Sarah Huckabee Sanders insists Trump reads 'more than anyone I know'

'I’ve watched him consume massive amounts of information, process it quickly, make a decision then go'

Donald Trump’s former White House press secretary has claimed in an interview with Fox News that the president “reads more than anybody I know” despite claims he does not even read his daily intelligence briefings.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who left the White House in June after serving for two years as one of the most visible faces of the administration, made the claims during a weekend interview with Fox News.

“The idea that [Mr Trump] can only take in one or two bullets is absurd, I’ve watched him consume massive amounts of information, process it quickly, make a decision then go,” Ms Sanders said.

She added: “He reads more than anybody I know!”

The former press secretary went on to describe “boxes upon boxes” containing documents the president would read “for hours” during flights on international trips.

Ms Sanders also said Mr Trump would spend “hours” reading “notes” and “magazines” on plane trips, adding: “He consumes a massive amount of information constantly.”

The former press secretary, who is reportedly considering following in her father’s footsteps by launching a gubernatorial bid in Arkansas, was defending the president against allegations published in the new book titled A Warning, written by an anonymous official.

The book portrays Mr Trump as unfit for office and unfocused. Ms Sanders disputed that perspective of the president, describing the anonymous official as a “coward” in the Fox News interview.

“You can’t spend that kind of time with [Mr Trump] and have that takeaway”, she added.

In a recent interview with the New York Times, Ms Sanders revealed accusations of dishonesty were among her least favourite parts of working in the Trump White House.

“I don’t like being called a liar,” she said. “The other stuff bothered me less.”

Ms Sanders's claims are notable as multiple former advisers have said the president does not enjoy reading, from Rex Tillerson and Steve Bannon to Gary Cohn, who reportedly wrote in an email: "It's worse than you can imagine ... Trump won't read anything – not one-page memos, not the brief policy papers, nothing. He gets up halfway through meetings with world leaders because he is bored."

In his controversial book Fire and Fury, based on interviews with White House staffers, Michael Wolff wrote: "He didn't process information in any conventional sense. He didn't read. He didn't even really skim. Some believed that for all practical purposes he was no more than semi-literate."

Mr Trump himself told Axios: "I like bullets or I like as little as possible. I don't need, you know, 200-page reports on something that can be handled on a page."

Late-night talk show hosts have had fun with the idea that Mr Trump can't read. Others have suggested he does not like reading because he needs glasses but is too vain to wear them, perhaps explaining his often tentative performance when reading speeches from an autocue.

Despite the president regularly tweeting praise of books written by his supporters, there has been speculation about how many books he has read himself.

He has spoken in the past of liking All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque but became uncomfortable when asked on camera to talk about any of his favourite parts of the Bible, saying it was too "personal".

The president has boasted of writing a dozen bestselling books himself, most famously The Art of the Deal in 1987, although one of his biographers, Tim O'Brien, said last year that Mr Trump "didn't write any of his books. Ghostwriters on all of them".