A new memoir documents a Barack Obama White House in which a fratty speech writing team smoked, drank, told "dick jokes," and used their jobs to sleep with women.
David Litt, a former Obama speech writer, will release Thanks Obama: My Hopey Changey White House Years in September, the Daily Mail reports.
Litt, a Yale graduate, and, at just 24 years of age in 2011, one of the youngest White House speech writers, tells the story of applying for a White House position with a history of recreational drug use.
"After some back-of-the-envelope math, I listed thirty instances of undergraduate marijuana use, plus one experience with mushrooms I made clear I hadn't enjoyed," Litt recalls.
He also discusses how romance was "almost painfully easy" for a White House staffer. At least one aide used his position to sleep with a "blonde D.C. newscaster," although Litt does not specify who. The aide regularly boasted about his conquest to his coworkers.
The White House that Litt describes might be characterized as "fratty." He writes how the all-male, all-white, all-under-40 speech writing team drank, smoked, called each other "bro," and followed along with college basketball mostly to please Obama.
"If chest bumping had been permitted in the Oval, we would have gone for it," Litt writes.
Serving regularly as Obama's comedy writer, Litt helped draft Obama's White House Correspondents' Dinner routine, including at least one crack at the expense of 2012 Republican contender Tim Pawlenty.
"You may think Tim Pawlenty's all-American, but have you heard his full name? That's right: Tim 'bin Laden' Pawlenty," Litt wrote in a line that Obama later removed.
Off-color jokes were not limited to former governors either. In one particular lewd quip, a speechwriter suggested Obama say, "Let's put it this way, dreams aren't the only thing I got from my father."
Not all was fun and games in the White House, however. Litt discusses the president's work to get under-35s to enroll with Obamacare through healthcare.gov.
Litt himself, like many others, did not trust the health care website in the first days of its catastrophic roll-out.