Then-President Donald Trump blew up talks at the White House about a national security issue by ranting about adult film star Stormy Daniels, according to Randall Stephenson, the former CEO of AT&T.
Stephenson recounted the incident to New York Times reporter David Sanger whose book, New Cold Wars: China’s Rise, Russia’s Invasion, and America’s Struggle to Defend the West is set to be released Tuesday. A copy was obtained by The Guardian ahead of its release.
Stephenson told Sanger that he was summoned to the Oval Office in 2019 to discuss Chinese threats to US telecommunications networks. Trump had seen him on TV talking about China and wanted to discuss the matter further with him.
But, it was not to be as then-President Trump spent the first 45 minutes of their one hour meeting ranting about Daniels.
“Trump burned up the first 45 minutes of the meeting by riffing on how men got into trouble,” Sanger writes. “It was all about women and private planes, he claimed. Then he went into a long diatribe about Stormy Daniels, the former porn star who claimed she had had an affair with him. It was ‘all part of the same stand-up comedy act’, Stephenson later recalled … and ‘we were left with 15 minutes to talk about Chinese infrastructure.’”
Stephenson told Sanger that he “could see that the president’s mind was elsewhere” and when they finally started discussing the reason why Stephenson was there, then-President Trump reportedly told him “this is really boring.”
When Trump’s daughter and adviser, Ivanka entered the Oval Office, Stephenson used that as an excuse to change the subject then left the meeting.
The report comes days before Trump is set to go on trial in New York on 34 criminal counts of allegedly falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment to Daniels during the 2016 presidential election.
