Scoop: Rob Porter claims Woodward book is "misleading"
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Former White House staff secretary Rob Porter is joining Gary Cohn in releasing a statement against Bob Woodward's new Trump book, "Fear."
What they're saying: Porter alleges Woodward's book is "selective and often misleading" about President Trump and the administration, while Woodward tells Axios, “I stand by my reporting.”
Rob Porter's full statement:
Having now read Bob Woodward’s Fear, I am struck by the selective and often misleading portrait it paints of the President and his administration.
As Staff Secretary, I was responsible for managing the flow of documents to and from the Oval Office and ensuring that anything the President was asked to sign had been properly vetted. The suggestion that materials were “stolen” from the President’s desk to prevent his signature misunderstands how the White House document review process works — and has worked for at least the last eight administrations.
It was also my responsibility to help ensure that relevant viewpoints were considered, that pros and cons were evaluated, that policy proposals were thoroughly vetted, and that the President could make decisions based on full information. Fulfilling this responsibility does not make someone part of a “resistance” or mean they are seeking to “thwart” the President’s agenda. Quite the opposite.
President Trump invites robust discussion and asks probing questions. He has the confidence to allow advisors to disagree with a proposed course of action and advocate for an alternative outcome—and I sometimes did just that. But in the end, President Trump is the one who decides, and he has shown himself more than capable of doing so.
During my time in the White House, I sought to serve the President’s best interests and to help enable his many successes—successes that Mr. Woodward’s book ignores.
President Trump’s accomplishments are undeniable: significant tax relief to spur economic growth, rolling back burdensome regulations to unleash job creators, remaking the federal judiciary to uphold the Constitution, and much more.
The bottom line: As with the Cohn statement, the vast majority of the scenes involving Porter — who left earlier this year amid allegations of abuse — reflect reporting that Axios has done over the course of the Trump presidency.
Go deeper: Read Cohn's statement
