Yellowhammer's Cliff Sims Reacts To Comments From Donald Trump

WASHINGTON, DC - Birmingham's Cliff Sims, founder of the conservative news site Yellowhammer News, has written a tell-all book on his days on the Trump staff, titled “Team of Vipers: My 500 Extraordinary Days in the Trump White House.” Sims worked as the special assistant to the President and as the director of White House message strategy, before resigning last year, and Trump had some choice words to rebut Sims' account of his time with the Trump staff.

The New Yorker describes the book as "a gossipy tell-all, sprinkled with stories of Trump yelling at Paul Ryan, Sims battling John Kelly, and a West Wing full of unseemly people looking out for their own interests."

Trump said via Twitter Tuesday, “A low level staffer that I hardly knew named Cliff Sims wrote yet another boring book based on made up stories and fiction. He pretended to be an insider when in fact he was nothing more than a gofer. He signed a non-disclosure agreement. He is a mess!”

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Sims said he enjoyed his time serving the Trump administration and has no ill will toward Trump. "I am proud to have worked for the American people, proud to have worked in the White House," Sims told The New Yorker. "And proud to have worked in the Donald Trump White House, in spite of a lot of the misgivings that I had, and I lay them all out in the book. It is an opportunity of a lifetime, and I am glad I did it."

Sims added, however, "I think I am pretty clear in the title, 'Team of Vipers,' that it is a tough place to work. But, you know, I include myself in the team of vipers, and certainly there were things I did there that I wish I had done differently at various times."

Despite some somewhat unflattering descriptions of the Trump White House, Sims says in his book, "I personally never witnessed a single thing behind closed doors that gave me any reason to believe Trump was consciously, overtly racist. If I had, I could not have possibly worked for him." Sims told The New Yorker that Trump is "very gregarious and a great host. I really don’t think there is a racist bone in his body. I can keep going on this, though, because I have thought a lot about this."

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