From Wanting to Shoot Protestors to Eating ‘Sensitive’ Notes: A Look at The Wildest Claims About Trump From His Own Officials’ Books

Former President Donald Trump’s four turbulent years in office produced the biggest boom in political publishing in decades. Castaways of the administration, from cabinet members to lowly staffers lept from the White House straight onto the bestseller list. While journalists like Michael Wolff, Jonathan Karl and Bob Woodward (just to name a few) uncovered their fair share of dirt, books from previous Trump officials offered explosive first-hand accounts from inside Trump’s White House.

From a former national security adviser to a press secretary to an attorney general and, most recently, a former secretary of defense, these books paint a bleak picture of what it was like to hold some of the most important positions in the country while in the service of Donald Trump.

Here is a list of some of the wildest details from the four highest-ranking Trump officials to write books – and Omarosa:

Mark Esper: A Sacred Oath: Memoirs of a Defense Secretary in Extraordinary Times

Esper, who served as Trump’s secretary of defense until he was fired after the 2020 election, is the latest former official to release a memoir of his time in the Trump White House. Esper has been on a weeks-long media tour promoting the book and admonishing Trump as a “threat to democracy.”

One of the most alarming claims made by Esper involves a meeting in which he says Trump became enraged when senior Pentagon staff refused to indulge his idea of shooting American citizens protesting police brutality in the legs.

“Can’t you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something?” Trump asked during a meeting.

Esper writes the president then erupted at the meeting, which came as violence was gripping U.S. cities in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in late May 2020.

“‘You are losers!” he allegedly yelled at officials. “You are all fucking losers!”

“This wasn’t the first time I had heard him use this language, but not with this much anger, and never directed at people in a room with him, let alone toward Barr, Milley and me,” Esper added, referencing then-Attorney General Bill Barr and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley.

“He repeated the foul insults again, this time directing his venom at the vice-president as well, who sat quietly, stone-faced, in the chair at the far end of the semi-circle closest to the Rose Garden,” Esper adds.

“I never saw him yell at the vice-president before, so this really caught my attention,” he continued.

Another notable section of the book included Trump suggesting the U.S. bomb drug labs in Mexico and then deny it. Esper wrote that Trump said “we could just shoot some Patriot missiles and take out the labs, quietly” adding “no one would know it was us.”

Esper concludes in his book that Trump “is an unprincipled person who, given his self-interest, should not be in the position of public service.”

Considering all that, and how Trump behaved in the aftermath of the 2020 election, Esper said he would not vote for Trump in 2024.

Bill Barr: One Damn Thing After Another

Former Trump Attorney General Bill Barr published his book on March 8th and also became a regular fixture on cable news and in the media, condemning both Donald Trump’s 2020 election fraud allegations and the Democratic Party.

The stolen election claim “was a lie” a “fabrication,” Barr said, one that “was repeated and amplified in media coverage throughout the election and is still repeated.” That issue is the very one Barr resigned over in December of 2020, after finding no evidence the election was stolen and incurring Trump’s wrath as a result.

Barr — who helped to bury the Mueller report detailing Russian interference in the 2016 election — wrote that Trump told him, “You must hate Trump. You would only do this if you hate Trump.”

Barr, who has since vowed to help stop Trump from becoming the 2024 GOP nominee, blasted the former president’s character in his book. He wrote that Trump has “shown he has neither the temperament nor persuasive powers to provide the kind of positive leadership that is needed.”

Barr also wrote that after losing the election, Trump “lost his grip” and argued that “the absurd lengths to which he took his “stolen election” claim led to the rioting on Capitol Hill” on Jan. 6.

Barr, however, has said that despite his misgivings he would still vote for Trump in 2024 if he were the GOP nominee, arguing that the Democrats are more dangerous.

Stephanie Grisham: I’ll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw at the Trump White House

Former White House Press Secretary and Communications Director Stephanie Grisham dished a lot of personal dirt in her book published in October 2021.

Grisham, who first served as Melania Trump’s chief of staff, wrote about how Trump cuts his own hair and once berated her and the First Lady after she was photographed wearing a jacked with the question, “I Really Don’t Care, Do U?” while visiting the southern border.

Grishman, who quit after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, also revealed she suggested to Melania she put out a statement:

“Do you want to tweet that peaceful protests are the right of every American, but there is no place for lawlessness and violence?” Grisham asked the First Lady, in an excerpt that was reported in Politico at the time.

A minute later, Melania replied with a one-word answer: “No.” At that moment, she was at the White House preparing for a photo shoot of a rug she had selected …

Grisham, who traveled with Trump overseas as press secretary, offered some insight into Trump’s relationship with Vladimir Putin.

Grisham, who is famous for never holding a press conference, has become a fierce critic of Donald Trump since she left the White House and said she will not vote for him again.

John Bolton: The Room Where It Happened

Former National Security Advisor John Bolton dropped his book, which riled critics for cribbing its name from a Hamilton song, in June of 2020.

The book describes Bolton’s 17 months at Trump’s side handling foreign policy. Bolton recalls having to steer Trump right on a number of issues from Trump’s hostility toward NATO, his fondness for North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un to odd overtures to Turkey’s strongman Erdogan. Bolton became a fierce critic of the Trump administration after leaving his post and made the rounds on talk shows for months dishing dirt, including confirming that Trump once invited Kim to take a ride on Air Force One.

But, the bombshell details in the book mostly pertain to Bolton’s description of the events surrounding Trump’s first impeachment trial and the former president’s phone call with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky.

The New York Times’ Peter Baker described Bolton’s writing on the issue:

He objected to the ‘drug deal’ being cooked up by Mr. Trump’s associates to force Ukraine to help [get dirt on Joe Biden] and that he called Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer who was hip deep in the affair, ‘a hand grenade who’s going to blow everybody up.’ He writes that he suspected that Mr. Giuliani had personal business interests at stake and adds that he had the matter reported to the White House Counsel’s Office.

“I thought the whole affair was bad policy, questionable legally, and unacceptable as presidential behavior,” Bolton writes. “Was it a factor in my later resignation? Yes, but as one of many ‘straws’ that contributed to my departure.”

“These and innumerable other similar conversations with Trump formed a pattern of fundamentally unacceptable behavior that eroded the very legitimacy of the presidency,” Bolton wrote, accusing Trump of weaponizing foreign policy for political gains.

“I am hard pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my tenure that wasn’t driven by reelection calculations,” Bolton concluded of Trump’s approach to national security and foreign policy.

Bolton refused to support Joe Biden in 2020 and has so far only said of Trump’s possible 2024 bid, “I don’t think Trump will run for the presidency in 2024. He very much fears losing in 2024.”

Omarosa Manigault Newman: Unhinged

Omarosa Manigault Newman, a former assistant to the president from January 2017 to December 2017, was one of the first former Trump officials to drop a book in August of 2018.

While the book wasn’t held in high regard as a chronicle of policy or operations in the Trump White House, Omarosa offered a lot of insider gossip and released secret tapes of conversations to boot.

Just a few highlights include Trump calling his son Donald Trump Jr a “fuck up,” Omarosa explaining why she thinks the infamous tape of Trump using the N-word is real, and a retelling of Trump eating a note passed to him by his former attorney Michael Cohen.

In 2018, debate over whether or not a tape of Trump saying the N-word on the Apprentice set was big news. Here is what Omarosa had to say about it:

I’d emailed before one of our daily comms meetings that a source from The Apprentice days had contacted me and claimed to be in possession of the tape. By that point, three sources in three separate conversations had described the contents of this tape. They all told me that President Trump hadn’t just dropped a single N-word bomb. He’d said it multiple times throughout the show’s taping during off-camera outtakes, particularly during the first season of The Apprentice.

Here is the excerpt of her claiming Trump ate a note from Cohen:

I guess they didn’t know that he would pocket sensitive notes or that once, after a meeting in the Oval with Michael Cohen, I saw him put a note in his mouth. Since Trump was ever the germaphobe, I was shocked he appeared to be chewing and swallowing the paper. It must have been something very, very sensitive.

Finally, here is Omarosa detailing her exchange with Trump after reports revealed that Trump Jr. had in fact met with a Russian lawyer to allegedly discuss Russian dirt on Hillary Clinton:

When I saw Donald that day, I said, “I’m sorry to hear about Don.”

He said, “He is such a f**kup. He screwed up again, but this time, he’s screwing us all, big-time!”

Other books from the likes of Former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci, Melania Trump aide Stephanie Winston Wolkoff and former FBI Director Jim Comey didn’t make this list and while there are more out there, we can all be guaranteed there are still many more to come.

Gen. Mark Milley’s memoir will certainly be one to look out for.