Tag: Gary Cohn

Aides tried to persuade Donald Trump to let them fact-check his tweets

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Top White House aides tried in vain to persuade President Donald Trump that he should let them check his tweets for accuracy, spelling and tone before he posted them for the world to see, journalist Bob Woodward wrote in his book that was released Tuesday.

Woodward said the aides – led by former communications director Hope Hicks – were alarmed by the outrage over Trump’s June 2017 tweet attacking the appearance and intelligence of Mika Brzezinski, a co-host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” political talk show.

The president blasted Brzezinski as “low I.Q. Crazy Mika” and said she had been “bleeding badly from a face-lift” during a New Year’s party at his Florida resort.

The tweet reignited controversy over Trump’s treatment of women, prompting Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine to tell Trump to “stop.”

“It’s not politically helpful,” Hicks told Trump, according to Woodward’s book “Fear” about the Trump White House. “You can’t just be a loose cannon on Twitter. You’re getting killed by a lot of this stuff. You’re shooting yourself in the foot. You’re making big mistakes.”

Hicks, along with three other aides – former staff secretary Rob Porter, former chief economic adviser Gary Cohn, and social media director Dan Scavino – told Trump they wanted to create a committee to vet his tweets, Woodward wrote.

“They would draft some tweets that they believed Trump would like,” Woodward wrote. “If the president had an idea for a tweet, he would write it down or get one of them in and they would vet it. Was it factually accurate? Was it spelled correctly? Did it make sense? Did it serve his needs?”

Trump reportedly responded “I guess you’re right” several times. But the president ended up ignoring his aides’ proposed edits and “did what he wanted,” Woodward wrote.

Trump has already tweeted his low opinion of the book.

“The Woodward book is a Joke – just another assault against me, in a barrage of assaults, using now dis-proven unnamed and anonymous sources,” he tweeted Monday. “Many have already come forward to say the quotes by them, like the book, are fiction.”

[USA Today]

Trump told Gary Cohn to ‘print money’ to lower the national debt

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As a candidate, Donald Trump pledged to balance the federal budget and lower the national debt, promises that are proving difficult to keep.

Once he won, Trump considered an unusual approach that was quickly slapped down by his chief economic advisor, according to veteran journalist Bob Woodward’s new book, “Fear: Trump in the White House,” which went on sale Tuesday.

“Just run the presses — print money,” Trump said, according to Woodward, during a discussion on the national debt with Gary Cohn, former director of the White House National Economic Council.

“You don’t get to do it that way,” Cohn said, according to Woodward. “We have huge deficits and they matter. The government doesn’t keep a balance sheet like that.”

Cohn was “astounded at Trump’s lack of basic understanding,” Woodward writes.

The vignette is one of many in the acclaimed investigative reporter’s book that describes a chaotic White House and a president being handled by top aides concerned by his behavior and decision-making.

Several people in Trump’s orbit have called the book’s accuracy into question, while Woodward has maintained several times that he stands by his reporting. In a note at the beginning of “Fear,” the author notes that the work “is drawn from hundreds of hours of interviews with first-hand participants and witnesses to these events.”

Cohn on Tuesday pushed back on the Woodward book. The former Goldman Sachs banker told Axios: “This book does not accurately portray my experience at the White House. I am proud of my service in the Trump Administration, and I continue to support the President and his economic agenda.”

Trump, meanwhile, has dismissed the book as a “scam” filled with “made up” quotes.

The president also floated an idea for making money from the recent rise in interest rates, according to Woodward.

“We should just go borrow a lot of money, hold it, and then sell it to make money,” Trump reportedly said.

The president also made clear that he was not pleased by the Federal Reserve’s current policy toward moving interest rates back to historical levels after suppressing them during the decade that followed the 2008 financial crisis. Cohn said he supported the Fed’s move to raise rates.

Trump then told Cohn that he wouldn’t pick him to be Fed chair, according to the book.

“That’s fine,” Cohn said, Woodward reports. “It’s the worst job in America.”

Trump chose Jerome Powell to succeed Janet Yellen as Fed chair. However, the president has criticized the Fed for raising rates while the economy surges.

“I’m not thrilled,” he told CNBC’s Joe Kernen in a July interview. “Because we go up and every time you go up they want to raise rates again. I don’t really — I am not happy about it. But at the same time I’m letting them do what they feel is best.”

[CNBC]

Advisers Gave Trump PowerPoint Presentation Debunking His Claims on Amazon. It Didn’t Work

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Over the past week or so, President Donald Trump has ramped up his attacks against tech giant Amazon, claiming the company isn’t paying any taxes while accusing them of taking advantage of the Postal Service and costing the government billions of dollars.

In the wake of Trump’s personal war against Amazon, fact checkers and journalists have noted that the president’s claims are either unsupported or outright false. The thing is, Trump’s advisers tried early on to keep him from tossing out his Amazon falsehoods. It just didn’t take.

Per the Wall Street Journal, White House officials kept hearing Trump grouse about Amazon during his first months in office. Therefore, they decided to set up some briefings so he would speak factually and knowledgeably about the company in public.

Gary Cohn, his top economic adviser, and other officials gave PowerPoint presentations and briefing papers they believed debunked his concerns that Amazon was dodging taxes and exploiting the U.S. Postal Service.It made little difference. Mr. Trump persisted in attacks that ran counter to the material they had showed him.

A source also told WSJ that the presentation wasn’t “the narrative he wants,” adding that Trump “didn’t find it persuasive because he keeps saying it’s untrue.”

[Mediaite]