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smooth, confident and austere manner,
“indirect assassination.”
we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”
Of course Priebus didn’t have control of Jared. And people were always going behind someone’s back.
The Trump White House seemed designed to upend any order or routine.
opposition research”
“investigative reporting.”
Scribbling his thoughts in neat, clean penmanship, the president wrote, “TRADE IS BAD.” Though he never said it in a speech, he had finally found the summarizing phrase and truest expression of his protectionism, isolationism and fervent American nationalism.
The Big Problem: 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.
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 president has zero psychological ability to recognize empathy or pity in any way.”
His perverse independence and irrationality ebbed and flowed.
Politico had run a long piece on Trump’s anger issues, calling Trump “driven by his temper” and saying “anger serves as a way to manage staff, express his displeasure or simply as an outlet that soothes him.”
At the August 18 NSC meeting, Trump approved McMaster’s four Rs. Summarized in a 60-page strategy memo dated August 21 signed by McMaster, they were formalized as, Reinforce: “provide more equipment and training but leverage support with conditions to drive reforms”; Realign: “US civilian assistance and political outreach will be realigned to target key areas under government control with contested areas considered on case by case basis”; Reconcile: “diplomatic efforts will urge government to undertake broader efforts to foster inclusivity and political accommodation, promote elections, and
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Buried in the 19-page section on integrated strategy was an admission: “Stalemate likely to persist in Afghanistan” and “Taliban likely to continue to gain ground.”
In the tradition of concealing the real story in a memo, “Win is unattainable” was the conclusion signed by McMaster.
The president often made decisions with only one or two or three people involved. There was no process for making and coordinating decisions. Chaos and disorder were inadequate to describe the situation. It was a free-for-all.
The honeymoon was soon over. Beginning in September, Kelly and Porter would be together alone, or with a few senior staffers. “The president’s unhinged,” Kelly said. There would be something, especially about trade agreements or the U.S. troops in South Korea. “We all need to try to talk him out of it,” Kelly said. They needed to stand up to the president. He wasn’t listening.
Madeleine Westerhout
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.
section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974,
The Chinese broke every rule. They stole everything, from tech companies’ trade secrets to pirated software, film and music, and counterfeited luxury goods and pharmaceuticals. They bought parts of companies and stole the technology. They stole intellectual property from American companies that had been required to move their technology to China to operate there.
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.”
Cohn realized that 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.
Over the decades Goldman Sachs had not done business with the Trump Organization or Trump himself, knowing that he might stiff anyone and everyone. He would just not pay, or sue.
Trump would not read, so Cohn brought charts to the Oval Office.
Months went by. “Where the hell is my Peter?” the president asked one day. “I haven’t talked to Peter Navarro in two months.” But, as was often the case, he did not follow up.
Trump’s face-off with Kim Jong Un was growing increasingly personal. On Air Force One when tensions were ramping up, Trump said, in a rare moment of reflection, “This guy’s crazy. I really hope this doesn’t end up going to a bad place.”
historian Barbara Tuchman’s book The Guns of August about the outbreak of World War I.
dotard.”
For weeks, Tillerson had been out publicly with what he called the “Four Nos”: The United States was not seeking regime change; or a collapse of the regime; was not looking for an accelerated reunification of the North and South; and did not want an excuse to send troops into the North.
bellicose
Kirstjen Nielsen,
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.”
Harmony could lead to groupthink.
During the Bush and Obama years, dozens of large companies had moved their headquarters overseas to take advantage of lower foreign tax rates. This process was known as inversion because it typically entailed creating a new parent company in a low-tax country like Ireland and making the existing American company its subsidiary.
six main tax reform players representing Congress and the administration.
The group came up with four principles: simplification of the tax code, tax relief for middle-income families, job creation and wage growth, and bringing back and taxing the trillions of corporate dollars stashed overseas.
Fire and Fury.
Grievance was a big part of Trump’s core, very much like a 14-year-old boy who felt he was being picked on unfairly. You couldn’t talk to him in adult logic. Teenage logic was necessary.
Real power is fear.
Many on Twitter wondered if Trump had violated the platform’s terms of service by threatening nuclear war. Others recalled Hillary Clinton’s line from her July 2016 convention speech: “A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons.”
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.
McMaster was ripshit at Kelly for not intervening.
The sort of wild card is the president’s short attention span and his questioning all these assumptions that people keep throwing out. And smelling and calling bullshit when he sees it.”
Afghanistan was a new House of Broken Toys. Political instability. Fraying of the Afghan government. Congressional and public criticism in the United States. Few, if any, military gains. Drought. Massive food insecurity. Refugees.
Dowd shrugged his shoulders at the waste of time, but he saw the full nightmare. It was quite a sight seeing the president of the United States fuming like some aggrieved Shakespearean king.
Remember the first rule, Mr. President, is do no harm.
But in the man and his presidency Dowd had seen the tragic flaw. In the political back-and-forth, the evasions, the denials, the tweeting, the obscuring, crying “Fake News,” the indignation, Trump had one overriding problem that Dowd knew but could not bring himself to say to the president: “You’re a fucking liar.”
