Trump’s advisors had intimate knowledge of how Trump worked, considered, and made decisions.  They frequently saw him in action. They knew him well. After months, or in some cases years of working with him, what was their opinion of their former boss?

As Maegan Vazquez reported on CNN,

“All White Houses find themselves confronting the odd tell-all memoir or interview from a jaundiced aide. But Trump, who is famous for demanding loyalty, has not appeared to inspire great confidence in those who quit or were dismissed from his administration.

Those officials aren’t just comprised of holdovers from the Obama administration, staff compelled to testify under oath, or career intelligence and Justice Department officials Trump has dubbed as being part of the so-called “deep state. There’s a long list of allies-turned-critics that includes several of the men and women Trump hand-selected to lead agencies across the federal government.”

 

The New York Times in a recent editorial in which it declared that Trump was unfit to be president, summed up what his people thought of him this way:

“Those who know Mr. Trump’s character best — the people he appointed to serve in the most important positions of his White House — have expressed grave doubts about his fitness for office.”

His former chief of staff John Kelly, a retired four-star Marine Corps general, described Mr. Trump as “a person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators. A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution and the rule of law.”

Bill Barr, whom Mr. Trump appointed as attorney general, said of him, “He will always put his own interest and gratifying his own ego ahead of everything else, including the country’s interest.”

James Mattis, a retired four-star Marine general who served as defense secretary, said, “Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people — does not even pretend to try.”

 Mike Pence, Mr. Trump’s vice president, has disavowed him. No other vice president in modern American history has done this. “I believe that anyone who puts themselves over the Constitution should never be president of the United States,” Mr. Pence has said. “And anyone who asked someone else to put them over the Constitution should never be president of the United States again.”

Omarosa Manigault Newman, the highest-ranking African-American staffer in Trump’s West Wing, also said he was “unhinged.” In fact, she used that as the title of her book about her time in Trump land. She also said in her book, “Donald Trump, and his decisions and his behavior, was harming the country. I could no longer be a part of this madness.”

Trump’s economic advisor Gary Cohn said Trump was “dumb as shit.”

According to Michael Wolf’s book Fire and Fury, both Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and former chief of staff Reince Priebus also called Trump an “idiot,” after they had worked with him.  This seems like a very common refrain from his former staffers? They challenged his intelligence. None of them said he was a stable genius.  Only Trump said that.

I have got some of these quotes from Rebecca Morin who wrote an article called “Idiot,’ ‘Dope,’ ‘Moron’: How Trump’s aides have insulted the boss,” in Politico.

Did anyone hear one of Obama’s former staffers say anything like that? Or Biden’s current staff?

But there is more: Next Time.