Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said President Donald Trump had the understanding of “a fifth- or sixth-grader,” according to accounts of journalist Bob Woodward’s book. | Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images ‘Idiot,’ ‘Dope,’ ‘Moron’: How Trump’s aides have insulted the boss

President Donald Trump has hurled numerous insults at Democrats, the news media and even those in his own party.

But the president has also been on the receiving end, including from people who work in his administration.


“Fear: Trump in the White House,” by Bob Woodward, is the latest book to detail chaos in the president’s immediate orbit. Excerpts were published Tuesday and immediately brought to mind several disparaging comments that Trump’s staff is reported to have made about the commander in chief:

• Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Trump had the understanding of “a fifth- or sixth-grader,” according to accounts of Woodward’s book that were published by The Washington Post . The comments came after a National Security Council meeting on Jan. 19 in which Trump questioned why the government was using resources to maintain a U.S. military presence on the Korean Peninsula. Mattis told Trump that presence was necessary “in order to prevent World War III.”

• White House chief of staff John Kelly called Trump “an idiot” and said he thought the president was “unhinged,” The Post also reported. NBC News first reported in May that Kelly had referred to the president as an idiot multiple times, in addition to making several remarks “insulting the president’s intelligence and casting himself as the savior of the country.” Kelly has denied that he ever called Trump an idiot.

• Omarosa Manigault Newman, who was the highest-ranking African-American staffer in the West Wing, claimed in a book published earlier this summer that Trump is a “racist, misogynist and bigot.” In her book, “Unhinged,” Manigault Newman said she witnessed Trump use racial epithets while describing presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway’s husband, George Conway, who is half Filipino.

• Earlier this year, Michael Wolff detailed in his book “Fire and Fury” that a number of individuals in the Trump administration insulted the president’s intelligence. Both Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and former chief of staff Reince Priebus called Trump an “idiot,” Wolff wrote. Former economic adviser Gary Cohn said Trump was “dumb as shit,” and former national security adviser H.R. McMaster said the president was a “dope,” according to the book.

• Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon said in November 2017 that Trump was “like an 11-year-old child,” according to Vanity Fair . He also said that Trump had “lost his step.” Bannon had left the White House in August 2017.

• Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in July 2017 called Trump a “moron,” NBC News reported . The comments came after Tillerson had a meeting at the Pentagon with members of the White House national security team and Cabinet officials.

• At a dinner in July 2017, McMaster mocked Trump, also calling him an “idiot,” BuzzFeed News reported . At the dinner, which was with Oracle CEO Safra Catz, McMaster also said Trump was a “dope” with the intelligence of a “kindergartner,” according to that report.