Trump used Melania’s phone to stop aides listening to calls, book claims

Ex-president denies the ‘third-rate’ reporter’s claims like having a paper fight with Mike Pence

Thumbs up: Donald Trump lives to fight another day (EPA)

Donald Trump used the first lady’s phone to keep calls away from the prying ears of his former chief of staff John Kelly, according to a new book.

The inner workings of the Trump administration were outlined in Frankly, We Did Win This Election, the new book from Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Bender that was released this week.

Among the tidbits revealed were how Mr Trump tried to get around the rules and regulations in place to monitor official communications.

That included the authority of the chief of staff to listen in to the president’s calls patched in through the White House, as revealed in an excerpt reported by Raw Story.

"When John Kelly, a retired, four-star Marine general whom Trump had recruited into his administration, invoked his chief of staff authority to listen in on any call that was patched through to the president from the West Wing switchboard, Trump gave friends the number to Melania’s phone to circumvent this official channel," Mr Bender wrote.

He also wrote that Mr Trump gave more "walk-in privileges" to almost anyone, making the chief of staff’s strategies to restrict access to the president invariably unsuccessful.

"Trump White House aides frequently tried to sneak in one final word during internal debates by leaving him printouts of unsourced and aggressively biased Breitbart News stories that backed up their own position," Mr Bender wrote.

Printed news stories handed to the president is relatively normal compared to another story from the book, in which Mr Trump threw a crumpled up newspaper article at vice president Mike Pence, who promptly threw it back.

Mr Trump was upset his campaign manager Corey Lewandowski was planning to work for Mr Pence in 2018 would make him "look weak", according to an excerpt published by Insider.

In one of the few instances standing up to Mr Trump, the vice president leaned in and "pointed a finger a few inches from his chest".

"We walked you through every detail of this," Mr Pence reportedly said. "We did this for you – as a favour. And this is how you respond? You need to get your facts straight."

In a statement to Insider, Mr Trump disputed the account by a "third-rate reporter" as totally false.

"No such fight ever happened, it is fiction as are so many others stories written in the vast number of books coming out about me," the statement said.