White House Dismisses Claims Trump 'Wanted Assad Assassinated'

President Trump has taken to Twitter to dismiss claims made in a new book (Image: PA).

The White House has dismissed claims made in a book that the US President wanted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad assassinated as "fabricated".

The book, by journalist Bob Woodward (the reporter who helped break the original watergate scandal), claims Donald Trump gave the order and alleges the US President as having told US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis: "Let’s f****** kill him! Let’s go in. Let’s kill the f****** lot of them."

Mr Mattis is said to have replied that he would "get right on it", but afterwards told an aide: "We’re not going to do any of that. We’re going to be much more measured."

The US Defense Secretary denies the claims and said in a statement:

"The contemptuous words about the President attributed to me in Woodward's book were never uttered by me or in my presence.

"While I generally enjoy reading fiction, this is a uniquely Washington brand of literature, and his anonymous sources do not lend credibility."

President Trump has himself dismissed the book's accuracy in several Twitter posts, stating he is "the exact opposite" of Mr Woodward's portrayal of him.

US Ambassador Nikki Haley denied on Tuesday that Mr Trump had ever planned to assassinate Mr Assad.

She told reporters at UN headquarters that she had been privy to conversations about the Syrian chemical weapons attacks, "and I have not once ever heard the president talk about assassinating Assad."

She said people should take what is written in books about the president with "a grain of salt".

Bob Woodward claims that senior US officials have staged "an administrative coup d’etat" against the President by ignoring many of his orders.

The book alleges that instead of assassinating Assad, the Pentagon ignored Mr Trump and eventually had him sign off on a cruise missile attack on a Syrian airfield in April 2017.

In a statement tweeted by President Trump, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that 'Fear: Trump in the White House' was "nothing more than fabricated stories, many by former disgruntled employees, told to make the President look bad".