The author, said to be a senior official in the Trump presidency, paints the imagery to describe the mood in the White House as staffers wake up to Trump’s early morning Twitter tirades.
A new book with an anonymous author has likened US President Donald Trump to an “elderly uncle running pantless 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,” the author writes in the book set to be published on November 19, 2019 by Twelve Books, which is part of Hachette Book Group..
Trump’s behaviour can be so erratic, the author says, top administration officials have pre-written resignation letters. A group even considered a mass resignation over Trump’s response to the deadly 2017 white supremacist rallies in Charlottesville, Va., the author claims.
Excerpts from the book titled ‘A Warning’ have been published by a gang of Trump’s “Fake news outlets” such as New York Times, the Washington Post, MSNBC and HuffPost.
The White House has blasted the book and its anonymous author.
“The coward who wrote this book didn’t put their name on it because it is nothing but lies,” said White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham.
Separately, the Justice Department sent a letter to the book’s publisher warning that the unnamed author may be violating “one or more nondisclosure agreements” by writing the book.
But there may be no stopping the book, which also describes the chaotic milieu in the Trump White House.
To the author, Trump as president is erratic, petulant egomaniac, averse to reading, prone to angry outbursts and known for an acutely short attention span.
“People who spend any time with Donald Trump are [made] uncomfortable by what they witness,” the author writes. “He stumbles, slurs, gets confused, is easily irritated, and has trouble synthesising information, not occasionally but with regularity.”
Reports said the author is the same person who wrote a controversial op-ed in the New York Times last year, saying he and other top appointees were working in secret to thwart some of Trump’s most outrageous ideas.
In the new book, the author says it was a mistake to offer such reassurances.
“I was wrong about the ‘quiet resistance’ inside the Trump administration,” the author writes now. “Unelected bureaucrats and cabinet appointees were never going to steer Donald Trump the right direction in the long run, or refine his malignant management style. He is who he is.”
According to the book, administration officials would often strategize before and after meetings with Trump, who is likened to 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.”
The author describes the evolving process of trying to brief the president.
“Early on, briefers were told not to send lengthy documents. Trump wouldn’t read them,” the author writes. “Nor should they bring summaries to the Oval Office. If they must bring paper, then PowerPoint was preferred because he is a visual learner. Okay, that’s fine, many thought to themselves, leaders like to absorb information in different ways.
“Then officials were told that PowerPoint decks needed to be slimmed down,” the author continues. “He needed more images to keep his interest — and fewer words. Then they were told to cut back the overall message (on complicated issues such as military readiness or the federal budget) to just three main points. Eh, that was still too much.
“Soon West Wing aides were exchanging ‘best practices’ for success in the Oval Office,” the author adds. “The most salient advice? Forget the three points. Come in with one main point and repeat it — over and over again, even if the president inevitably goes off on tangents — until he gets it. Just keep steering the subject back to it. ONE point.”
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