Trump Thought Fiona Hil Was a Secretary, Called Her ‘Darlin’: Book

• Trump called Fiona Hill “darlin'” and mistook her for a secretary after a phone call with Putin, Hill wrote in her new book.
• Hill was the top Russia expert on the National Security Council.
• “Trump essentially thought everyone at the National Security Council was a secretary,” she wrote.

Then-President Donald Trump called the top Russia expert in the White House “darlin'” and mistook her for a secretary during an Oval Office meeting in May 2017. That’s according to Fiona Hill’s new book, “There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century.”

In fact, Hill was Trump’s top Russia advisor on the National Security Council (NSC). In her memoir, she wrote that the incident happened after Trump spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin on the phone.

She wrote that Trump expressed “great satisfaction” with the phone call and thought Putin was “calm, measured,” and friendly, and that Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner agreed. But Hill, who’s authored a biography on Putin, felt differently. “I had detected more menace in what Putin had to say,” she wrote.

Hill said she wanted to interject and voice her concerns but that Trump was primarily interested in putting out a press release about the call.

“He had no interest in the substance at all, just the fact that he had a ‘good’ call with Putin and that Ivanka and Jared had agreed. The whole thing was slightly surreal,” Hill wrote. She added that Trump asked her to type up changes he wanted made to the press release, but Hill didn’t initially realize he was talking about her.

“Suddenly he was practically yelling — ‘Hey, darlin’, are you listening? Are you paying attention?'” Trump said to Hill, according to the book. “The president clearly thought I was part of the Executive Secretariat … He wanted me to type up the revised press release.”