President Trump has told the White House cleaning staff to keep their hands off his stuff, because he fears being poisoned, a new book claims.
According to an excerpt of “Fire and Fury” published in New York magazine, Trump has a chronic fear of poisoning. So when he moved into his bedroom in the White House, he told the housekeeping staff not to touch anything, especially his toothbrush. He also admonished them for attempting to retrieve one of his shirts from the carpet. “If my shirt is on the floor, it’s because I want it on the floor,” author Michael Wolff quotes him as saying.
Fear of being poisoned is also supposedly why the president favors McDonald’s, the book says: The food is premade and can be secretly picked up for him. (Although it’s been reported elsewhere that he’s had the White House chefs attempt to replicate Quarter Pounders, to his inevitable dissatisfaction.)
The book also reports that Trump tells the cleaning staff when he wants his sheets laundered, then strips the bed himself, and that the president and first lady Melania Trump occupy separate bedrooms, the first such arrangement since the Kennedy administration in the ’60s.
“Fire and Fury” will be released on January 9 and has already shot to No. 1 on the Amazon best-seller list on the strength of several explosive excerpts. In the book, Wolff reports that the Trump campaign team did not plan to win the election and were unpleasantly shocked when it happened. Former presidential adviser Steve Bannon is quoted as saying Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with a Russian lawyer was “treasonous.” Trump Sr. is depicted as attempting to manipulate his friends’ wives into having sex with him.
Wolff says his account is based on behind-the-scenes West Wing access and hundreds of hours of taped interviews with current and former staffers. The White House has sent Wolff a cease-and-desist letter and is asking for the book to be withdrawn, an attempt that First Amendment lawyers say has no chance of succeeding.
