The first Trump campaign book by true insiders hits on Tuesday -- "Let Trump Be Trump: The Inside Story of His Rise to the Presidency" (Hachette), by confidants Corey Lewandowski and Dave Bossie, who have secretly written a nugget-studded account.
This comes a month before Michael Wolff's "Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House," which takes a more critical look at Trump.
Deplorables, as Trump originals defiantly call themselves, will love "Let Trump Be Trump" — it's a campaign memoir / buddy picture. But journalists will also feast on it:
- Paul Manafort — first a Trump delegate strategist, later campaign chairman, and now under indictment — takes a beating. Manafort's purview grew after Lewandowski was fired.
- In April 2016, en route to a Delaware rally, Trump ordered the pilot of his personal chopper to fly lower in order to get cell service to chew out Manafort for suggesting the candidate not go on TV.
- Trump barked a barrage of four-letter words: "I know guys like you, with your hair and your skin."
- At one point in Iowa, Trump scolded Lewandowski: "You don't know what you're doing. This team is completely lost."
- The authors write that Steve Bannon, when he first heard Trump was running for president, laughed and said: "Yeah, of what country?"
- When "the kids" (Lewandowski and Hope Hicks) overnighted at Mar-a-Lago, Trump would insist they, and body man Keith Schiller, sit with him for dinner.
- The boss would regale them with stories about himself. His table mates back then remain a rare breed today: True Trump loyalists.
- Preorder here.
That's all for now – more soon. But as a last sneak peek (and a sign of the book's perspective), here's the dedication:
To President Donald J. Trump
And First Lady Melania Trump
And the entire Trump family for
Making America great again.
