The Divider is due out next week.
There have been numerous books about former President Trump’s White House — many of which came from some former high-ranking officials themselves. Now, a husband-and-wife duo is shedding new light on a presidency marred by controversy and investigations.
With their combined 60 years of reporting experience, veteran political journalists Peter Baker and Susan Glasser detail a sweeping 700-plus-page history of “Trump’s almost cartoonishly chaotic White House” in their upcoming book, The Divider: Trump in the White House, which debuts on Tuesday.
To bring a sense of order to Trump’s tumultuous four years in office, each chapter is dedicated to a topic or story line — including Trump’s cozy relationship with Russia and his battle with Mexico over a border wall. Others focus on other key actors in the periphery, including his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who the former president frequently undercut behind closed doors. According to Baker and Glasser, Trump once said, “Jared, all he cares about is his New York liberal crowd.”
Here’s a breakdown of some of the juiciest revelations so far.
Melania Trump warned her husband about his Covid-19 response
Many in Trump’s inner circle disagreed with his handling of the coronavirus pandemic from the get-go — including his own wife. Then-First Lady Melania Trump reportedly told her husband that he was “blowing” his response to the rapidly spreading virus. She even sought help from former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie — who maintained ties to the White House — to intervene, asking him to help convince Trump to take the pandemic more seriously. But at the time, her husband reportedly dismissed her, saying, “You worry too much.”
Trump considered trading Puerto Rico for Greenland
Though Trump’s interest in Greenland was widely reported in 2019, the president was so serious about buying the country that he considered taking federal money from Puerto Rico or even trading the country outright in order to do it. The idea is believed to have come from Estée Lauder cosmetics heir Ronald Lauder, who happened to be one of Trump’s old friends from college, according to The New York Times. At one point, National Security Adviser John Bolton even assembled a small team to brainstorm ideas for how to approach the country, which has been part of Denmark for a millennium.
White House staffers secretly used a book questioning Trump’s mental health
Chief of Staff John Kelly was so baffled by Trump’s irrational behavior that he bought a book in which 27 psychiatrists and mental health experts warned that the president was psychologically unfit for the job. The book, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, proved to be a useful guide for Kelly while he was running the White House, which he reportedly referred to as “Crazytown.” Trump’s mental health was called into question throughout his presidency, to which he famously responded by telling reporters that he was “a very stable genius.”
“Kelly told others that the book was a helpful guide to a president he came to consider a pathological liar whose inflated ego was in fact the sign of a deeply insecure person,” reads an excerpt from The Divider.
Trump feared that he would be assassinated by Iran
The former president often touted his authorization of the killing of top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani via a drone strike. But in private, Trump worried that he was now a target. According to the book, Trump told friends at a cocktail party in December 2020 that he was scared that Iran would try to assassinate him to avenge Soleimani’s death, and that he “had to go back to Washington, where he would be safer.”
Trump said he wouldn’t pick Nikki Haley as his running mate because of her “complexion problem”
Trump is well-known for making disparaging comments about women across different backgrounds (as first publicly demonstrated by his extremely graphic conversation in 2005 with then Access Hollywood’s Billy Bush that was leaked during his 2016 campaign). According to The Divider, he also told people that he wouldn’t pick Nikki Haley, his United Nations ambassador, as a running mate because she had a “complexion problem.” (Haley is Indian-American.) He also told visitors at the White House that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was “an example of why women should be careful about plastic surgery.”
Stay tuned for other possible eye-opening details from The Divider, which is sure to be a must-read.
