US President Donald Trump routinely referred to black leaders of foreign nations with racist insults. He had an abiding admiration for President Vladimir Putin's willingness to treat Russia like a personal business. And he was consumed with hatred for previous American president Barack Obama.
Those are the descriptions that Michael Cohen, a previous personal lawyer and self-described fixer for Mr Trump, lays out in his book Disloyal: A Memoir, which paints the President as a sordid, mob-like figure willing to engage in underhand tactics against anyone opposing him.
"As a rule, Trump expressed low opinions of all black folks, from music to culture and politics," Cohen writes in the book, to be released today.
He says Mr Trump called Mr Nelson Mandela, who led the emancipation of South Africa from white minority rule, "no leader".
"Tell me one country run by a black person that isn't a s***hole," Cohen quotes Mr Trump as saying.
He also alleges that Mr Trump called Mr Kwame Jackson, a black contestant on his reality TV show The Apprentice, a homophobic slur, and that he had deep disgust for black leaders in addition to celebrities and sports figures.
He was obsessed with Mr Obama, his predecessor, Cohen writes.
The book describes Mr Trump hiring "a Faux-Bama, or fake Obama, to record a video where Trump ritualistically belittled the first black president and then fired him, a kind of fantasy fulfilment that it was hard to imagine any adult would spend serious money living outuntil he did the functional equivalent in the real world".
The video appears to be a recording that was supposed to be shown on the first night of the Republican National Convention in 2012, when Mr Trump had endorsed the party's presidential nominee, Mr Mitt Romney, and insisted on having time during the programming.
Among the revelations from Cohen, who worked for Mr Trump for more than a decade, are descriptions of the negotiations during the 2016 campaign with a key official at the Trump Organization about how to pay off an adult-film actress who said she had an affair with Mr Trump.
Cohen also explains in detail how The National Enquirer became a weapon working in tandem with Mr Trump to damage the businessman's opponents in the 2016 Republican primaries.
Asked concerning the several claims in the book, which The New York Times obtained an advance copy of, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEy was dismissive.
"Michael Cohen is a disgraced felon and disbarred lawyer who lied to Congress," she said in a statement. "He has lost all credibility, and it's unsurprising to see his latest attempt to profit off of lies."
A MOBSTER, PLAIN AND SIMPLE
As I've been saying since the beginning, Trump was a mobster, plain and simple.
MICHAEL COHEN, a previous personal lawyer and self-described fixer for Mr Donald Trump, in his book Disloyal: A Memoir.
A spokesman for the Trump Organization did not respond to an e-mail seeking comment.
In Cohen's telling, his lies were on behalf of Mr Trump, whether it was in investigations or in trying to win him good headlines.
Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to a handful of financial crimes and a campaign finance violation related to the payments to previous adult-film actress Stephanie Clifford, who went by the stage name Stormy Daniels.
Cohen is defiant about those actions in the book, maintaining that he is innocent of some of the crimes he pleaded guilty to and that he was a victim of "the conviction machine" of the US government, which also threatened his wife.
He writes in detail about how he was released from a minimum security prison in Otisville, New York, to serve the rest of his sentence at home, only to be thrown back in prison because he would not initially sign a document prohibiting him from publishing the book.
A judge afterwards ruled that the move by the government was retaliatory, and Cohen was released to home confinement for the remainder of his sentence.
Cohen describes the Trump Organization as loosely reminiscent of the mafia, with Mr Trump as the would-be family don.
"As I've been saying since the beginning, Trump was a mobster, plain and simple," Cohen writes when describing how he helped coordinate a softball interview between Ms Megyn Kelly, then of Fox News, and Mr Trump after the candidate had spent days attacking her and creating a security risk for her.
NYTIMES