Many former White House officials saw President Trump as “delusional” and a danger to national security, according to a new report.
CNN’s Carl Bernstein reported on Monday that many former officials within the administration saw the president as being woefully ill-prepared for calls with foreign leaders and said that he pandered in conversation with them.
Two sources told Bernstein that Trump was often “delusional” during such calls, which caused concern to former national security advisers H.R. McMaster and John Bolton, former Defense Secretary James Mattis, former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and former White House chief of staff John Kelly. Trump would brag about his own wealth, mock previous presidents, and routinely disparage the leaders of U.S. allies in the conversations.
Trump was “so consistently unprepared for discussion of serious issues, so often outplayed in his conversations with powerful leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Erdogan, and so abusive to leaders of America’s principal allies” that officials at the time feared that he “posed a danger to the national security” of the country, according to Bernstein.
The report comes on the heels of the release of Bolton’s new book, The Room Where It Happened. The allegations against Trump in Bolton’s book ring similar to the ones detailed in the CNN report. However, Bernstein noted, “The calls described to CNN cover a far longer period than Bolton’s tenure, are much more comprehensive — and seemingly more damning — in their sweep.”
