Cliff Sims on Tuesday shared several photos of him with President Trump inside the White House after Trump dismissed the former staffer as “nothing more than a gofer.”
Sims appeared to use the new moniker to publicize the release of his book, “Team of Vipers.”
“Written by the most famous ‘gofer’ in the world!” Sims wrote on Twitter.
{mosads}Sims also responded to the claim that he was a “low level” staffer who barely knew the president by sharing several photos of them together.
The pictures showed the two men walking together down a White House corridor and gathered around the president’s desk in the Oval Office with other staffers.
One photo even included a handwritten note the president had left on a Dec. 14, 2017, copy of The New York Times after the final GOP tax bill was announced.
“Cliff great job! Thanks,” the president appeared to write.
Trump’s attacks against Sims came on the day his tell-all book about his time in the administration was released.
“A low level staffer that I hardly knew named Cliff Sims wrote yet another boring book based on made up stories and fiction,” Trump tweeted.
“He pretended to be an insider when in fact he was nothing more than a gofer. He signed a non-disclosure agreement,” he added. “He is a mess!”
Trump’s tweets mark the first time the president has publicly commented on the book, although several current and former White House officials told Politico that Trump is “really hopping mad” over the book.
“Who is this guy? Why is he writing this book? He wasn’t even in meetings,” Trump reportedly said Monday, dismissing Sims as “the videographer.”
Sims previously served as the director of White House message strategy and a special assistant to the president, reportedly spending time alone with Trump crafting messaging strategy around the 2017 tax reform legislation. He also worked on Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
He left his position in May after serving roughly 18 months in the Trump administration.
Excerpts of the book portrayed White House counselor Kellyanne Conway as a “cartoon villain brought to life” who spoke negatively about other staffers to the press.
Sims also claimed that White House senior adviser Stephen Miller, who often works on immigration policy for the administration, said he’d be happy if “not a single refugee foot ever again touched American soil.”
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Monday said she’d never heard Miller make such comments.
Michael Glassner, chief operating officer of Trump’s 2020 campaign, said Tuesday they were preparing to file a lawsuit against Sims for violating a nondisclosure agreement.