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In advance of Trumps factory tour today, I took a look at the strange relationship thats developed between Tim Cook and Donald Trump over the past three years. One of the things that popped up was one specific story that Trump would tell about Apple, in rally after rally and meeting after meeting. The idea was that Trump had somehow induced the company to build a new factory in the US, through some combination of tax cuts and trade policy, which was both very politically useful and also very much not true.

Today, perhaps not surprisingly, he told the lie again.

Were seeing the beginning of a very powerful and important plant, Trump said at the factory. Anybody that followed my campaign, I would always talk about Apple, that I want to see Apple building plants in the United States. And thats whats happening.

This is not true for a couple reasons one of them nitpicky and one of them a lot more serious. The nitpicky problem is that Apple isnt actually building a manufacturing plant. The company is building a new campus in Austin, but its miles away from the factory and the jobs are going to be very similar to the kind of white-collar design and engineering work that Apple does in Cupertino. Apple doesnt do its own manufacturing, and the plant Trump is standing in belongs to a contractor called Flex Ltd (formerly Flextronics).

But the bigger problem is that what Flex is doing isnt anything new. This particular factory has been manufacturing Mac Pros since 2013, when Cook first announced it would assemble them in the United States. Thats before Trump took office. So the idea that were seeing the beginning of something, or that Trump has done something during his presidency to bring about this particular instance of US manufacturing, just doesnt hold water.

Trump is talking as if Apple has created a brand-new factory in Texas to build Mac Pros. If all you saw was a five-second clip on the news, thats probably the impression you would get but it just isnt true.

People often get very worked up about whether a politician is technically lying when they say something that isnt true, or if theyve just stumbled into falsehood as if accidentally falling off a chair. But when you say the same false thing over and over again for a year and a half, its hard to call it anything else.

Speaking of which, Trump just aired the lie on Twitter as well:

You can see the video footage of Trumps tour for yourself below.

Things actually get worse if you keep watching. Later in the video, Trump takes back the mic for a quick aside on how his tariff policy has benefited the factory.

The nice part is, he doesnt have to worry about tariffs, Trump says. When you build it here, you dont have to worry about tariffs.

This is also not true.

In fact, Apple is currently paying tariffs on a number of Mac Pro parts, which must be imported from China to Texas before the final device can be assembled. (Ten of Apples requested tariff exemptions were issued earlier this year, but five others were denied, including taxes on the cooling system, charging cable, and various circuit boards.) Because Trumps current array of tariffs are levied on components but not finished devices, Apple actually doesnt pay tariffs on the iPhones and MacBooks that are assembled in China.

The net effect is a tax on electronics assembled in the US. Its more expensive to assemble Mac Pros in the US, not just because of labor and production costs, but explicitly because of the tariffs Trump has placed on intermediary goods. Apple even briefly flirted with moving Mac Pro production back to China, as a way of driving home the cost of those tariffs, although the company ultimately backed down.

The structure of those taxes could change in the future, and a tariff on phones and other electronics has already been formally proposed, although it keeps getting delayed. On the other hand, talks with China could be so productive that earlier rounds of tariffs are lifted completely. With that much uncertainty, its hard for anyone to be sure about the best way to arrange a supply chain.

But the result is an alarming level of falsehood even by Trump standards. He claimed to have brought Apple manufacturing to the United States while standing in a factory that had already been building Apple products for six years, and one that had nearly lost the gig not benefited because of Trumps trade policy.

See the rest here:
Trump is lying about the new Apple factory - The Verge

SEOULPresident Donald Trumps demands for vast increases in South Korean and Japanese financial contributions to maintain U.S. bases and forces has triggered fears here that hes eager for massive troop withdrawals from the territory of these U.S. allies. And while the scale and the history are very different, the capricious way that Trump ordered U.S. forces pulled out of northeast Syria in October is seen as a cautionary example.

Although some U.S. troops reportedly are back in action in Syria, Trump created murderous confusion when he suddenly decided to pull about 1,000 of them out on Oct. 6, betraying longtime Kurdish allies beleaguered by the Turks, Syrians, Russians, and ISIS guerrillas. The overwhelming concern here is that the impetuous and ill-informed action in Syria was a rehearsal for much greater reductions in U.S. forces in northeast Asia. Trump has questioned the need for them, and their cost, for many years.

My Korean colleagues worry that the Syria withdrawal could also be applied to Korea, and potentially with similar very negative consequences, says Bruce Bennett, senior researcher at RAND Corp. Actions like the Syria withdrawal cause our allies to worry that they could be next, and that worry undermines the strength of our alliances.

The U.S. role in Korea was put to the test last week when James DeHart, chief U.S. negotiator on the bases, staged a precipitous walkout after two hours getting nowhere in a meeting here with South Koreas negotiator.

South Korea contributed approximately $900 million this year to the bases, up 8 percent from 2018. But Trump wants to up the price to Seoul by 400 percent to $5 billion, a figure he seems to have pulled out of thin air and that the Pentagon has had trouble justifying. (As MIT Prof. Vipin Narang told CNN in a memorable remark, Nothing says I love you like a shakedown.)

DeHart, Trumps negotiator, read a brief statement saying South Koreas counter-proposal to Trumps demand for raising the South Korean outlay was not responsive to our request for fair and equitable burden-sharing. Thus we cut short our participation in the talks in hopes the Koreans would put forward new proposals.

Maybe the Trump team thinks this is just the way things are done here on the peninsula. DeHarts remarks bear an uncanny resemblance to those of the North Korean negotiator who broke off talks in Stockholm last month with U.S. nuclear negotiator Stephen Biegun, claiming the U.S. had added nothing to the dialogue on the Norths nukes and missiles.

What will the rest of the world conclude about the value of an alliance with the U.S., and what will the world conclude about the need for national nuclear weapon programs?

Korea expert Bruce Bennett at RAND

Its not only the U.S. presence in South Korea thats imperiled; bases also are in doubt in Japan, where conservative Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is balking at Trumps demand for a $4 billion increase in its annual contribution.

Bruce Bennett at RAND raises the question of who has military superiority in the region if the U.S. breaks its historic alliances. North Korea has 1.1 million troops plus 30 to 60 nuclear warheads, he notes, while South Koreas armed forces, bereft of nukes, will be down to 365,000 by 2022.

If the North is in a position of dominance, Bennett asks, what will the rest of the world conclude about the value of an alliance with the U.S., and what will the world conclude about the need for national nuclear weapon programs? Such a move could well lead to the end of effective U.S. nuclear nonproliferation efforts."

During his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump seemed to embrace the idea that South Korea and Japan should have their own nuclear weapons to defend against North Korea. At some point, he told Anderson Cooper in a CNN town hall, we have to say, you know what, were better off if Japan protects itself against this maniac in North Korea, were better off, frankly, if South Korea is going to start to protect itself.... Wouldnt you rather in a certain sense have Japan have nuclear weapons when North Korea has nuclear weapons?... Wouldnt you rather have Japan, perhaps, theyre over there, theyre very close, theyre very fearful of North Korea.

[Trump] truly believes that 'free rider' stuff he's been saying since the 1980s.

Van Jackson, author of 'On the Brink: Trump, Kim, and the Threat of Nuclear War'

By law Trump cannot arbitrarily slash the number of U.S. troops in Korea, now about 28,500, to below 22,000 without talking to the South Koreans and proving the drawdown wont compromise the alliance or defense of the South. Trump, however, has said repeatedly that he believes South Korea and Japan can fend for themselves and American forces are no longer needed.

The danger is Trump means what he says, but his friend Kim Jong Un is not cutting him much slack. On Monday, nine years after North Korean artillery killed four South Koreans on an island in the Yellow Sea, the Norths state media reported Kim had presided over an artillery exercise on a nearby islandas menacing as the Norths recent short-range missile tests in view of its proximity to South Korean territory but apparently not much of a worry for POTUS.

Trump is unafraid to push to the wire and beyond on cost-sharing negotiations with Korea and Japan because he believes he has all the leverage, says Victor Cha at Georgetown University. If they dont want to pay, he will pull them out.

Cha, who served on the National Security Council during the presidency of George W. Bush, bases this conviction on what he sees as Trumps unappreciation of the benefits of having allies around the world. His outlook as a businessman, he observes, leads him to a monetization of foreign policy in general.

Trumps tough bargaining position throws into doubt the future of the delicate alliance relationships that the U.S. has had since the Korean War to ward off another North Korean assault on South Koreaand possible Chinese intervention, too. Backing up U.S. forces in Korea, the U.S. has 50,000 troops in Japan, including a Marine division on Okinawa, plus more air and naval forces on Guam.

What we need to do is to change the regime in North Korea. Thats why were here today.

Otto Warmbier's father, Fred Warmbier, addressing a rally in Seoul

He truly believes that free rider stuff hes been saying since the 1980s, says Van Jackson, author of On the Brink: Trump, Kim, and the Threat of Nuclear War. He thinks were being taken to the cleaners by our allies, he doesnt get the security value of alliances or forward military presence, and the only acceptable redress for his grievance is maximal rent-seeking.

Defense Secretary Mark Esper, on a recent visit here, said South Korea is a wealthy country and could and should pay more to help offset the cost of defense, but were not threatening our allies over this. Jackson, who now lectures at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand, says he would be willing to bet Trump pulls a troop withdrawal stunt sometime in the next year if South Korea doesnt make some huge concessions.

The issue arouses intense fears and debate among South Koreans. Not only conservatives but also middle-of-the-roaders who supported President Moon Jae-in in the Candlelight Revolution of 2016 and 2017 are increasingly disillusioned by his policy of appeasing North Koreas leader Kim Jong Un in the quest for reconciliation. And the concern intensifies as the American defensive shield appears to be threatened.

At a rally Saturday in central Seoul, several hundred thousand people waving American and South Korean flags shouted slogans denouncing Moon.

There, Fred and Cindy Warmbier, the parents of Otto Warmbier, who was jailed in North Korea nearly four years ago for stealing a poster near the end of a brief tourist trip to Pyongyang, described their sons torture before he was sent home to die in June 2017. We look forward to working with you to solve the problem of North Korea, said Fred Warmbier, whose words were translated over mega-loudspeakers to thunderous applause. What we need to do is to change the regime in North Korea. Thats why were here today.

In the crowd, Ahn Chang, who had been jailed for refusing to leave a government office while protesting Moons policies, worried about whatever Trump will do. I am very afraid he will pull out troops, says Ahn. Unlike typical U.S. presidents, hes against this whole Korean-American alliance. If he pulled out troops, we are left alone to fight.

Ahn believes South Korean leftists have fallen for North Korean propaganda and wont stand up against attack from the North. The leftists are brain-washed, he says. We are already losing because of the lies they were telling to the people.

Moons real stance, however, may be somewhat ambivalent. On Friday, his government announced it would not take the controversial step of withdrawing from its deal for exchanging military intelligence information with Japan, as it had threatened to do. A Moon spokesman said South Korea would remain committed to GSOMIA (an acronym pronounced Gee-soh-mee-ya, for General Security of Military Intelligence Agreement) for the sake of national interest.

But South Korea will continue to press Japan to do away with constraints on export of vital chemicals and other equipment imposed after Koreas supreme court ruled that Nippon Steel and others had to compensate Koreans forced to work for the Japanese as de facto slave labor in World War II.

The sense is that Moon and others would not be thrilled by a U.S. decision to cut down the number of U.S. troops while North Korea shows no signs of scaling back, much less giving up, its nuclear and missile program.In fact, some analysts believe Trump would hesitate for fear of the rising power of China, which supports North Korea.

We know Trump doesnt want to spend money for alliances, says Choi Jin-wook, former director of the Korea Institute of National Unification, but he cannot withdraw U.S. troops from South Korea and Japan because of China.

But, really, theres no telling what Trump really has in mind. He does not seem to care about the post-World War II consensus on the U.S.-built liberal world order, says Daniel Pinkston, a longtime Korea analyst and lecturer at Troy University. He and a large part of his coalition view the liberal world order as rigged or ripping off the U.S. They would would rather ruin it and be spoilers.

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Trump Pushes South Korea and Japan to Go Nuclear by Demanding They Pay Billions More for US Troops - Daily Beast

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Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr.s criminal investigation of the Trump Organization is scrutinizing the actions of one of the presidents oldest and most trusted deputies, ProPublica has learned.

The focus on Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg, a 72-year-old accountant now running the business with Trumps two adult sons, stems from his involvement in arranging a payment to porn actress Stormy Daniels in exchange for her silence about an alleged sexual encounter with Trump (which Trump has denied).

Federal prosecutors from the Southern District of New York, or SDNY, contended that the Trump Organization had improperly booked reimbursements for the hush-money scheme as legal expenses, with the aid of sham invoices. They granted legal immunity to Weisselberg and later closed their 18-month investigation with the guilty plea of one Trump associate, Michael Cohen. But Weisselbergs immunity deal applied only to federal proceedings.

Now Vances state grand jury is examining whether Weisselberg, among others and even the Trump Organization should face state criminal charges for falsification of business records, according to a source familiar with the investigation. Neither Weisselberg nor the Trump Organization responded to requests for comment. Vance, through a spokesman, declined to comment.

A handful of lawyers and investigators from Vances office, led by Chris Conroy, chief of the DAs major economic crimes bureau, traveled to the federal minimum-security prison camp in Otisville, New York, on Oct. 30 to meet for the third time with Cohen, who is serving a three-year prison sentence, according to two sources knowledgeable about the matter. Much of the discussion involved Weisselberg.

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Neither the president nor his sons appear to be in Vances crosshairs at this point in the investigation, which is at an early stage, according to the source familiar with the investigation. But, the source added, New York prosecutors are far from ruling that out.

The investigation is playing out amid an unusually public conflict between the offices of the Manhattan DA and the U.S. attorney, which are headquartered across the street from each other in Lower Manhattan.

Vance originally launched his investigation back in August 2018, after Cohens guilty plea and public testimony revealed the Trump Organizations deceits.

But when one of Vances staffers placed a courtesy call to inform the federal prosecutors of their investigation, according to the source familiar with the investigation, the DA was asked to stand down. The reason: The U.S. attorneys office said it was still investigating the Trump Organization, pursuing additional targets. (A spokesperson for the SDNY declined to comment.) Vance agreed to put his investigation on hold.

As late as May 2019, federal prosecutors told U.S. District Judge William Pauley that their investigation was ongoing. For months before that, the SDNY seemed to be gathering evidence for possible charges against people beyond Cohen. At least, that was the public impression created by the prosecutors decision to grant immunity and non-prosecution agreements, respectively, to Weisselberg and executives with the National Enquirer, who collaborated with Cohen on a second hush-money payoff, to former Playboy centerfold Karen McDougal. (Trump denied that relationship, too.)

Vances probe remained on hold for nearly a year until July 18, 2019 when Pauley revealed that federal prosecutors had informed him their investigation was effectively concluded.

With that, the Manhattan DA quickly restarted his state investigation. On Aug. 1, a grand jury subpoenaed an array of records from the Trump Organization involving the hush-money payments and Cohens work for Trump. The DA contended that the subpoena applied to Trumps tax records.

Over the next few weeks, Trumps business turned over 3,376 pages of documents, court filings show. Those documents did not include tax records. A subsequent filing by the DA asserted that approximately two-thirds of those 3,376 pages consisted of non-substantive Google alerts.

On Aug. 29, the DA subpoenaed Mazars USA, Trumps accounting firm, demanding Trumps personal and business tax returns dating back to 2011, as well as work papers and financial statements. Lawyers for the president then filed suit in federal court on Sept. 19 to quash the Mazars subpoena.

The U.S. Department of Justice intervened in the case, backing Trumps request to keep the dispute in federal, rather than state, court. The DOJ supported further delays to consider Trumps claims in federal court, but it did not then take a position on the merits of the underlying dispute.

The DOJ pleadings were co-signed by the SDNY. Privately, SDNY representatives, wary of appearing to do Trumps bidding, insisted that their offices role was limited, likening it to merely serving as local counsel.

Thats when the tensions between the federal and state prosecutors surfaced but they were largely ignored by the press, which focused on the bigger issue of whether the president can quash the subpoena for his taxes. Vances office bristled at the DOJs unusual decision to jump in with support from the SDNY.

The Manhattan DAs office argued in court that the delay caused by the SDNYs request to stand down has harmed its ability to bring a case. The clock is now running out on the DAs ability to bring misdemeanor false-records charges. Because the last disguised reimbursement payment, signed by Trump, is dated Dec. 5, 2017, the two-year statute of limitations expires next month. (Convicting a person of a misdemeanor fake-records charge requires proving an intent to defraud, according to lawyers. The charge can also be prosecuted as a felony, which has a five-year statute of limitations. Proving the felony requires not only establishing an intent to defraud, but also that the intention was aimed at committing or concealing a second crime, such as claiming improper deductions on a tax return or making a false representation on a financial statement.)

At a hearing in federal court on Sept. 25, Carey Dunne, general counsel for the DAs office, complained that the feds were aiding Trumps efforts to run out the clock: It is what they want in the end. What that means, if they get further delay, basically they win and we lose, without an adjudication by this court, and thats not what should happen today.

Dunne made a similar argument in an Oct. 3 letter to the federal judge overseeing the subpoena battle. As he put it, delaying enforcement of the subpoena will likely result in the expiration of the statutes of limitation that would apply to some of the transactions at issue in the grand jury investigation. Dunne called the DOJs involvement all the more audacious in view of the fact that, until quite recently and for more than a year, DOJ prosecutors in this very district conducted a highly publicized grand jury investigation into some of the very same transactions and actors that have been reported to be at issue in this matter.

Federal district and appeals courts quickly rejected Trumps claim of blanket immunity from criminal investigation, and he has now petitioned the Supreme Court to hear his case. If the court refuses to hear it, Vances investigators could be combing through Trumps tax records by year-end. A decision to hear the case would push any resolution well into 2020.

The scrutiny of Weisselberg stems from his reported role in hiding the hush-money payments. Cohen gave congressional committees a detailed account of how, at Trumps direction, he strategized with Weisselberg in October 2016 about how to fund the $130,000 payment to Daniels.

The adult-film actress was then threatening to go public. It was a fraught moment, immediately after the broadcast of the Access Hollywood tape, in which Trump talked about grabbing women by their genitals, and just one month before Election Day.

Cohen testified that he and Weisselberg argued over which one of them should come up with the hush money. Eventually, Cohen tapped a home-equity line of credit, a funding source that would be hidden from his wife. According to government filings, it was decided the Trump Organization would reimburse Cohen through monthly payments disguised as a legal retainer, and Cohen submitted sham invoices to paper over the deceit. Along with Donald Trump Jr., Weisselberg signed two of the monthly checks for Cohen. Trump signed six others.

Prosecutors said Cohen carried out his actions in coordination with and at the direction of Trump, who they identified in filings as Individual-1. Those filings identified two other Trump Organization figures Executive-1 and Executive-2 as processing Cohens phony monthly invoices. Those two executives were the Trump Organizations controller, Jeff McConney, a 32-year veteran of the company, and Weisselberg, according to a source familiar with the matter. (Previous published reports incorrectly identified Weisselberg as Executive-1 and McConney as Executive-2.) McConney did not respond to an emailed request for comment.

One of Cohens lawyers later released a surreptitious recording Cohen made of a September 2016 conversation with Trump discussing the arrangement to pay McDougal. In it, Cohen is heard telling Trump: Ive spoken to Allen Weisselberg about how to set the whole thing up.

Cohen was the only identified participant in the scheme to be charged in the federal investigation. (In addition to federal tax and false-statement crimes, he pleaded guilty to illegal campaign contributions for the payoffs, which benefited Trumps campaign by silencing the women through Election Day.) A DOJ policy memo barring federal prosecution of a sitting president protected Trump.

That shield, however, doesnt apply in state court, making the president, Trump Organization executives including Weisselberg (whose federal immunity, as noted, also doesnt apply in state proceedings) and even the Trump Organization itself potential targets.

A company can be charged if a high-ranking officer with authority to bind the business engages in illegal conduct, according to Adam Kaufmann, a white-collar attorney and former investigations chief for the Manhattan DAs office.

Weisselbergs employment dates back to the era of Fred Trump, the presidents father, and he has a reputation as the ultimate company man. In deposition excerpts filed by the New York attorney general in her case against the Trump Foundation which resulted in its shutdown, admissions of wrongdoing and an order to pay $2 million to charity Weisselberg, who served as the foundations treasurer, was questioned about Trumps use of the charity for a political event before the Iowa presidential primary.

He described receiving a phone call one morning in January 2016, as he was preparing for a dental appointment, asking him to fly to Iowa that night to write some checks. What did he think about this request to bring the checkbook, an assistant attorney general asked. It doesnt matter what I thought, Weisselberg replied. Hes my boss. I went.

As for Cohen, he has been attempting to insert himself into the investigation as a witness. His lawyers have been laboring to reduce his three-year term, offering the carrot of Cohens cooperation regarding what they claim is a litany of Trump Organization crimes. Recently, word was conspicuously leaked that he had stories to tell about his own contact with Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, the Rudy Giuliani associates indicted for using foreign funds to influence U.S. elections.

Federal prosecutors, who last year declined to urge a major reduction in the range for Cohens projected prison term, citing a pattern of deception that permeated his entire life, among other things, have rebuffed repeated entreaties from Cohens lawyers to reengage. Cohens lawyers had hoped such cooperation would prompt federal prosecutors to request a special post-sentence Rule 35 reduction in his prison term before the one-year window for such a request expired.

The Manhattan DAs team, with different targets and no power to urge a sentence reduction, has been more receptive. At the teams last meeting with Cohen and his lawyers, they discussed the possibility of obtaining a trove of evidence that federal agents seized in the raids on Cohens apartment, office and hotel suite in April 2018. The feds recently returned a flash drive containing the evidence including files, contracts, notes and tape recordings to Cohens legal team.

Cohens legal team, which includes Lanny Davis, has also urged congressional leaders to intervene on his behalf. Cohens team is promoting a new, albeit improbable, image for the man who once was proud to call himself Trumps fixer: the John Dean of his generation.

See the article here:
Prosecutors Investigating the Trump Organization Zero In on Trump CFO Allen Weisselberg - ProPublica

Photo: Mark Wilson (Getty Images)

You do not know anyone as stupid as Donald Trump.

Even if you know a baboon with a head injury or have an uncle who dropped out of school in the first semester of kindergarten to pursue a career in the lucrative glue-eating sector, I can guarantee that they are not as rockheadedly dumb as Americas barren-brained embarrassment of a president.

On Wednesday, supplemental visual and written evidence of Donald Trumps addle-minded stupidity came in the form of photographs taken as the president stopped to deliver a nonsensical rant before boarding Air Force One and heading wherever stupid people go to do stupid things. Probably Narnia. Or Mississippi.

Oh, wait. It was an Apple factory, according to NBC:

President Donald Trump, departing the White House on his way to Texas to visit an Apple factory, stopped in front of reporters to defend himself amid U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondlands testimony Wednesday by reading from hand-written notes insisting he did not want a quid pro quo.

Trump began reading notes of what he says he spoke about during an early September phone call with Sondland, who was trying to figure out whether the roughly $400 million in military aid was being linked to whether Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy would publicly announce investigations into the Bidens and a debunked conspiracy involving Democrats and the 2016 election.

At least some of Trumps talking points were captured by a Reuters photographer outside the White House.

Yes, this dumb motherfucker lies so much that he needs crib notes! Lets examine them for a minute because 5 things really stand out.

Here is the full text of Trumps notes:

Ambassador Sondland says: What do you want from Ukraine? I keep hearing all these different ideas and theories. What do you want? It was a very short abrupt conversation. He was not in a good mood. He just said: I want nothing. I want nothing. I want no quid pro quo. Tell Zillinsky (sp) to do the right thing. This is the final word from the president of the United States.

Also, The Root was able to get this actual footage of Trump preparing his talking points.

Originally posted here:
Here Is the Full Text of Donald Trump's Sharpie Lies for the Press - The Root

President Donald Trump regularly struggles to "remember what he's said or been told," an anonymous senior government official behind a new expos on the inner workings of the White House has claimed.

Much of the nearly 260 pages of the anonymous official's tome, A Warning, which hit bookshelves on Tuesday, has been dedicated to sounding the alarm about Trump's alarming behavior.

While the anonymous author, who is described only as a "senior official in the Trump administration" admits they are not "qualified to diagnose the president's mental acuity," they can say that "normal people who spend any time with Donald Trump are uncomfortable by what they witness."

"He stumbles, slurs, gets confused, is easily irritated, and has trouble synthesizing information, not occasionally but with regularity," the official warns.

Often, they say, "the president also can't remember what he's said or been told."

"Americans are used to him denying words that have come out of his mouth," the senior official writes. "Sometimes this is to avoid responsibility."

However, they say it often "appears Trump genuinely doesn't remember important facts."

One clear example of that, the official recalls, is when the president claimed he was not sure if he had "ever even heard of a Category 5" hurricane, despite having been briefed on at least four other Category 5 hurricanes during his time in office.

"Was he forgetting these briefings?" the author questions. "Or more problematic, was he not paying attention at all? These are events that affect millions of Americans, yet they don't seem to stick in his brain."

The official writes that while Trump has often claimed to be highly intelligent, they say they have "seen the president fall flat on his face when trying to speak intelligently" on a number of topics on which he claims to be an expert.

"You can see why behind closed doors his own top officials deride him as an 'idiot' and a 'moron' with the understanding of a 'fifth or sixth grader,'" the unnamed senior official says.

In addition to questioning Trump's ability to recall basic terms that he has said or heard, the anonymous author also accuses the president of an "astounding" level of "intellectual laziness."

Asserting that Trump barely reads and has required that briefings be shorter and include fewer words and more pictures, the senior official says they are "bewildered how anyone could have run a private company on the empty mental tank President Trump relies upon every day to run the government."

"On television, a CEO-turned-showman can sit around a desk and bark orders at subordinates and then go to commercial," they write. "In real life, a successful CEO has to absorb a lot of information, about the economic climate, about his or her competitors, about product and consumer trends."

"How can you manage a sprawling organization if you won't read anything?" the author questions. "Not very well, it turns out.

While the anonymous official says some Trump defenders might be tempted to write their warnings off "as the musings of Never-Trumpers," they say, "that is not the case."

Anyone who has spent time with Trump and "would claim otherwise" of their account, the official says, is "lying to themselves or to the country."

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Trump Regularly 'Can't Remember What He's Said or Been Told,' White House Insider Says - Newsweek