Did General John Hyten really call Trump an 'idiot' and say Melania is 'smarter than President'?
News that President Donald Trump is facing criticism from people in his own administration has come to the fore again. According to a testimony which was part of a sexual assault allegation involving Vice Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff John Hyten, the latter called Trump "an idiot" and said Melania Trump is "smarter than the president."
A report came up on July 22 on retired col. Kathy Spletstoser who accused Hyten of assault in 2017 and alleged that the military was trying to hide records because the testimony could harm the top Pentagon official's career, according to The Washington Post. In a part of the testimony she revealed to the Post, Spletstoser spoke on Hyten's opinion about the president and Melania after he dined with them in October 2017, less than a year after the Republican came to office.
According to the Post which cited notes that Spletstoser took during a briefing on the dinner and later gave to the Air Force investigators, Hyten told her and other staff members that Trump "is an idiot". "He is just a businessman without a basic understanding of national security. Everything is a business transaction for him and making money is winning to him and the only thing that matters," the top official said.
According to the notes, Hyten also said that Trump wanted to sell nuclear-powered submarines to South Korea and he had a talk with him to explain why that was not a good idea. He said everything is a business deal for the president. The 60-year-old veteran then spoke positively about Melania Trump saying after talking to her for quite some time about the locations of America's intercontinental ballistic missile fields, he found her to be "more inquisitive and smarter than the president".
The Post sent the entire content of Spletstoser's testimony to Hyten but he refused to issue a comment. The White House also said it is "not familiar" with any such conversation.
The Department of Defense said the records that the former Army official wants do not fall under the federal Freedom of Information Act. Hyten and his legal representatives have called Spletstoser's charges as "unsubstantiated". The probe, which was triggered by a complaint that Spletstoser filed with the Air Force in April last year when Hyten was still to take up his current role, has neither supported her version nor completely exonerated the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
John Bolton made similar revelations
A few weeks ago, former national security adviser John Bolton also made similar revelations about the president in his new tell-all White House memoir 'The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir'. Among the many allegations that he brought against Trump with whom he has a sour relation now, Bolton said the latter had no idea about Britain being a nuclear power, thought Finland was a part of Russia and even asked China to help him get elected for the second term. The Trump administration tried the legal way to stop the book's release but the court said it was futile to do so since its contents have already been leaked in public.