President Donald Trump has denied referring to Attorney General Jeff Sessions as "mentally retarded" and a "dumb southerner," following the release of a new book by Bob Woodward that suggested the president used the slurs about Sessions.
Woodward's book Fear: Trump in the White House, which is set for release on September 11, claims the president mocked the attorney general's accent and suggested he "couldn't even be a one-person country lawyer down in Alabama"—things Trump immediately pushed back on following the release of excerpts of the book to the press.
"The already discredited Woodward book, so many lies and phony sources, has me calling Jeff Sessions 'mentally retarded' and 'a dumb southerner,'" Trump tweeted late on Tuesday night.
"I said NEITHER, never used those terms on anyone, including Jeff, and being a southerner is a GREAT thing. He made this up to divide!" he added.
The already discredited Woodward book, so many lies and phony sources, has me calling Jeff Sessions “mentally retarded” and “a dumb southerner.” I said NEITHER, never used those terms on anyone, including Jeff, and being a southerner is a GREAT thing. He made this up to divide!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 5, 2018
The president's claim he did not call Sessions a dumb southerner came alongside a flurry of tweets on the topic—during which he shared White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders' rebuttal of claims in the book as "nothing more than fabricated stories," and a number of articles in which claims in the book were dismissed by those people they were attributed to.
Earlier in the evening, the president wrote suggesting that Woodward, who famously reported on Watergate and has written a number of books on U.S. presidents, was a Democrat operative.
"The Woodward book has already been refuted and discredited by General (Secretary of Defense) James Mattis and General (Chief of Staff) John Kelly. Their quotes were made up frauds, a con on the public. Likewise other stories and quotes. Woodward is a Dem operative? Notice timing? " the president wrote.
Although the president has slammed the book since excerpts were released to the press, audio shared by The Washington Post reveals that the president contacted Woodward after the manuscript had been completed and suggested he should contribute.
The president told Woodward he believed it would be "a bad book," The Post reported, to which Woodward replied that the book would be "tough" but based on factual reporting.
