Trump often ‘stumbles, slurs, gets confused’ and ‘can’t remember what he’s said or been told’: Anonymous senior official
It’s no secret that President Donald Trump often flip-flops on policy and contradicts himself. And according to the recently released book, “A Warning” — written anonymously by someone described as a “senior Trump Administration official” —Trump regularly has difficulty remembering things he has said or been told.
“A Warning,” Newsweek reporter Chantal Da Silva points out, is full of references to Trump’s poor memory.
It often appears that Trump “genuinely doesn’t remember important facts,” the official writes in the book. And the president often “can’t remember what he’s said or been told,” the official warns.
According to the official, Trump “stumbles, slurs, gets confused, is easily irritated, and has trouble synthesizing information — not occasionally, but with regularity.”
The official cites some examples. Trump once said he wasn’t sure he had “ever even heard of a Category 5” hurricane — although he had already been briefed, according to the official, on at least four previous Category 5 hurricanes.
The official asks, “Was he forgetting these briefings? Or more problematic, was he not paying attention at all? These are events that affect millions of Americans, yet they don’t seem to stick in his brain.”
The author of “A Warning” is the same person who, in September 2018, wrote a New York Times op-ed headlined, “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration.” The tone of that article was one of a frustrated Republican conservative who had major concerns about Trump but was hoping to steer him in the right direction; in the book, however, the official has since concluded that Trump is beyond redemption and shouldn’t be in the White House.
Trump’s childishness is evident when he takes to Twitter and posts insults about political opponents, and according to the official, the president’s childishness and immaturity are an ongoing source of frustration inside the White House.
“You can see why, behind closed doors, his own top officials deride him as an ‘idiot’ and a ‘moron’ with the understanding of a ‘fifth or sixth grader,’” the official laments.
Trump is notorious for having an aversion to reading — and has had a hard time understanding why his daughter, White House Senior Adviser Ivanka Trump, reads as much as she does. In “A Warning,” the official is clearly frustrated by Trump’s disdain for reading.
“How can you manage a sprawling organization if you won't read anything?” the official warns. “Not very well, it turns out.”
