did you know the president isn t much of a reader, that he s inordinately fond of autocrats, that he stumbles, slurs, gets confused and has trouble synthesizing information? those who have read the book say it s a lot of anecdotes, it sort of reinforces what people know. what do you make of it? yeah, i think that s the problem with the rollout of this book. fundamentally it s not advancing and filling in more detailed a picture than what we know of this president. me as a reporter who covered both his campaign and the white house, i hear these anecdotes every day from people who work inside the white house. they re reported in the new york times, the washington post and elsewhere. this book doesn t actually advance the ball. especially the fact that the author is anonymous, usually journalists extend confidentiality to sources when the only way they can get that information to the public is by protecting his identity. now the author has done that and says he doesn t want to make
attacked them through the press or did any one of these. what s amazing about this book, and obviously we all have to read it in detail, is that just from the excerpts, it doesn t seem unimaginable because it is exactly what we ve seen day to day, confirmed by realtime events. we see a president out of control all the time. so it s not surprising that he s out of control behind the scenes. it s just remarkably unassuring that he is equally out of control behind the cameras as well. let me read from the new york times book review. anonymous has seen and heard disturbing things. you, the reader, will already recognize most of what anonymous has seen and heard if you ve been paying attention to the news. did you know the president isn t much of a reader, that he s inordinately fond of autocrats, stumbles, slurs, is easily
clinton, and, you know, neither one of them tweeted out attacks on political opponents or just attacked them through the press or did any one of these. what s amazing about this book, and obviously we all have to read it in detail, is that just from the excerpts, it doesn t seem unimaginable because it is exactly what we ve seen day to day, confirmed by real time events. we see a president out of control all the time. so it s not surprising that he s out of control behind the scenes. it s just remarkably unassuring that he is equally out of control behind the cameras as well. let me read from the new york times book review. anonymous has seen and heard disturbing things. you, the reader, will already recognize most of what anonymous has seen and heard if you ve been paying attention to the news. did you know the president isn t much of a reader, that he s inordinately fond of autocrats,