.

In the book, Woodward writes of a Jan meeting within the White House residence organized by Dowd that served as a rehearsal for a possible Trump interview with Mueller. Dowd and another Trump professional person, the book continues, later met with Mueller and his deputy within the special counsel’s workplace, wherever Trump’s attorneys reenacted the president’s problematic rehearsal.

In a statement, Dowd same that he had not scan the book and pushed back against Woodward’s reportage, as well as the “orange jumpsuit” comment, the rehearsal and also the reenactment.

“I don't shall address each inaccurate statement attributed to Pine Tree State — however I do need to create this clear: there was no alleged ‘practice session’ or ‘reenactment’ of a mock interview at the Special Counsel’s workplace,” Dowd same. “Further, I failed to consult with the President as a ‘liar’ associate degreed failed to say that he was possible to finish up in an ‘orange jump suit.’ ”

Yet over the course of 448 pages, Woodward renders a picture of a president crazy. In one scene, once Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad launched a chemical weapons attack on his own voters in 2017, Trump suggests to Mattis the concept of assassinating Assad, in line with the book. 

Woodward conjointly offers up a cadre of West Wing aides frantically attempting to regulate their boss’s whims and impulses, typically by deception. The author writes of aides stealing papers off Trump’s table — their arrange to keep at bay problematic actions by the president — and of senior advisers bemoaning their White House posts. 

“He’s associate degree half-wit. It’s pointless to do to convert him of something. He’s gone off the rails. We’re in Crazytown,” Kelly same, in line with Woodward.

After a very grim National Security Council meeting on the Korean Peninsula this year, Woodward writes, Mattis “was significantly displeased and afraid, telling shut associates that the president acted .

In a statement early weekday evening, Mattis denied his portrayal within the book. “The disdainful words concerning the President attributed to Pine Tree State in Woodward’s book were ne'er verbalized by Pine Tree State or in my presence,” he said. “While I usually fancy reading fiction, this can be a unambiguously Washington complete of literature, and his anonymous sources don't lend quality.”

Woodward conjointly writes that Trump repeatedly railed against professional person General Jeff Sessions, a former Republican legislator from Alabama, for recusing himself from overseeing the Russia investigation.

A voice for Rep. Cathy McMorris composer (R-Wash.), World Health Organization incorporates a son with trisomy 21, same Rodgers’s “views on this kind of language haven't modified and ne'er can. That term ought to ne'er be used.”

The White House’s dismissal of Woodward’s book comes once the president praised the author on Twitter many years past, once Woodward was reportage on a unique occupier of the White House.

“Only the Obama WH will escape with assaultive Bob Woodward,” Trump tweeted in 2013. And in associate degree August phone spoken language, Trump told Woodward that he believed the journalist had “always been fair” to him.

But by late weekday, the president had done associate degree about-face.

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