by Shelby Talcott
White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham ripped into the anonymous author set to publish an apparent tell-all of the Trump administration in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation on Friday.
The anonymous author first wrote in The New York Times in 2018 that there is a group of administration officials working against Trump’s interests. The person added that senior officials within the Trump administration “are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations,” according to the op-ed.
The person is set to publish a tell-all detailing an “unprecedented behind-the-scenes portrait of the Trump presidency,” according to The Washington Post. The book is titled “A Warning,” and MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow read a series of excerpts from it Thursday evening.
“The coward who wrote this book didn’t put their name on it because it is nothing but lies,” Grisham said, according to a statement. “Real authors reach out to their subjects to get things fact checked — but this person is in hiding, making that very basic part of being a real writer impossible.”
The excerpts accuse the president of being unable to focus on basic tasks and reportedly forcing the administration to “dumb down” its work. Grisham went after the book and appeared to hit back at Maddow, calling out reporters who are not covering the book as “a work of fiction.”
“Reporters who choose to write about this farce should have the journalistic integrity to cover the book as what it is — a work of fiction,” Grisham continued.
Maddow reported Thursday that the book includes allegations that the president is “unfit for the job,” preferred simple PowerPoints over written reports and can’t pay attention.
“But if the aim was to educate this new commander-in-chief, they couldn’t submit a 50-page report … and expect him to read it and then discuss it,” Maddow reported, reading an excerpt of the book. “That would be like speaking Aramaic to Trump through a pillow. Even if he tried very hard to pay attention, which he didn’t, he wouldn’t be able to understand what the hell he was hearing.”
The anonymous author will be interviewed by at least one journalist when the book is published, Axios reported.
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Shelby Talcott is a reporter for the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Photo “Anonymous Book” by Amazon.
