One of the only things about the Trump administration that was any fun was journalists used to compete with each other to get the most bonkers anecdotes about how terrifying/stupid/unhinged it was to have Donald Trump as the literal actual president of the United States.
Wait, did we say “fun”?
Uh well, OK, anyway, Peter Baker of the New York Times and Susan Glasser of The New Yorker — they are married — have a new book called “The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021,” and all the excerpts just hit, including one in the Times written by Baker himself.
Let’s run through one million fucking crazy stories, quick and dirty style:
He really wanted to buy Greenland, because a makeup billionaire said he could.
We already knew Trump got extremely fixated during his presidency on the funny delusion that he was allowed to just buy Greenland, as if he was still a shitty real estate agent and not the president. But Baker and Glasser have more details on just how weird that all was.
Turns out Ronald Lauder, the Estée Lauder heir, told Trump this was totally a thing, and that he would back-channel Denmark and make it happen. Tom Cotton tried to take credit for it at the time. (You tried, Tom Cotton.) Baker notes that Trump in an interview last year tried to pretend it was his own idea. But no, it was Ronald Lauder.
Baker reports that the White House was distracted by this for months.
“A friend of mine, a really, really experienced businessman, thinks we can get Greenland,” Mr. Trump told his national security adviser. “What do you think?” That led to a special team being assigned to evaluate the prospects, resulting in a memo that laid out various options, including a lease proposal akin to a New York real estate deal.
Oh god.
John Bolton put a team on it. Fiona Hill — yes that Fiona Hill — had to be a part of it. Trump really thought he could “trade” Puerto Rico for Greenland.
Baker says a “mystified” member of Trump’s Cabinet was “struck by the delusional nature” of this effort, and that others were just trying to keep the story from leaking.
Denmark said fuck off.
He thought he could give the West Bank to the King of Jordan.
This one comes from the Washington Post’s report on the book.
Trump offered what he thought was a “great deal.” Abdullah was like whaaaaaat?
“I thought I was having a heart attack,” Abdullah II recalled to an American friend in 2018, according to a new book on the Trump presidency being published next week. “I couldn’t breathe. I was bent doubled-over.”
Trump thought he was being helpful. Trump was apparently unaware that he did not have the authority to give the West Bank to King Abdullah, or that it would be a total shitshow for Jordan.
Oh well, he tried!
They ALL knew he was compromised by Russia.
Presented with minimal comment from us, we were just over here for years screaming about it:
Following a 2018 meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland – after which Trump sided with Putin over US intelligence agencies who had determined Russia tried to interfere in the 2016 election – the top US intelligence official was left wondering what Trump’s real motives were.
“I never could come to a conclusion. It raised the question in everybody’s mind: What does Putin have on him that causes him to do something that undermines his credibility?” Dan Coats, the then-director of national intelligence, reflected to associates afterward, according to the book.
Raised the question in “everybody’s mind.”
As we all remember, Dan Coats was out of there the next year, and that is when Trump started putting in craven asslickers as director of national intelligence.
John Kelly bought a book about what kind of mental diseases Trump might have and used it as a cheat sheet for dealing with Trump.
Chief of Staff Kelly didn’t think Trump didn’t understand the difference between right and wrong, but rather that he did and simply always opted for “wrong.”
Kelly was so pissed off at Trump when he refused to lower the White House flag to half-staff for John McCain that he told Trump, “If you don’t support John McCain’s funeral, when you die, the public will come to your grave and piss on it.”
Haha, joke’s on John Kelly, the public is pissing on Trump’s grave when he dies no matter what. We are literally all drinking a Big Gulp right now in anticipation.
Finally, this came out in the New Yorker last month, but Kelly also had to explain some history to Trump, who was wishing out loud that he had some nice generals like those boys who served Adolf Hitler.
“You do know that they tried to kill Hitler three times and almost pulled it off?” Kelly said, according to the book.
Trump didn’t believe him, the book says. “No, no, no, they were totally loyal to him,” Trump insisted.
Best brain.
Don’t faint, but occasionally Donald Trump is sexist and racist.
Dear Nikki Haley, you know how you are always trading in your dignity to stay in Trump’s graces? Well here’s what he has to say about your “complexion.”
He harshly criticized women for their looks, telling visitors that Speaker Nancy Pelosi was an example of why women should be careful about plastic surgery and that he would not pick Nikki Haley, his United Nations ambassador, as a running mate because she had a “complexion problem.”
Whatever could he possibly mean by that? Is it a “you have bad skin” comment or a “you are not white” comment or are those the same for Donald Trump the white supremacist?
All these Cabinet members were definitely going to resign if things ever got too bad. Thank Jesus they never got TOO bad!
In October 2018, then-Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen told an aide over Signal that a bunch of people wanted to quit at the same time. Things were just real bad right about then:
Chief of Staff John F. Kelly; Defense Secretary Jim Mattis; Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Education Secretary Betsy DeVos; and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke “all” wanted to quit, Nielsen wrote, according to the book.
At the time, Trump was fearful of losing control of Congress and eager to appeal to his base of supporters. Fox News was focusing attention on a caravan of migrants moving through Central America toward the southern border — referring to it as an “invasion,” the book notes. Trump, in response, urged Nielsen to “harden the border even to the point of pushing her to take action she had no authority to take,” according to the book.
Nielsen and Alex Azar, the health and human services secretary, even agreed that they would both resign in protest if Trump resumed family separations at the southern border. In fall 2018, she wrote to an aide, “The insanity has been loosed.”
According to CNN, the full quote was “Ok for the first time I am actually scared for the country. The insanity has been loosed.”
Apparently the insanity had apparently not been loosed before the fall of 2018. We guess we were just overreacting up to that point.
Other delusional things Trump HEREBY ORDERED!
He HEREBY ORDERED “more than 50 times” that James Clapper and John Brennan have their security clearances stripped, because they said mean things about him on TV.
He HEREBY ORDERED a stop to a merger between CNN and AT&T, because CNN said mean things about him.
He HEREBY ORDERED his aides make a plan to “cancel” the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, because it ruled against him a whole bunch. “Let’s just cancel it,” he said to Kirstjen Nielsen. He HEREBY ORDERED some legislation be drawn up to “get rid of the fucking judges.”
Everybody silently said fuck off and went about their day.
One time Lindsey Graham said Trump is a ‘lying motherfucker’ but he was very aw shucks about it.
Trump isn’t going to pick Mike Pence as his running mate in 2024.
That’s your headline, Guardian?
We pick on the Guardian, but we shouldn’t because a lot of news sources include that earthshaking revelation in their coverage. Good try, guys.
In another story, the Guardian reports that the book says Trump was very scared as late as December 2020 that Iran was going to assassinate him in retaliation for taking out Iranian general Qassem Suleimani. Maybe he is still scared of it now.
Next time the FBI has to raid Mar-a-Lago they should be like KNOCK KNOCK! WHO’S THERE? IRAN!
You know, just to see if he’s still scared.
[New York Times / Washington Post / CNN]
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