Trump Primarily Exasperated With Conway, Cohn Over Woodward Book

(L-R) National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn, Senior Advisor to the President Jared Kushner, and Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway make their way from the Rose Garden after attending a joint press con... (L-R) National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn, Senior Advisor to the President Jared Kushner, and Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway make their way from the Rose Garden after attending a joint press conference between US President Donald Trump and Greece's Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras at the White House on October 17, 2017 in Washington, DC. / AFP PHOTO / MANDEL NGAN (Photo credit should read MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images) MORE LESS

Following reports on excerpts of famed reporter Bob Woodward’s new White House exposé, President Donald Trump is pointing his vexation at White House counselor Kellyanne Conway and former National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn, Vanity Fair reported.

The President blames his communications shop, but mostly Conway, for failing to set up an interview with Woodward before the manuscript was finalized. In a transcript of a phone call between Trump and Woodward, which the Washington Post published this week, Woodward tells the President that he asked several individuals close to him to help arrange the dialogue, including Conway.

Yet the two never met and the book is largely reliant on anonymous sources, who paint the White House as deeply dysfunctional and a place in which even the President’s closest aides call him an “idiot” and a “fucking liar.”

While chief of staff John Kelly and Secretary of Defense James Mattis made a show of denouncing the damaging remarks attributed to them earlier this week, some former officials, like Cohn, have remained silent.

A senior official told Vanity Fair that Trump “hates” the leaks and was particularly upset about reports that Cohn intentionally “stole a letter off Trump’s desk” that would have removed the U.S. from the Korea Free Trade Agreement. Cohn reportedly gloated about the book and called a former coworker to ask “how he came off,” in Vanity Fair’s words.

“Gary wanted to make sure he didn’t compromise himself that much,” a person who spoke to Cohn told Vanity Fair.

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  1. I guess is payback time for Gary Cohn, Trump should get used to the idea that there is a big crowd of bott-lickers that will turn on him when the moment comes, and Pence is going to be the one with the knive.

  2. Trump: My administration is controlled by Obama and CNN. I can only trust KGB.

  3. I understand that Kellyanne has a whole bag of lollipops in her purse to pacify the toddler when he gets wound up. That’s how she’s survived.

  4. My guess is that Kellyanne is the author. She’s well known to be a duplicitous snake and the most frequent leaker in the White House. Perhaps her husband’s tweets are part of a game that she is in on.
    Apropos of JM’s observation that the writer doesn’t care much about immigration: neither does KAC. She doesn’t seem like a foreign policy wiz, but definitely Libertarian.

  5. Trump is exasperated again today?? In other news, the sun rose this morning.

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