According to two sources with knowledge of the matter, and another person close to Trump, the ex-president has spent an inordinate amount of the past few days privately railing against Meadows, the revelation in the memoir, and, of course, the extensive media coverage of the matter.

Both in conversations with confidants, social pals over the phone, or in person, Trump has made a point of aggressively scolding his former chief of staff behind his back this week. The former president has, for instance, said that he didn’t know ahead of time that Meadows was putting that “garbage” about the positive test in his memoir, two of the people said…

The source close to the ex-president said that, at one point in the past few days, Trump bemoaned that Meadows had been so—in Trump’s succinct phrasing—“fucking stupid” with his book.