MEDIA/RUDY GIULIANI/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/TRUMP PEOPLE: “President Donald Trump on Friday [9-7-18] accused journalist Bob Woodward of using ‘made up’ quotes in his forthcoming book, insisting that the comments attributed to him in the book could not be accurate because ‘I don’t talk the way I am quoted’…Woodward’s book, which he has said was written using ‘hundreds of hours of tapes’ with firsthand sources in the administration, describes a dim picture of the Trump administration that amounts to an ‘adminstrative coup d’etat’ inside the White House. The book includes passages detailing episodes where aides to the president sought to derail specific goals of the president’s by removing documents from his desk. Woodward quotes the president calling Attorney General Jeff Sessions ‘mentally retarded’ and a ‘dumb Southerner,’ telling his close adviser Rudy Giuliani that he acted like ‘a little baby that needed to be changed’ after a TV appearance, and comparing his first chief of staff Reince Priebus to ‘a little rat.’ Excerpts of the book published this week have shaken the West Wing, and the White House press shop initially got off to a slow start pushing back against the book. A number of officials quoted in the book, including chief of staff John Kelly and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis have denied making damaging statements attributed to them in the book, and Trump has ripped the book on Twitter daily since excerpts of it were released.”
–Caitlin Oprysko, “Trump disputes ‘made up’ quotes in new Woodward book,” Politico, September 7, 2018 8:35 am