Donald Trump reportedly called a staffer an “idiot” and shouted “you f***ing listen” at him after the aide made a small mistake.
The shocking allegations were made by former House Speaker John Boehner who took a series of swipes at the former president in his new book called ‘On the House: A Washington Memoir.’
While the Republican ex-speaker praised Trump’s golfing skills and insisted he played golf with a handicap of five, Boehner recalled the 45th US President as a “direct, loud, intense” man.
“He was very friendly, but in an in-your-face, this-is-how-they-talk-in-New-York kind of a way that I was not used to at all. Direct, loud, intense,” he penned in an excerpt obtained by Punchbowl News ahead of the book’s scheduled release on April 13.
“Pretty much the same guy who got elected to the White House. I can tell you that with Trump, what you saw was what you got – for better or worse.”
Boehner also recalled the time he was selected to play in a pair with Trump against insurance executives whom the latter allegedly referred to as turkeys.
“‘Boehner!’ Trump said when we were ready to start. ‘You and I are gonna take these two turkeys on and whip ‘em.’ That was okay with me,” the former House Speaker wrote.
He went on to claim that Trump asked his aide, John ‘BJ’ Criscuolo, about the names of the executives they were paired against only for the staffer to give the former president wrong names.
“‘I think they’re Joe and Jeff,’ BJ told him. So Trump said hello to Joe and hello to Jeff and we set off,” Boehner wrote. As he added, the truth finally came out after Trump once again referred to his opponents using wrong names at the end of the match by saying: “Good match, Joe. Well done, Jeff.”
“Finally, one of the guys stopped us. He had kind of a weird look on his face, and I could see something awkward was coming. ‘Guys,’ he said, ‘our names are Mike and David,’” Boehner recalled.
“We had been calling these guys the wrong names over and over, all day long, and they were either too polite or too shy to correct us the whole time.”
While everyone, including the executives and the ex-speaker found the gaffe hilarious, Trump reportedly reacted furiously.
“This sort of glower fell across his face. The kind of look I could tell that you didn’t want to see too often if you happened to work for him,” the author added.
“He marched over to BJ and got right in his face to the point that BJ might have had to take a step or two back. Then Trump shouted, ‘What are you, some kind of idiot? These guys’ names are Mike and David!’
“Then he gave the young man a piece of advice that he – and I – have never forgotten. And I hesitate to put an expletive in the mouth of a former president of the United States, but here it goes anyway. ‘You want to know how to remember somebody’s name?’ Trump asked. ‘You f***ing LISTEN!’”
While Boehner admitted he often laughed about the incident with his aide, he claimed there was something “dark” about it that he had never seen before.
“I’d never seen anybody treat a staffer like that – not in politics, not ever. This was more than New York bluster. This was real anger, over something very, very small. We had no idea then what that anger would do to our country,” he said according to the excerpt.
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Replaced!