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US President Donald Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows issued a vociferous defense of Donald Trump after an audio recording emerged of the president’s sister and said he was a rampant liar with no principles. She also alleged that he didn’t take his own SATs, tests widely used by universities in their admissions process. Meadows rejected a claim in an interview with ABC‘s This Week that has been repeatedly leveled at Trump and that he doesn’t read. He said, “You may see it when he goes to Marine One. There’s a cardboard box that is brought on Marine One, what is in there are clippings and clippings, each and every day. He reads probably more than anybody I know which causes me to have to read more because every morning he’s given me a to-do list, every evening he’s given me a to-do list”.

Meadows was responding to audio recording and it was first reported by The Washington Post. It contains snippets of more than 15 hours of face-to-face conversations between the president’s niece and sister, Mary Trump and Maryanne Trump Barry, respectively. Maryanne Trump Barry is a retired federal judge who is nine years older than her brother. Barry said, “All he wants to do is appeal to his base”. He said in a conversation secretly recorded by her niece. When asked by Mary Trump what the president reads, Barry was blunt. She said, “He doesn’t read”. Trump has been alleged by unnamed White House staffers in numerous reports of not reading daily intelligence briefings.

This has been blamed for the president’s slow response to the coronavirus and inaction over reports that Russia was paying bounties to Afghan militants to kill US troops. Meadows said, “I can tell you this, the president is committed to this country, loves this country. The one principle that he talks to me about is. What can we do to serve the American people better? And he’s been very consistent in that. So listen, this is politics as usual, by a niece that was written out of a will that apparently just has an ax to grind because she wants Joe Biden to be president”. Barry said her brother has no principles. And his base, I mean my God, if you were a religious person, you want to help people. Not do this”.