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WASHINGTON – President Trump, commander-in-chief with a well-known bunker mentality, has long doubted the ability of his collaborators to protect him from external attacks. But his concern over who he can trust has only grown since anonymous members of the administration – many of them in Bob Woodward's book "Fear And an article published in the New York Times about his volatile personality and doubts about his ability to lead.
Everything happens according to one of the few people who still has the trust of the president: a family member.
"I think there are people he can trust," said Donald Trump Jr., the president's eldest son, in an interview with ABC's "Good Morning America" at the Trump White House. . "I just think it's a much smaller group than I would like."
But the public denials – even if they are not specific – from the helpers they were the ones who spoke against him seem to have momentarily supported the president.
As Hurricane Florence headed to the east coast on Tuesday, Trump praised the statements of two former assistants who opposed the way Woodward characterized home life. Blanche – but not the categorical denials.
In an Oval Office briefing on the storm, Mr. Trump sat in front of weather maps and praised the statements of Rob Porter, former Secretary of Staff of the White House and Gary D. Cohn, former Senior Economic Advisor Of the president. of which are highlighted in the book.
"Well, you should not talk about it at the moment because it does not matter," Trump told a reporter, "but I really appreciate their statement." Their statement was excellent.
The statements followed a series of similar denials last week by government officials such as Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Trump has repeatedly told his associates that he was pleased with the statements, according to a White House official familiar with his ideas, especially that of Jim Mattis, the Secretary of Defense.
But neither Mr. Cohn nor Mr. Porter denied having spoken with Mr. Woodward, a journalist known for keeping meticulous notes and recording his interviews, and the two denials were relatively unspecific about what was in the book.
"This book does not accurately portray my experience at the White House," Cohn said in his book. statement on the book on the site Axios. "I am proud of my service in the Trump administration and I continue to support the President and his economic agenda."
But he did not mention one of the most explosive stories in the book, in which he was the main participant. It is described as the theft of a letter from Mr. Trump's office that the president planned to sign that would have removed the United States from a trade deal with South Korea. Mr. Woodward wrote that Mr. Cohn told a colleague that he should "protect the country".
A few hours after Mr. Cohn's statement, Mr. Porter's statement – longer and more specific about the letter episode, but also not denying speaking to Mr. Woodward -.
"As secretary of staff, I was responsible for managing the flow of documents to and from the Oval Office and ensuring that everything the chair was asked to sign had been properly verified," said Mr. Porter. "The idea that materials were" stolen "from the president's office to prevent his signature does not include the operation of the White House document review process – and has worked for at least the last eight administrations."
The president himself denied that the documents were removed from the office. "Nobody took anything from me," he said in an interview with The Daily Caller last week.
Mr. Woodward has repeatedly defended his reports.
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