Apparently, the president* has been livening up his personal tours of the White House by talking about the places where Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky had their encounters, and that he also slanders Barack Obama for the benefit of his guests. At least, that's what the Washington Post tells us.

Flashing a grin, he wants his friends to see where Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky reportedly began their sexual encounters. “We’ve remodeled it since then,” he said on a tour in December, said a person with direct knowledge of the event. In a visit in 2017, Trump told a TV anchor, “I’m told this is where Bill and Monica . . .” — stopping himself from going further, according to “Team of Vipers,” a new book by former White House aide Cliff Sims that The Washington Post obtained before its publication Tuesday.

Three other people who have embarked on a tour with Trump said he made similar comments regarding the former president and White House intern, laughing and making facial expressions. The subject often leads to lengthy, sometimes crass conversations, aides said.

No kidding. Electing the Keeper of the Golden Commode has led to crass conversations echoing through those sacred halls? There was no way anyone could have predicted that.

The president has also claimed to guests, without evidence, that his private dining room off the Oval Office was in “rough shape” and had a hole in the wall when he came into the West Wing and that President Barack Obama used it to watch sports, according to two White House officials and two other people who have heard him discuss the dining room. “He just sat in here and watched basketball all day,” Trump told a recent group, before saying he upgraded Obama’s smaller TV to a sprawling, flat-screen one, the four people said.

No kidding. Electing someone whose campaign rhetoric was shot through with truthless racist slanders has resulted in truthless racist slanders resounding through The Residence? There was no way anyone could have predicted that, either.

The Washington Post Getty Images

But that wasn't the most exquisite bit of insanity to emerge from the presidential* casino and day-spa this week. That came from The New York Times, which reported that a whole exaltation of the wingiest of the Beltway wingnuts paid a visit.

During the meeting last Thursday in the Roosevelt Room, which was attended by about a half-dozen White House aides, one woman argued that women should not serve in the military because they had less muscle mass and lung capacity than men did, according to those familiar with the events. At another point, someone said that gay marriage, which the Supreme Court determined in 2015 was the law of the land, was harming the fabric of the United States. And another attendee was dismissive that sexual assault is pervasive in the military.

The leader of this delegation from the Phantom Zone was Ginni Thomas, the controversial spouse of Justice Clarence Thomas of the United States Supreme Court. She was accompanied by the chief of staff in the office of Congressman Louie Gohmert, Padishah Emperor for life of the crazy people. (The latter was masquerading as a "conservative columnist.") It is obviously improper for the wife of a Supreme Court justice to show up at the White House to lobby for her ideological soulmates. But Ginni Thomas's rap sheet is not that of the average SCOTUS spouse. She has been the wildest of wild cards.

She deals in paranoid social media. She trafficked in all manner of slander during the pursuit of Bill Clinton in the 1990s. She has organized a political lobbying and advocacy group that commands a serious audience, and that wields considerable influence on the hard right. In her most famous escapade, in 2010, out of the clear blue, Thomas called Anita Hill, the woman whose sexual harassment claims nearly derailed Clarence Thomas's nomination, and demanded that Hill apologize, which was a thing that did not happen. From The New York Times:

In a voice mail message left at 7:31 a.m. on Oct. 9, a Saturday, Virginia Thomas asked her husband’s former aide-turned-adversary to make amends. Ms. Hill played the recording, from her voice mail at Brandeis University, for The New York Times. “Good morning Anita Hill, it’s Ginni Thomas,” it said. “I just wanted to reach across the airwaves and the years and ask you to consider something. I would love you to consider an apology sometime and some full explanation of why you did what you did with my husband.”

Virginia Thomas sits behind her husband, Clarance, at the Anita Hill hearings. JENNIFER K. LAW Getty Images

Ms. Thomas went on: “So give it some thought. And certainly pray about this and hope that one day you will help us understand why you did what you did. O.K., have a good day.” Ms. Hill, in an interview, said she had kept the message for nearly a week trying to decide whether the caller really was Ms. Thomas or a prankster. Unsure, she said, she decided to turn it over to the Brandeis campus police with a request to convey it the Federal Bureau of Investigation. “I thought it was certainly inappropriate,” Ms. Hill said. “It came in at 7:30 a.m. on my office phone from somebody I didn’t know, and she is asking for an apology. It was not invited. There was no background for it.”

She's still out there on the fringes, too, cold-calling democracy and disturbing its peace.



More recently, she hired as an assistant a woman fired by the conservative group Turning Point USA for texting a colleague a year earlier that “I HATE BLACK PEOPLE.” The woman, Crystal Clanton, was on the list of people Ms. Thomas’s group asked to have attend the meeting, the people familiar with the sit-down said. She has also drawn criticism for sharing social media posts promoting conspiracy theories, including one suggesting that the billionaire philanthropist George Soros was working against Mr. Trump and that Democrats had committed voter fraud during last year’s midterm elections. Shortly before the elections, Ms. Thomas also shared a misleading post about the caravan of migrants traveling toward the United States.

This is a very strange White House these days.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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