President Donald Trump’s allies, including CIA Director Mike Pompeo and ex-campaign manager Corey Lewandowski have blasted a tell-all book about the West Wing as ‘a complete fabrication’.
Trump’s allies defended him fiercely in television interviews on Sunday, clapping back at tidal wave of White House scuttlebutt in Michael Wolff’s new book that portrays the president as an imbecile.
Pompeo, appearing on Fox News Sunday, insisted that Wolff’s portrayal of Trump was ‘just pure fantasy.’
‘I’m with him almost every day,’ Pompeo said. ‘We talk about some of the most serious matters facing America and the rest of the world, complex issues.’
Pompeo, appearing on Fox News, insisted that Wolff’s portrayal of Trump was ‘pure fantasy’
Wolff’s bombshell book, released Friday, portrays Trump as a childish imbecile
Far from being detached and unable to deal with complex policy issues, Pompeo said: ‘The president is engaged, he understands the complexity, he asks really difficult questions of our team at the CIA.’
He described Trump as an ‘avid consumer’ of the agency’s intelligence.
Pompeo added that Trump was ‘completely fit,’ saying it was ‘ludicrous’ to suggest otherwise.
He added: ‘The [book’s] statements are just pure fantasy, absurd.’
‘Statements likes the one Mr. Wolff made about how we all think about the president are just ridiculous and frankly beneath the conversation this morning,’ Pompeo told host Chris Wallace.
‘They are the conversation because you’re making them the conversation.’
Lewandowski also appeared later in the program.
‘This is a book of fiction,’ he said. ‘It’s not only not accurate, there are so many misrepresentations in this book that it shouldn’t be taken seriously. … This book is a complete fabrication.’
Lewandowski called the book ‘a work of fiction’ and denied calling Jared Kushner ‘the butler’
Kushner is seen on Sunday morning. Lewandowski denied calling him ‘the butler’
Lewandowski said he believes Trump is fit to be president.
‘I spent 18 hours a day with candidate Trump,’ he said. ‘Wolff hasn’t spent any time with the candidate. … If you look at what this man has achieved its not instant gratification, its long-term success.’
Lewandowski also denied calling Jared Kushner ‘the butler’, as Wolff claimed, and said he had never even spoken with the author.
Trump tweeted Sunday that the instant bestseller — which paints him as disengaged, ill-informed and unstable, with signs of serious memory loss — was a ‘Fake Book, written by a totally discredited author.’
A day earlier, seeking to refute Wolff’s suggestion that he lacked stability, Trump called himself a ‘very stable genius.’
Wolff appeared on NBC Sunday to defend his work. He has been criticized for including a swirl of sensational and sometimes contradictory claims in the bombshell book
Wolff has been criticized for including a swirl of sensational and sometimes contradictory claims in his book, and has admitted that he wasn’t sure if his sources were being honest before running with their tales.
But Wolff insisted he did not enter the book project with an anti-Trump bias or agenda.
‘I would have been delighted to have written a contrarian account here: ‘Donald Trump, this unexpected president, is actually going to succeed,’ Wolff told NBC on Sunday.
He continued: ‘Okay, that’s not the story. He is not going to succeed. This is worse than everybody thought.’