Book by figure described as administration official says colleagues considered mass resignations to raise alarm, according to Washington Post

The anonymous author of a widely anticipated book on the Trump White House has described the US president as spiraling from crisis to crisis “like a 12-year-old in an air traffic control tower”, according to scathing extracts published by the Washington Post on Thursday.

The unnamed author, identified only as “a senior official in the Trump administration”, also says that colleagues considered resigning en masse in order to raise alarm about the president’s conduct, but ultimately decided against it, according to the Post.

The extracts obtained by the Post are due to appear in A Warning, a book written by the unnamed person who last year wrote a New York Times column critical of the president. They paint Trump as volatile and incompetent, while also describing how he made racist and misogynistic statements in private.

In the book, the author describes Trump’s approach to the presidency as “like a 12-year-old in an air traffic control tower, pushing the buttons of government indiscriminately, indifferent to the planes skidding across the runway and the flights frantically diverting away from the airport”.

The author also describes how Trump’s impulsive Twitter antics often left senior officials “waking up in the morning ‘in a full-blown panic’”.

“It’s like showing up at the nursing home at daybreak to find your elderly uncle running pantsless across the courtyard and cursing loudly about the cafeteria food, as worried attendants tried to catch him,” the author writes, according to the Post. “You’re stunned, amused, and embarrassed all at the same time. Only your uncle probably wouldn’t do it every single day, his words aren’t broadcast to the public, and he doesn’t have to lead the US government once he puts his pants on.”

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The White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham criticized the book and the author’s decision to remain anonymous.

“The coward who wrote this book didn’t put their name on it because it is nothing but lies,” she said on Thursday.

She said reporters should “cover the book as what it is: a work of fiction”.

Quick guide Books that exposed the inner workings of Donald Trump's White House Show Hide Michael Wolff – Fire and Fury Wolff’s sensational White House exposé paints Donald Trump as a childlike nonentity. It alleges the self-styled "very stable genius” has been described as an idiot by Rupert Murdoch and a moron by Rex Tillerson. Wolff says the thing that interests the US president most is watching himself on television. “I consider it to be fiction,” said Trump of the book. Many others were not so sure. Read the review. Sean Spicer – The Briefing Sean Spicer's 182 days as press secretary yielded a book that tells of a White House where people would routinely bring in "burner phones" to avoid being caught leaking, He describes Trump as sometimes being his own worst enemy with his manic tweeting, and recalls his downfall essentially started on day one, when Spicer was responsible for attempts to spin the news on the president's dismal inauguration crowds. Perhaps, though, the highlight is when Spicer describes Trump as “a unicorn riding a unicorn over a rainbow'. Read the review. Omarosa Manigault Newman – Unhinged The most prominent African American in the Trump White House before she was abruptly dismissed, Newman spread her criticism liberally. Her description of the vice-president, Mike Pence, as the "Stepford veep" is one of the kinder sideswipes. Of the more jaw-dropping revelations, the suggestion Trump had initially asked to be sworn in over a copy of The Art of the Deal, instead of the Bible, is a hard image to shake. Read the review. Cliff Sims – Team of Vipers Cliff Sims' book suggested he had made enemies and alienated people throughout the administration. He was particularly scathing about Sarah Sanders, Trump’s former press secretary. Her “gymnastics with the truth", he said, "would tax even the nimblest of prevaricators, and Sanders was not that”. Read the review. Anonymous – A Warning From a senior official in the Trump administration – and so many have left and fallen out with the president – Trump is described as “like a 12-year-old in an air traffic control tower”. The unknown author adds: “It’s like showing up at the nursing home at daybreak to find your elderly uncle running pants-less across the courtyard and cursing loudly about the cafeteria food, as worried attendants tried to catch him” John Bolton - The Room Where It Happened John Bolton’s damning indictment of the Trump presidency soared up the chart despite withering reviews describing it as “bloated with self-importance”, after the Trump administration made a last-ditch attempt to prevent its publication. The book claimed that Trump pleaded with China to help win the 2020 election, he suggested he was open to serving more than two terms, offered favours to authoritarian leaders, praised Xi for China’s internment camps and thought Finland was part of Russia.

The Post said the author decided to publish the work anonymously so as not to distract from the president and the larger issues.

“I have decided to publish this anonymously because this debate is not about me,” the official writes. “It is about us. It is about how we want the presidency to reflect our country, and that is where the discussion should center. Some will call this ‘cowardice’. My feelings are not hurt by the accusation. Nor am I unprepared to attach my name to criticism of President Trump. I may do so, in due course.”

The book includes passages describing Trump allegedly making misogynistic and racist comments behind the scenes, commenting on people’s weight or appearance, and at one point describes the president as trying to affect a Hispanic accent during an Oval Office meeting to complain about migrants crossing the US-Mexico border.

In one alleged incident, Trump said: “We get these women coming in with like seven children. They are saying, ‘Oh, please help! My husband left me!’ They are useless. They don’t do anything for our country. At least if they came in with a husband we could put him in the fields to pick corn or something.”

The unnamed author’s original op-ed in the New York Times, headlined I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration, alleged that some senior White House officials collaborated to protect the country and public from some of Trump’s most dangerous and irresponsible impulses.

Agencies contributed reporting