White House staff dishes dirt: Enraged Hillary once split Bill’s head open

A new book that serves up some of the trashiest behavior by our first families in the White House features a story from the late 1990s about Hillary Clinton, in a fit of rage, splitting Bill Clinton’s head open --  a wound that required stitches.

The book written by Kate Andersen Brower, The Residence: Inside the Private World of The White House, offers numerous recollections about presidents, first ladies and their kids from a White House staff that rarely reveals anything at all. As the Clintons hope to move back into the White House, it seems this book will certainly present a stumbling block.

According to a review by William O’Connor of The Daily Beast, the Monica Lewinsky era in the book is perhaps the juiciest. One anecdote that has made the rounds is that Hillary hit Bill so hard with a book that there was blood all over their bed and the president needed stitches.

Obviously the weapon was a hard cover. Presumably it was thrown at high velocity.

“That time period also took its toll on White House workers, who would often find themselves berated for little things by Hillary,” O’Connor wrote. “The staff was also consistently shocked by the couple throughout their time in the office, from ‘their vicious cursing’ and ‘periods of stony silence.’”

Throughout the book, the message emerges that the Clintons were the most polarizing, the first Bush family the most popular.

“In chapter after chapter, the consensus seems to be that George H.W. Bush and Barbara Bush were the most beloved and respected of the presidencies covered in the book -- which may have had to do with the fact that they were somewhat used to staff,” according to O’Connor.

“On the other hand, the book is filled with quote after quote about how difficult the Clintons were and how paranoid they were. Friends of Bill’s consistently set off alarm bells for the Secret Service for having criminal records. On the other hand, many of the women interviewed in the book felt that Hillary ‘was very, very sympathetic to working women’ and had a good relationship with the female staff.”

The Residence also provides some interesting tidbits about Chelsea Clinton, Jimmy Carter’s sons, the Obamas and Ronald Reagan. There is also a bizarre story about Lyndon Johnson insisting on a custom-built shower, similar to the one at his home in Texas, that would blast water at his crotch and at his rear end.