Trump Made Jordan’s King Almost Have a ‘Heart Attack’ When He Offered Him the West Bank: New Book

Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

Then-President Donald Trump reportedly shocked Jordan’s King Abdullah II during a 2018 meeting in which Trump offered to give Jordan the West Bank, which has a large population known to be hostile to Jordan’s monarchy.

“I thought I was having a heart attack,” Abdullah II reportedly told an American friend after the meeting in 2018. “I couldn’t breathe. I was bent doubled-over.”

The bombshell anecdote is one of many in the new book by New York Times White House correspondent Peter Baker and Susan Glasser – a prominent writer for the New Yorker. The two veteran journalists are also married.

Baker and Glasser, whose book is out next week, based their reporting on their years of chronicling Trump’s presidency as “well as about 300 original interviews conducted exclusively for this book.”

“We obtained private diaries, memos, contemporaneous notes, emails, text messages, and other documents that shed new light on Trump’s time in office,” the couple adds in the book, which was reported on in the Washington Post.

“The offer to Abdullah of the West Bank — which is bordered by Israel and Jordan, and which Trump had no control over — came in January 2018. Trump thought he would be doing the Jordanian king a favor, not realizing that it would destabilize his country, according to the book,” notes the Post on Trump’s bizarre offer to give away territory not under his control.

The book also details an exchange between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Trump on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Japan in 2019.

The book reports that while Putin bragged to Trump he had acquired “hypersonic missiles” before the U.S. – Trump responded by boasting of his international popularity.

Trump relayed to Putin how proud he was that Poland was considering naming a military base after him, while Israel had named a settlement (now abandoned) “Trump Heights.”

“Maybe they should just name Israel after you, Donald,” Putin reportedly shot back.