When asked on Fox News if he thought former economic adviser Gary Cohn was a major source for Bob Woodward’s bestselling book Fear: Trump in the White House, President Trump replied that he “could very well have been.”
Then he hinted that he’s got dirt on Cohn: “I can tell stories about him like you wouldn’t believe.”
Just published: Presidents of War by Michael Beschloss.
New York Times: “There are fascinating nuggets on virtually every page of Presidents of War. It is a superb and important book, superbly rendered.”
“The fired deputy director of the FBI, Andrew McCabe, is accusing his former agency of potentially targeting him unfairly by stalling publication of his much-anticipated book, The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump,” ABC News reports.
“Based on FBI policy requiring that the FBI have an opportunity to review agency-related information before it’s released publicly, McCabe submitted a draft of his book to the FBI more than two months ago, and the book was set to be published in early December. But the FBI has yet to reach a conclusion on McCabe’s proposed revelations, so the book’s publication date has now been pushed back to February 2019, according to McCabe.”
The Guardian: “In a new book, short-lived White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci escalates multiple long-running battles with erstwhile Washington colleagues while chiseling a heroic likeness of Donald Trump with inside tales of the president’s secret wisdom and wit.”
“The list of characters Scaramucci trashes anew includes current chief of staff John Kelly, former chief of staff Reince Priebus and former chief strategist Steve Bannon.”
“Kelly is ‘ineffective’ and suffers from ‘personal insecurity,’ Scaramucci writes; Priebus is a rat; and Bannon is a hypocrite and a weirdo.”
Data published by book store chain Barnes & Noble show a 57% boost in political book sales compared to the prior year, CNBC reports.
But with a few exceptions, states that voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election tended to also favor the books that cast him in a friendlier light, and vice versa.
Just published: The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis.
The Guardian has an excerpt:
Not long after the people on TV announced that Trump had won Pennsylvania, Jared Kushner grabbed Christie anxiously and said: “We have to have a transition meeting tomorrow morning!” Even before that meeting, Christie had made sure that Trump knew the protocol for his discussions with foreign leaders. The transition team had prepared a document to let him know how these were meant to go. The first few calls were easy – the very first was always with the prime minister of Great Britain – but two dozen calls in you were talking to some kleptocrat and tiptoeing around sensitive security issues. Before any of the calls could be made, however, the president of Egypt called in to the switchboard at Trump Tower and somehow got the operator to put him straight through to Trump. “Trump was like … I love the Bangles! You know that song Walk Like an Egyptian?” recalled one of his advisers on the scene.
That had been the first hint Christie had of trouble.
A book deal for the “senior Trump administration official” who wrote the anonymous New York Times op-ed could be worth $10 million, literary agent Keith Urbahn tells the Washingtonian.
Literary agent Larry Weissman adds that the most lucrative deal would likely be struck before Anonymous’s identity is leaked, intentionally or unintentionally.
Jane Mayer: “Politicians may be too timid to explore the subject, but a new book from, of all places, Oxford University Press promises to be incendiary. Cyberwar: How Russian Hackers and Trolls Helped Elect a President—What We Don’t, Can’t, and Do Know, by Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a professor of communications at the University of Pennsylvania, dares to ask—and even attempts to answer—whether Russian meddling had a decisive impact in 2016. Jamieson offers a forensic analysis of the available evidence and concludes that Russia very likely delivered Trump’s victory.”
“The book, which is coming out less than two months before the midterm elections, at a moment when polls suggest that some sixty per cent of voters disapprove of Trump, may well reignite the question of Trump’s electoral legitimacy.”
Outgoing Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel (D) “already is making plans for after he leaves City Hall, including a deal to write a book about his theories on the increasing importance of cities in a country and world where federal government paralysis has forced municipalities to rely more on themselves,” the Chicago Tribune reports.
Alfred A. Knopf will publish The Nation City: Why Mayors Run the World in spring 2020.
“Like a toadstool… I lay there, annoyed that I was getting fucked by a guy with Yeti pubes and a dick like the mushroom character in Mario Kart… It may have been the least impressive sex I’d ever had, but clearly, he didn’t share that opinion.”
— Stormy Daniels, quoted by The Guardian, describing her affair with Donald Trump in her new tell-all book, Full Disclosure.
Bob Woodward was asked by Olivia Nuzzi whether he found Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House by Michael Wolf to be as credible book as his own, Fear: Trump in the White House.
Said Woodward: “I mean, as they say, I think it got the sociology largely right. The relationships and so forth. But 50 years from now what’s going to be important about the Trump presidency is what he does or doesn’t do. And if I’m right, as I believe I am, it’s a nervous breakdown.”
He elaborated: “Things are not connected. There is not … there is impulse, decisions. I think that the most ardent Trump supporter could read the book and not feel comfortable about the management and the staying the course. There’s not a team. You know, it’s a team of predators, or people who just disagree with the president.
President Trump “disputed one of his longtime lawyer’s criticisms of his behavior and questioned whether a forthcoming book by Jay Goldberg runs afoul of lawyer-client privilege,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Mr. Goldberg represented Mr. Trump in divorce cases involving two ex-wives, Ivana Trump and Marla Maples. His memoir, The Courtroom Is My Theater, is due to be released in December. Mr. Trump questioned whether it is appropriate for Mr. Goldberg to write about a client.”
Said Trump: “There’s lawyer-client privilege here. You can’t do that.”
Bob Woodward said he would release tapes of his interviews used for his new book, Fear: Inside the Trump White House, for any source who requests it, The Hill reports.
Said Woodward: “This is meticulously done trying to cross reference everything and so forth. I would expect somebody would not want to release their information because they’re confidential sources and as you know, I protect my sources. I think it’s one of the building blocks of journalism and book writing.”
Bob Woodward’s new book, Fear: Inside the Trump White House, sold more than 750,000 copies through its first day of release, the most for any title in Simon & Schuster history, The Hill reports.
Out next month: Full Disclosure by Stormy Daniels.
A news release says the adult entertainer will tell “her whole story for the first time,” including how she came to be a successful actress and director in the adult film business, her alleged affair with Donald Trump and “the events that led to the nondisclosure agreement and the behind-the-scenes attempts to intimidate her,” the New York Times reports.
Bob Woodward told the New York Times that a “key official” in the Trump administration privately told him that his new book is “1,000 percent true,” but later publicly said the opposite.
Said Woodward: “After the information in Fear started breaking last week, one key person who’s in office called and said ‘Everyone knows what you said here is true. It’s 1,000 percent correct.’ And then this person has said some public things that contradict that.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Wonk Wire, Political Job Hunt and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.