Earlier today I wrote a diary about former White House staffer Cliff Sims’ new book, Team of Vipers, and the revelation that Donald Trump is obsessed with his TV image and, specifically, chyrons.
Well, it turns out that was just an aperitif. The Washington Post has more. A lot more.
A few choice excerpts:
The author reconstructs in comic detail the Trump team’s first day at work, when the president sat in the residence raging about news coverage of the relatively small size of his inauguration crowds, and White House press secretary Sean Spicer scrambled to address it.
Spicer had worked the team “into a frenzy,” and it fell to Sims to write the script for his first statement to the media. Nervously chewing gum, Spicer dictated “a torrent of expletives with a few salient points scattered in between.” At one point, Sims’s computer crashed and he lost the draft, so it had to be rewritten. And in their rush to satisfy the impatient president, nobody checked the facts. Spicer, he writes, was “walking into his own execution.”
And …
Sims depicts Trump as deeply suspicious of his own staff. He recalls a private huddle in which he and Keith Schiller, the president’s longtime bodyguard and confidant, helped Trump draw up an enemies list with a Sharpie on White House stationery. “We’re going to get rid of all the snakes, even the bottom-feeders,” Trump told them.
And …
Sims recounts that [John] Kelly once confided to him in a moment of exasperation: “This is the worst [expletive] job I’ve ever had. People apparently think that I care when they write that I might be fired. If that ever happened, it would be the best day I’ve had since I walked into this place.”
And my personal favorite:
At times, Trump evinced less rage than a lack of interest. Sims recounts one time when [Paul] Ryan was in the Oval Office explaining the ins and outs of the Republican health-care bill to the president. As Ryan droned on for 15 minutes, Trump sipped on a glass of Diet Coke, peered out at the Rose Garden, stared aimlessly at the walls and, finally, walked out.
Read the whole thing. It’s a trip … to a haunted house … atop a lake of fire … in an active volcano … inside Satan’s asshole.
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Yo! Dear F*cking Lunatic: 101 Obscenely Rude Letters to Donald Trump by Aldous J. Pennyfarthing is now available at Amazon! Buy there (or at one of the other fine online retailers carrying it), or be square.
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But wait, there’s more! The Fierce, Fabulous (and Mostly Fictional) Adventures of Mike Ponce, America’s First Gay Vice President is also available at Amazon! You can get two great political humor ebooks for less than the price of the coffee you’ll be spitting out on your tablet when you read them!