When Donald Trump starts tweeting about a book weeks before it comes out, you know he’s worried.

Bob Woodward is a Navy veteran, began the investigation which eventually uncovered Watergate, and has come to be known as one of the finest investigative journalists America has ever produced.

He’s also the author of Fear: Trump in the White House, the explosive new book that has once again illustrated what a mess the White House really is, with Donald Trump front and centre.

Much like Fire and Fury, written by Michael Wolff and released earlier this year, it doesn’t reflect well on the nation’s leading decision makers.

The book will be released next week, but excerpts have already been published. Below, the Atlantic picks out some of the most explosive lines:

Defense Secretary James Mattis

Following a contentious National Security Council meeting, Mattis told people close to him that the president had the understanding of “a fifth- or sixth-grader.”

Chief of Staff John Kelly (below) on Trump:

“He’s an idiot. It’s pointless to try to convince him of anything. He’s gone off the rails. We’re in Crazytown. I don’t even know why any of us are here. This is the worst job I’ve ever had.”

Former Personal Attorney John Dowd

“You are not a good witness … Mr. President, I’m afraid I just can’t help you,” Dowd told Trump in a meeting in which he counseled the president not to agree to an interview with Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

Earlier, Dowd told Mueller why he didn’t want Trump to testify. “I’m not going to sit there and let him look like an idiot. And you publish that transcript, because everything leaks in Washington, and the guys overseas are going to say, ‘I told you he was an idiot. I told you he was a goddamn dumbbell. What are we dealing with this idiot for?’”

Former Chief of Staff Reince Priebus

While serving as chief of staff, Priebus expressed discontent with the president’s social-media habits. He called the president’s bedroom—where he watches cable news—“the devil’s workshop,” and referred to the hours when Trump tweets as “the witching hour.”

Ironic, considering Trump tweets about being the victim of a witch-hunt every other day.

Those are just the stand-out quotes, but there’s more dirt over on the Washington Post, who shed further light on the lengths those closest to the president go to prevent disaster.

In particular, where it relates to issues of national security:

Again and again, Woodward recounts at length how Trump’s national security team was shaken by his lack of curiosity and knowledge about world affairs and his contempt for the mainstream perspectives of military and intelligence leaders…

In Woodward’s telling, many top advisers were repeatedly unnerved by Trump’s actions and expressed dim views of him. “Secretaries of defense don’t always get to choose the president they work for,” Mattis told friends at one point, prompting laughter as he explained Trump’s tendency to go off on tangents about subjects such as immigration and the news media…

Few in Trump’s orbit were protected from the president’s insults. He often mocked then-national security adviser H.R. McMaster [below] behind his back, puffing up his chest and exaggerating his breathing as he impersonated the retired Army general, and once said McMaster dresses in cheap suits, “like a beer salesman.”

A near-constant subject of withering presidential attacks was Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Trump told Porter that Sessions was a “traitor” for recusing himself from overseeing the Russia investigation, Woodward writes. Mocking Sessions’s accent, Trump added: “This guy is mentally retarded. He’s this dumb Southerner. . . . He couldn’t even be a one-person country lawyer down in Alabama.”

That would be a pretty direct assault on a large part of his voter base.

There was always going to be a John McCain insult or two thrown somewhere into the mix:

At a dinner with Mattis [below] and Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, among others, Trump lashed out at a vocal critic, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). He painted the former Navy pilot as cowardly, falsely suggesting he took an early release from a prisoner-of-war camp in Vietnam because of his father’s military rank and left others behind.

Mattis swiftly corrected his boss: “No, Mr. President, I think you’ve got it reversed.” The defense secretary explained that McCain, who died Aug. 25, had in fact turned down early release and was brutally tortured during his five years at the “Hanoi Hilton.”

“Oh, okay,” Trump replied, according to Woodward’s account.

At other points, defying Trump meant physically removing things off his desk. Before Trump could sign the letter to formally withdraw the United States from a trade agreement with South Korea, it was yanked from his desk.

He never noticed, and nor did he notice when a notification letter to withdraw from NAFTA never arrived on his desk, despite having asked for it to be drawn up.

How about massively regretting his comments in Charlottesville, where neo-Nazis and white supremacists gathered, with one of them killing a counter-protester?

Trump regrets it, but not for the reason you would think:

Trump was sharply criticized for initially saying that “both sides” were to blame. At the urging of advisers, he then condemned white supremacists and neo-Nazis but almost immediately told aides, “That was the biggest fucking mistake I’ve made” and the “worst speech I’ve ever given,” according to Woodward’s account.

We know that former chief White House strategist Steve Bannon didn’t get along with Ivanka, but how about this for a showdown:

“You’re a goddamn staffer!” Bannon screamed at her, telling her that she had to work through Priebus like other aides. “You walk around this place and act like you’re in charge, and you’re not. You’re on staff!”

Ivanka Trump, who had special access to the president and worked around Priebus, replied: “I’m not a staffer! I’ll never be a staffer. I’m the first daughter.”

I imagine she stomped her feet whilst saying that.

You knew Donald would come out swinging on Twitter, and he fired off a number of rebukes overnight, culminating in this:

Who to believe – Donald Trump, or a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has spent half a century in the game, and never had his integrity questioned.

Tough call.

[sources:atlantic&washpost]