An obscure White House staffer’s jaw-dropping Trump tell-all

That theme alone is unsurprising. It’s hardly newsworthy, for example, that the Trump-Ryan relationship was fraught. But Sims, in his up-close perch, vivifies the friction. He writes of the evening Trump watched on television as the speaker criticized his remarks in the aftermath of the white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. From his private dining room off the Oval, “jaw clenched,” Trump yelled for his secretary to get the Ryan on the phone. He then stood, clutching the remote control “like a pistol.” When his secretary gave him the go-ahead, Trump snatched up the phone.

“Paul, do you know why Democrats have been kicking your a– for decades?” his tirade began, as Sims tells it. “Because they know a little word called ‘loyalty,’ Why do you think Nancy [Pelosi] has held on this long? Have you seen her? She’s a disaster. Every time she opens her mouth another Republican gets elected. But they stick with her…Why can’t you be loyal to your president, Paul?”

His voice grew louder. “You know what else I remember? I remember being in Wisconsin and your own people were booing you. You were out there dying like a dog, Paul. Like a dog! And what’d I do? I saved your a—.”