Gary Cohn, the former top economic adviser to President Donald Trump, pushed back Tuesday on veteran journalist Bob Woodward’s portrayal of his time in the White House in a new book.
“This book does not accurately portray my experience at the White House,” Cohn told the news website Axios in a statement. “I am proud of my service in the Trump Administration, and I continue to support the President and his economic agenda.”
Cohn is quoted extensively in the book, titled “Fear: Trump in the White House,” and the relationship between the former Goldman Sachs executive and Trump is a key focus of Woodward’s reporting.
Some of the more explosive allegations in the book also deal with Cohn, such as the detail that the former economic adviser stole documents off of Trump’s desk to prevent the president from pulling the US out of major trade deals.
Cohn did not deny any specific allegations made in the book.
Another key figure from the book, former White House Staff Secretary Rob Porter also issued a statement on Woodward’s reporting.
“Having now read bob Woodward’s Fear, I am struck by the selective and often misleading portrait it paints of the President and his administration,” Porter said.
Porter, the other White House official named in the document theft anecdote, also addressed those allegations.
“The suggestion that materials were ‘stolen’ form the President’s desk to prevent his signature misunderstands how the White House document review process works — and has worked for at least the last eight administrations,” he said.
According to Woodward, Porter was concerned when the president demanded an order to pull the US out of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Most economists predict that a dissolution of NAFTA would be an economic disaster for the three member countries: the US, Canada, and Mexico.
After Porter told Cohn about the president’s request, the economic adviser decided to steal the document off the president’s desk to prevent Trump from signing.
“I can stop this,” Cohn told Porter per Woodward’s book. “I’ll just take the paper off his desk before I leave.”
According to Axios, Cohn’s outsize role in the book has led Trump and other administration officials to assume that Cohn was a source for Woodward. According to the author, “Fear” is based on extensive interviews with former and current members of the Trump administration, and many interviews were taped for posterity.
While the White House has denounced Woodward’s book, the scenes of dysfunction are similar to other reports about the chaotic nature of the Trump administration.
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