President Trump is reportedly furious at former White House aides Gary Cohn and Rob Porter after the pair featured in excerpts of Bob Woodward’s forthcoming book on the Trump administration.
Trump will possibly launch public attacks at Cohn, the former White House chief economic adviser, and Porter, an ex-White House staff secretary, next week to coincide with the Tuesday release of “Fear: Trump in the White House,” sources told Axios.
Trump denied last Tuesday an section in the book about how Cohn once took a letter from his desk to prevent him from exiting a trade deal with South Korea. Trump condemned the claim as “false” and “made up.”
[Bob Woodward: Americans need to ‘wake up’ to what is going on inside the White House]
Porter is mentioned in a separate section in which Trump calls his second speech seeking to clarify his remarks that there were “very fine people on both sides” of the deadly confrontations in August 2017 between white nationalists and counterprotesters in Charlottesville, Va.,
“That was the biggest f—ing mistake I’ve made,” Trump told Porter, according to the book. “You never make those concessions. You never apologize. I didn’t do anything wrong in the first place. Why look weak?”
Trump and Cohn reportedly clashed over their contrarian approaches to trade before the former National Economic Council director resigned in March.
Porter, however, is said to have enjoyed a better working relationship with Trump, who reportedly offered him the job of White House counsel in 2017. Porter left the administration in February following his two ex-wives coming forward with allegations of domestic abuse. The White House was criticized for its handling of the accusations, particularly Trump who defended Porter amid the scandal.
Axios also reported Sunday that Trump has widened his search to replace incumbent White House counsel Don McGahn, who the president tweeted in August would be departing the top legal post in the fall.
Emmet Flood, a White House attorney liaising with special counsel Robert Mueller, was considered a frontrunner for the job. But Fannie Mae general counsel Brian Brooks is emerging as a contender, according to Axios.
