Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House

by Michael Wolff

including a theory he discussed with friends about how the more years between an older man and a younger woman, the less the younger woman took an older man’s cheating personally.

Few people who knew Trump had illusions about him. That was almost his appeal: he was what he was. Twinkle in his eye, larceny in his soul.

In fact, up close, Trump was not the bombastic and pugilistic man who had stirred rabid crowds on the campaign trail. He was neither angry nor combative. He may have been the most threatening and frightening and menacing presidential candidate in modern history, but in person he could seem almost soothing. His extreme self-satisfaction rubbed off. Life was sunny. Trump was an optimist—at least about himself. He was charming and full of flattery; he focused on you. He was funny—self-deprecating even. And incredibly energetic—Let’s do it whatever it is, let’s do it. He wasn’t a tough guy. He was “a big warm-hearted monkey,” said Bannon, with rather faint praise.

power provides its own excuses for social lapses.

Discouragement for everyone else is merely the need to improve reality for them.

(6) the media’s claim to be the protector of factual probity and accuracy was itself a sham; (7)

In business meetings, observers would be nonplussed that Charlie and Jared Kushner invariably greeted each other with a kiss and that the adult Jared called his father Daddy.

ICK

Casualness is the enemy of pretense.

“It certainly is an odd circumstance if you live your life without regard for being elected and then get elected—and quite an opportunity for your enemies.”