The anonymous senior Trump administration official claims in their forthcoming book that Trump officials considered resigning together last year in a “midnight self-massacre” in hopes to sound an alarm about President Donald Trump, according to an excerpt obtained by The Washington Post.
The unnamed author known as “Anonymous,” whose new book “A Warning” will be released on November 19, wrote an op-ed in the New York Times in 2018, claiming to be part of a “resistance” working to thwart Trump’s worst impulses.
Sources familiar with the book have previously confirmed to CNN that the publisher and the author’s literary agents at Javelin were provided verification that the author of the book and op-ed is the same person.
According to the New York Times’ review of the book, the anonymous author, however, admits that their op-ed’s thesis was “dead wrong” – saying that the “adults in the room” trying to impose order were “just a wet Band-Aid that wouldn’t hold together a gaping wound.”
In excerpts published by the Post, which obtained a copy of the book, the author writes: “I was wrong about the ‘quiet resistance’ inside the Trump administration. Unelected bureaucrats and cabinet appointees were never going to steer Donald Trump the right direction in the long run, or refine his malignant management style. He is who he is.”
The book describes the President as dealing with each new political crisis “like a twelve-year-old in an air traffic control tower, pushing the buttons of government indiscriminately, indifferent to the planes skidding across the runway and the flights frantically diverting away from the airport,” according to the Post.
The author claims that officials would wake up “in a full-blown panic” over the President’s tweets, the Post reports.
“It’s like showing up at the nursing home at daybreak to find your elderly uncle running pantsless across the courtyard and cursing loudly about the cafeteria food, as worried attendants tried to catch him. You’re stunned, amused, and embarrassed all at the same time. Only your uncle probably wouldn’t do it every single day, his words aren’t broadcast to the public, and he doesn’t have to lead the US government once he puts his pants on,” the author writes, according to the Post.
The author also alleges that Trump makes misogynistic comments and racist comments, including one incident in which he attempted a Hispanic accent to mock migrants crossing the US-Mexico border, the Post reports.
CNN previously reported that the author’s intent is to convince the nation to not reelect Trump in 2020.
“The truth about the president must be spoken, not after Americans have stood in the voting booth to consider whether to give him another term and not after he has departed office,” the book’s jacket cover says, CNN has reported.
The Times quotes the author as saying, “Many reasonable people voted for Trump because they love their country, wanted to shake up the establishment, and felt that the alternative was worse. I know you because I’ve felt the same way.”
Now, the author argues in their book that “the president has failed to rise to the occasion in fulfilling his duties,” according to the Times.
“The last straw” for the anonymous author was Trump’s attempt to hoist the American flag on the White House above staff when Sen. John McCain died last year, according to the Times.
“President Trump, in unprecedented fashion, was determined to use his office to limit the nation’s recognition of John McCain’s legacy,” the author writes, in a Times’ quote of the book.
The book also contains an allegation — strongly dismissed by Vice President Mike Pence — that senior White House officials were certain Pence would support an effort to have Trump removed from office over concerns about his mental state, a source close to the book process confirmed to CNN’s Jake Tapper on Thursday.
Pence told reporters in New Hampshire on Thursday that he “never ever heard any discussion in my entire tenure as vice president about the 25th Amendment, and why would I?”
“I have to tell you, this the very notion of this anonymous who wrote an editorial, and now it’s reported that they’ve written a book, is just appalling to me. If there’s someone in our administration or served in our administration who doesn’t support this President, doesn’t support his agenda, they should do the honorable thing and resign,” Pence added.
White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said in a statement released Friday that the book is a “work of fiction.”
“The coward who wrote this book didn’t put their name on it because it is nothing but lies,” Grisham told the Post. “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. 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.”
The Justice Department told the author in a letter earlier this week that was obtained by CNN Business that he or she may be violating “one or more nondisclosure agreements” by writing the anti-Trump book.
The author’s publisher rejected the argument and said the book will be released as planned.
When the Times’ oped was published last year, the essay enraged Trump and touched off a furious search inside the administration for its author. The President attacked the author as “gutless” and suggested that the Times’ decision to publish the op-ed could be called “treason.”
CNN’s Karl de Vries, Betsy Klein and Brian Stelter contributed to this report.