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Maximize aggression to conceal vital weakness.
Signs of Russian “reconnoitering,” or digital intrusions as the National Security Agency called them, first appeared in local and state electoral boards’ computerized voter registration rolls—lists of voters’ names and addresses—in the summer of 2015. They first showed up in Illinois, then spread across the country to include 21 states.
Obama approved the under-the-radar approach. On August 4, Brennan told Bortnikov, You’re meddling in our election. We know it. We have it cold. Bortnikov flatly denied it.
At 3 p.m. on Friday, October 7, they released a joint statement officially accusing Russia of trying to interfere in the U.S. election, although they didn’t name Putin in the public release.
at 4:05 p.m., David Fahrenthold at The Washington Post released a story headlined, “Trump Recorded Having Extremely Lewd Conversation About Women in 2005.”
at 4:30 p.m., WikiLeaks capped the day’s news by dumping thousands of emails hacked from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s personal account online.
“The 35 percent corporate tax rate has been great for my business for the last decade. We’ve been inverting companies to 10 percent tax jurisdictions and they pay us enormous fees.” He was speaking as a Goldman president. An inversion refers to relocating a corporation’s legal home to a low-tax country such as Ireland or Bermuda in the form of a new parent company while retaining operations and management as a subsidiary in the higher-tax country.
“We can’t allow companies to just keep inverting out of the United States. It’s just bad. It’s wrong for business. It’s wrong for jobs.
Cohn didn’t mention a report that had come out during the campaign which said the Trump Organization’s business credit score was a 19 out of 100, below the national average by 30 points, and that it could have difficulty borrowing money.
Congress had a debt ceiling which set a cap on how much money the federal government could borrow, and it was legally binding. It was clear that Trump did not understand the way the U.S. government debt cycle balance sheet worked.
“those idiot raghead mullahs.”
perhaps 85 percent of all known nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons facilities could be attacked and destroyed and that was only the identified ones.
The Pentagon reported that the only way “to locate and destroy—with complete certainty—all components of North Korea’s nuclear program” was through a ground invasion. A ground invasion would trigger a North Korean response, likely with a nuclear weapon.
You’ve got to deny anything that’s said about you. Never admit.”
one such “deep secret.” North Korea was accelerating both its missile and nuclear weapons programs at an astonishing rate, and would “well within a year” have a ballistic missile with a nuclear weapon that perhaps could reach the United States mainland.
North Korea’s missile launch was a full-scale crisis: Kim Jong Un now had mobile ICBM capability and missiles that could potentially reach the homeland. U.S. intelligence had incontrovertible evidence that the Chinese had supplied the eight-axle vehicle that was a key component of these complex missile systems. The CIA risked losing sensitive sources if the U.S. tightened travel restrictions. And if the president decided to order some sort of significant military response, the assets would not be immediately available.
the summarizing phrase and truest expression of his protectionism, isolationism and fervent American nationalism.
Trump subjected Sessions to a withering attack in the Oval Office, calling him an “idiot.” Despite his promise to Bannon, Sessions sent a resignation letter to Trump. Priebus talked the president out of accepting it. Recusing himself made the attorney general a “traitor,” Trump said to Porter. The president made fun of his Southern accent. “This guy is mentally retarded. He’s this dumb Southerner.”
The president did not understand the importance of allies overseas, the value of diplomacy or the relationship between the military, the economy and intelligence partnerships with foreign governments.
“The great gift of the greatest generation to us,” Mattis opened, “is the rules-based, international democratic order.” This global architecture brought security, stability and prosperity.
“This is what has kept the peace for 70 years,” the former Texas oilman said.
Trump’s attack on the generals. The president was speaking as if the U.S. military was a mercenary force for hire. If a country wouldn’t pay us to be there, then we didn’t want to be there. As if there were no American interests in forging and keeping a peaceful world order, as if the American organizing principle was money. “Are you okay?” Cohn asked him. “He’s a fucking moron,” Tillerson said so everyone heard.
A senior White House official who spoke contemporaneously with participants in the meeting recorded this summary: “The president proceeded to lecture and insult the entire group about how they didn’t know anything when it came to defense or national security. It seems clear that many of the president’s senior advisers, especially those in the national security realm, are extremely concerned with his erratic nature, his relative ignorance, his inability to learn, as well as what they consider his dangerous views.”
The United States should be getting oil. The generals aren’t sufficiently focused on getting or making money. They don’t understand what our objectives should be and they have the United States engaged in all the wrong ways.
What the president would bring up in the morning most often was what he had seen on television, especially Fox News, or something from the newspapers he read more thoroughly than the public generally knew.
H. R. McMaster tried to explain that Xi was using the president. China was an economic aggressor, planning to become Number One in the world. Trump said he understood all of that. But all of those problems were superseded by his rapport with Xi.
“The president has zero psychological ability to recognize empathy or pity in any way.”
Trump defended what he had said. “It’s not as if one side has any sort of [monopoly] on hatred or on bigotry. It’s not as if any one group is at fault or anything like that.
“There’s no upside to not directly condemn neo-Nazis and those that are motivated by racial animus.
Trump, who doesn’t touch type or use a keyboard,
To Rob Porter, Charlottesville was the breaking point. Trump rejected the better judgment of almost all of his staff. He had done that before. His perverse independence and irrationality ebbed and flowed. But with Charlottesville the floodgates just opened. For just the sake of a few words, he had drawn a stark line. “This was no longer a presidency,” Porter said. “This is no longer a White House. This is a man being who he is.” Trump was going ahead no matter what.
Trump had no understanding of how government functioned.
Trump liked signing. It meant he was doing things, and he had an up-and-down penmanship that looked authoritative in black Magic Marker.
Trump needed time “to vent and sort of emotionally stabilize himself.”
It was not just the distraction of a wide-ranging Mueller investigation hanging over his head, but the constant media coverage that Trump had colluded with the Russians and/or obstructed justice, a real feeding frenzy—vicious, uncivil. The result, Porter said, “In some moments it was almost incapacity of the president to be president.”
They would get him on Air Force One to a rally. Leaving the plane for one rally, he said, “I think I’m going to spend the first 10 minutes just attacking the media.”
They’re so chaotic. He’s never going to change. It’s pointless to prepare a meaningful, substantive briefing for the president that’s organized, where you have a bunch of slides. Because you know he’s never going to listen. We’re never going to get through it. He’s going to get through the first 10 minutes and then he’s going to want to start talking about some other topic.
Porter tried to prepare organized briefing papers with relevant information, different viewpoints, costs/benefits, pros and cons and consequences of a decision. It didn’t work.
The administration estimated China had committed $600 billion in intellectual property theft.
Whenever either of them would challenge Trump’s conviction on the importance of trade deficits and the need to impose tariffs, Trump was immovable. “I know I’m right,” he said. “If you disagree with me, you’re wrong.”
“Mr. President,” Cohn said, “that’s not what you do with the U.S. economy.” Because the stakes were so high, it was crucial to be conservative. “You do something when you’re 100 percent certain it will work, and then you pray like hell that you’re right. You don’t do 50/50s with the U.S. economy.” “If we’re not right,” Trump repeated, “we roll them back.”
Trump had gone bankrupt six times and seemed not to mind. Bankruptcy was just another business strategy. Walk away, threaten to blow up the deal. Real power is fear.
“If you’re the Chinese and you want to really just destroy us, just stop sending us antibiotics. You know we don’t really produce antibiotics in the United States?” The study also showed that nine major antibiotics were not produced in the United States, including penicillin. China sold 96.6 percent of all antibiotics used here. “We don’t produce penicillin.”
“Where the hell is my Peter?” the president asked one day.
In a small group meeting in his office one day, Kelly said of the president, “He’s an idiot. It’s pointless to try to convince him of anything. He’s gone off the rails. We’re in crazytown.” “I don’t even know why any of us are here. This is the worst job I’ve ever had.”
Trump could not possibly understand
“Trump is the perfect foil,” he summarized. “He’s the bad father, the terrible first husband, the boyfriend that fucked you over and wasted all those years, and [you] gave up your youth for, and then dumped you. And the terrible boss that grabbed you by the pussy all the time and demeaned you.”
He belittled the KORUS trade agreement, South Korea and its new leader. This barely concealed rage at an ally was magnificently undiplomatic, the way the president often liked it. He was on the verge of blowing up the relationship.
South Korea had a population of 50 million people, the 27th-largest country in the world but with an economy that was the 11th-largest and a GDP of $1.5 trillion, the same as Russia’s.
“We’re doing this in order to prevent World War III,” Mattis said. He was calm but stark. It was a breathtaking statement, a challenge to the president, suggesting he was risking nuclear war. Time stopped for more than one in attendance.
