Disgraced former White House staffer Rob Porter was forced to publicly condemn Bob Woodward’s book on Trump after his lover Hope Hicks, who remains loyal to the president, threatened to dump him, sources have exclusively told DailyMailTV.
Porter, 40, who left the White House in February amid accusations of domestic abuse from his two ex-wives, distanced himself from Woodward’s new book on Tuesday following its release.
Besides the quotes attributed to Porter, it has been widely suggested that Porter is one of multiple sources who spoke to Woodward off the record.
Porter described the book, Fear, as ‘selective and often misleading’ in a lengthy statement which also gave a glowing portrayal of the presidency.
Woodward, the Washington Post’s star investigative journalist since the early 70s when he broke the story on the Watergate scandal, told Axios that he stands by his reporting.
Former White House Communications Director Hope Hicks (pictured on Tuesday) 29, threatened to end things with boyfriend Rob Porter for trash-talkingTrump to Bob Woodward, sources tell DailyMail.com
The disgraced former White House staff secretary and former National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn (both pictured in January) were featured in Woodward’s book and were reported to have worked together to derail’ Trump’s ‘most dangerous’ orders
Fear describes a number of detailed incidents at the White House where Porter was one of only a handful of people in the room and he is quoted directly.
In Chapter 29, Woodward writes that following the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, which ended in violence when a counter-protester died, Porter was at a ‘breaking point’ and stood up to Trump, writing a conciliatory speech for him after the president had equivocated on neo-Nazis and those who protest against them.
‘This was no longer a presidency,’ Porter said. ‘This is no longer a White House. This is a man being who he is.’ Woodward writes.
Porter is heavily featured in Fear, appearing in the prologue and six chapters. He is also directly quoted criticizing Trump
According to sources, Hicks, 29, threatened to break it off with Porter after she learned he had been trash-talking Trump to Woodward.
Hope, who does not appear to have taken another job since leaving her post as White House communications director in February, is keen to return to the Trump fold, sources said.
She remains in the president’s good graces and made an impromptu appearance at one of his rallies this summer.
She was seen leaving her home in Manhattan, dressed to the nines, on Tuesday afternoon.
Sources told Politico that the president was ‘livid’ with Porter, and former chief economic advisor Gary Cohn, for allegedly leaking to Woodward. But Trump then changed course on Tuesday and praised his former aides for their denials.
DailyMail.com revealed in July that the former colleagues were still clandestinely dating after they were spotted together in Manhattan and spent a cozy weekend holed up in Hicks’s upper east side apartment.
Porter reportedly ‘resigned’ from the White House in February after his two ex-wives alleged domestic abuse in exclusive interviews with DailyMail.com.
Porter was initially defended by senior White House staff, including chief of staff John Kelly and press secretary Sarah Sanders, following his ex-wife Jennifer Willoughby’s accusations of domestic abuse to DailyMail.com.
Hope, pictured in New York City on Tuesday, does not appear to have taken another job since leaving her post as White House communications director in February and is keen to return to the Trump fold, sources said
She was seen leaving her home in Manhattan, dressed to the nines, on Tuesday afternoon
Following the release of a photo provided by Porter’s second-ex-wife Colbie Holderness with a black eye which, she told DailyMail.com, he had given to her, he left his post as staff secretary.
Porter denied the allegations of abuse.
Sources told DailyMail.com that Porter was keen to seek retribution for what he considered a ‘lack of loyalty’ by the Trump administration and had been speaking to various journalists – presumably Woodward among them.
Porter has a prolific presence throughout Woodward’s book, appearing in the prologue and six chapters. The references to his alleged domestic abuse are relegated to 20 pages at the end of the weighty tome.
Woodward writes: ‘Porter left the White House on February 7 after two ex-wives went public with allegations that he had physically abused them.
‘One released a photo showing a black eye that she said Porter gave her. Each, one to the press and one in a blog post, gave graphic descriptions of domestic abuse. Porter quickly concluded it would be best for all—his former spouses, his family and closer friends, the White House and himself—to resign. He wanted to focus on repairing relationships and healing.’
Porter first appears in the prologue of Fear during the now infamous incident when former economic advisor, Gary Cohn, allegedly stole a letter terminating the U.S. trade deal with South Korea, from Trump’s Oval Office desk.
According to the book: ‘Porter later discovered there were multiple copies of the draft letter, and either Cohn or he made sure none remained on the president’s desk.
Trump publicly praised his former aides Rob Porter and Gary Cohn for denying the accounts in Bob Woodward’s new book on Tuesday – but Sources told DailyMail.com on Tuesday that Porter was keen to seek retribution for what he considered a ‘lack of loyalty’ by the Trump administration
‘Cohn and Porter worked together to derail what they believed were Trump’s most impulsive and dangerous orders. That document and others like it just disappeared.’
Woodward described the decision by the staffers as ‘no less than an administrative coup d’etat’.
Porter also appears in Chapter 17; where his hiring by Reince Preibus is discussed in glowing terms: ‘He came into the job with five-star recommendations from people who had served as staff secretaries to Republic presidents.’
In the same chapter, he is positioned, in Woodward’s words, as forming ‘an alliance’ with Gary Cohn and belonging to the ‘Wall Street Wing’ of the White House, attempting to undermine Trump’s ‘Flat Earth Society’ beliefs on trade deficits.
He appears again in Chapter 19, where his presented as leading the resistance among staffers who do not want Trump to pull out of NAFTA, which lifted tariffs between the U.S., Canada and Mexico. Again, Woodward writes, he conspired with Cohn to prevent NAFTA collapsing.
‘I can stop this,’ Cohn said to Porter. ‘I’ll just take the paper off his desk before I leave.’ And he later took it.’
Porter also allegedly promised to ‘slow-walk’ any other decisions that Trump tried to take on NAFTA.
In Chapter 32, with the arrival of General John Kelly as chief of staff, Porter is presented as trying to impose order on the ‘free-for-all’ White House, ‘screaming bloody process’ as he called it every day for months’.
‘The president would have an idea and say, “I want to sign something.” And Porter would have to explain that while Trump had broad authority to issue executive orders, for example, a president was frequently restricted by law.’
Stay dry: Hicks was seen alone while braving the rainy NYC weather on Monday
In July, Dailymail.com revealed Rob, who lives in Washington D.C., and Hope were still in a relationship as they were spotted in Central Park and going extraordinary lengths to make sure they were not seen together
DailyMail.com revealed in February that the two were lovers after they were spotted together in Washington (pictured)
In Chapter 33, Woodward writes that Trump asks Porter if he wanted to be White House counsel and Porter declined, and in the following chapter, a scene where the White House staff secretary is on Air Force One with the president is laid out.
Trump has just called North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un, ‘little rocket man’, in a tweet and seems especially pleased about it.
Porter is presented as the adult in the room, conceding that while the nickname is ‘funny’, the focus should be on what the endgame is.
In his statement this week to Axios, Porter defended Trump’s actions.
He wrote: Having now read Bob Woodward’s Fear, I am struck by the selective and often misleading portrait it paints of the President and his administration.
As Staff Secretary, I was responsible for managing the flow of documents to and from the Oval Office and ensuring that anything the President was asked to sign had been properly vetted. The suggestion that materials were ‘stolen’ from the President’s desk to prevent his signature misunderstands how the White House document review process works — and has worked for at least the last eight administrations.
It was also my responsibility to help ensure that relevant viewpoints were considered, that pros and cons were evaluated, that policy proposals were thoroughly vetted, and that the President could make decisions based on full information. Fulfilling this responsibility does not make someone part of a ‘resistance’ or mean they are seeking to ‘thwart’ the President’s agenda. Quite the opposite.
President Trump invites robust discussion and asks probing questions. He has the confidence to allow advisors to disagree with a proposed course of action and advocate for an alternative outcome—and I sometimes did just that. But in the end, President Trump is the one who decides, and he has shown himself more than capable of doing so. During my time in the White House, I sought to serve the President’s best interests and to help enable his many successes—successes that Mr. Woodward’s book ignores.
President Trump’s accomplishments are undeniable: significant tax relief to spur economic growth, rolling back burdensome regulations to unleash job creators, remaking the federal judiciary to uphold the Constitution, and much more.’