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President Donald Trump holds a campaign rally at Drake University in Des Moines
- An excerpt from a new book by two of the Daily Beast's political reporters details some of Trump's favorite media "obsessions."
- The book alleges that Trump fixated on Meghan McCain's weight, and called NBC anchor Katy Tur a "bitch" and used transphobic remarks while speaking about Tur's parent, Zoey Tur.
- The excerpt also delves into Trump's relationship with MSNBC's "The Morning Show" co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski and Jon, Mary Kaye, and Abby Huntsman.
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President Donald Trump's bombastic relationship with the media and his own communications team are captured in a new book excerpt that details Trump's often personal attacks on female journalists and associates.
The excerpt from the book, "Sinking in the Swamp: How Trump's Minions and Misfits Poisoned Washington," by The Daily Beast's Lachlan Markay and Asawin Suebsaeng, chronicles Trump's insults about Tur and McCain, MSNBC's "The Morning Show" hosts Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski, and the View co-host Abby Huntsman.
Tur first interviewed Trump in July 2015, weeks after Trump launched his campaign by calling Mexicans "rapists." Trump mocked Tur, calling her a "very naive person" at one point of the interview. At a rally a year after the interview, he called her a "third-rate journalist," prompting views from the crowd.
The book alleges that Trump called Tur "that bitch with a tranny dad" to aides and friends. Tur's biological father, Zoey Tur, is a journalist who covered the LA riots and OJ Simpson's Bronco chase. She announced her transition in 2013. In a 2016 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Zoey Tur called Trump "mentally ill" and a "fascist."
Trump's well-documented feud with John McCain spilled over into his perception of McCain's daughter.
Meghan McCain, who herself has insulted Trump on The View multiple times, was the target of Trump's insults when he asked one person over the phone if "She's been getting fatter?" and said that she was "dumber" than her father, according to the book. The other person on the phone muted the phone and put it on speakerphone at one point during a minute-and-a-half tirade about McCain so that other people could hear Trump insulting McCain's cheeks and waistline.
One anecdote in the excerpt focuses on Trump's communications staff, who rarely spoke with the then-candidate, but encountered Trump when he wandered into the staff's "war room" one day in September 2016 and proceeded to ask his staffers whether CNN or MSNBC was worse. He also apparently alluded to an alleged affair between MSNBC's The Morning Show co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, who are now married.
"You know, nobody else knows about it, but I know about Joe and Mika's little apartment in the Upper East Side," Trump said, according to the book.
Scarborough and Brzezinski were then invited to the war room merely days later, as part of a meeting brokered by Jared Kushner.
Trump also found a way to make comments about the appearance of the wife and daughter of his then-ambassador to Russia, Jon Huntsman. Huntsman, whose daughter Abby Huntsman was formerly a Fox News anchor and one of McCain's co-hosts on The View, brought his wife to a White House meeting with a North Korean diplomat.
Upon meeting Mary Kaye Huntsman, Jon's wife, Trump said: "Now I know how Abby lost all her baby weight so fast!"
"Sinking in the Swamp: How Trump's Minions and Misfits Poisoned Washington," will be published on February 11th.