Fear: Trump in the White House

by Bob Woodward

Cohn and Porter worked together to derail what they believed were Trump’s most impulsive and dangerous orders. That document and others like it just disappeared. When Trump had a draft on his desk to proofread, Cohn at times would just yank it, and the president would forget about it. But if it was on his desk, he’d sign it. “It’s not what we did for the country,” Cohn said privately. “It’s what we saved him from doing.”

The reality was that the United States in 2017 was tethered to the words and actions of an emotionally overwrought, mercurial and unpredictable leader. Members of his staff had joined to purposefully block some of what they believed were the president’s most dangerous impulses. It was a nervous breakdown of the executive power of the most powerful country in the world.

Perilous times, maybe the worst, for Trump and the party, Priebus thought. There was only one path forward: escalation on all fronts. Maximize aggression to conceal vital weakness.

A tital Trump virtrue. Gthis says it all.

Roger Ailes, Governor Chris Christie and “the Mayor”—Rudy Giuliani—also were attending. Bannon was pissed. He was not there to audition in front of anyone. He and Trump had agreed, made a deal which should not be reviewable.

And Roger Ailes ran Fox News helping to manage Trumps campaign. And Fox's motto "Fair and Balancef". Go figure!

hamburgers were laid out. The fantasy diet of an 11-year-old kid, Bannon thought, as Trump wolfed down two hot dogs.

“I realized,” Bannon said later, “I’m the director, he’s the actor.”

Cohn was astounded at Trump’s lack of basic understanding. He tried to explain. If you as the federal government borrow money through issuing bonds, you are increasing the U.S. deficit. What do you mean? Trump asked. Just run the presses—print money. You don’t get to do it that way, Cohn said. We have huge deficits and they matter. The government doesn’t keep a balance sheet like that.

The result record deficits because of Trumps ignorance od economics 101.

Trump returned to printing money. “We’ll just borrow,” he said, enamored with the idea of heading the federal government, which had the best credit rating in the world, so they could borrow at the lowest interest rate. 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. You just can’t print money, Cohn said. “Why not? Why not?” 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.

Of course the United States manufactured things, but reality did not match the vision in Trump’s mind. The president clung to an outdated view of America—locomotives, factories with huge smokestacks, workers busy on assembly lines.

“Mr. President, can I show this to you?” Cohn fanned out the pages of data in front of the president. “See, the biggest leavers of jobs—people leaving voluntarily—was from manufacturing.” “I don’t get it,” Trump said. Cohn tried to explain: “I can sit in a nice office with air conditioning and a desk, or stand on my feet eight hours a day. Which one would you do for the same pay?” Cohn added, “People don’t want to stand in front of a 2,000 degree blast furnace. People don’t want to go into coal mines and get black lung. For the same dollars or equal dollars, they’re going to choose something else.” Trump wasn’t buying it. Several times Cohn just asked the president, “Why do you have these views?” “I just do,” Trump replied. “I’ve had these views for 30 years.” “That doesn’t mean they’re right,” Cohn said. “I had the view for 15 years I could play professional football. It doesn’t mean I was right.”

Porter had never seen Trump so visibly disturbed. He knew Trump was a narcissist who saw everything in terms of its impact on him. But the hours of raging reminded Porter of what he had read about Nixon’s final days in office—praying, pounding the carpet, talking to the pictures of past presidents on the walls. Trump’s behavior was now in the paranoid territory.

“You’ve got to deny, deny, deny and push back on these women,” he said. “If you admit to anything and any culpability, then you’re dead. That was a big mistake you made. You didn’t come out guns blazing and just challenge them. You showed weakness. You’ve got to be strong. You’ve got to be aggressive. You’ve got to push back hard. You’ve got to deny anything that’s said about you. Never admit.”

“Mr. President,” Cohn said, “the first thing he’s going to bring up is the steel tariffs. And he’s going to remind you that you let him out.” “I don’t remember,” Trump said, sitting behind the Resolute Desk. “Well, sir,” Cohn said, “you had the conversation with him . . .” “I’m going to deny it,” Trump replied. “I never had that conversation with him.” “Okay, sir, just reminding you that it’s going to come up.” Cohn had witnessed this for over a year—denial when needed or useful or more convenient. “He’s a professional liar,” Cohn told an associate.

Kushner said that most of the legislative discussions in the White House involved Priebus acolytes from the combative Republican National Committee, or from former senator Sessions’s office or from Pence’s stable of conservatives. None of them had experience negotiating bipartisan agreements or getting deals done. Extremists and people trying to score political points were running the legislative agenda.

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.

Cohn concluded that Trump was, in fact, going backwards. He had been more manageable the first months when he was a novice. For Priebus, it was the worst meeting among many terrible ones. Six months into the administration, he could see vividly that they had a fundamental problem of goal setting. Where were they going? The distrust in the room had been thick and corrosive. The atmosphere was primitive; everyone was ostensibly on the same side, but they had seemed suited up in battle armor, particularly the president. This was what craziness was like, Priebus concluded.

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.”

And yet he's our Presdent?

Tillerson came to see him. “I just don’t like the way the president talks to these generals. They don’t deserve it. I can’t sit around and listen to this from the president. He’s just a moron.”

It made no sense, Priebus realized, unless you understood the way Trump made decisions. “The president has zero psychological ability to recognize empathy or pity in any way.”

In some ways, these four—Ivanka, Jared, Conway and Bannon—had the same modus operandi. “They walk into the West Wing. You’re not putting your weapon down,” Priebus said. “I’m not either.” Their discussions were not designed to persuade but, like their president, to win—to slay, crush and demean.

Slay, crush, and demean, gthe Yrump way of leading ,

“If you have natural predators at the table,” Priebus said, “things don’t move.” So the White House was not leading on key issues like health care and tax reform. Foreign policy was not coherent and often contradictory. “Why?” asked Priebus. “Because when you put a snake and a rat and a falcon and a rabbit and a shark and a seal in a zoo without walls, things start getting nasty and bloody. That’s what happens.”

the Trump election had rekindled the divide in the country. There was a more hostile relationship with the media. The culture wars were reinvigorated. There was a racist tinge. Trump accelerated it.

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.

“This is in your book, sir,” Cohn said, and brought out another copy. The document showed that the United States won 85.7 percent of its WTO cases, more than average. “The United States has won trade disputes against China on unfair extra duties on U.S. poultry, steel and autos, as well as unfair export restraints on raw materials and rare earth minerals. The United States has also used the dispute settlements system to force China to drop subsidies in numerous sectors.” “This is bullshit,” Trump replied. “This is wrong.” “This is not wrong. This is data from the United States trade representative. Call Lighthizer and see if he agrees.” “I’m not calling Lighthizer,” Trump said. “Well,” Cohn said, “I’ll call Lighthizer. This is the factual data. There’s no one that’s going to disagree with this data.” Then he added, “Data is data.”

As usual, Pence was staying out of the way. He didn’t want to be tweeted about or called an idiot. If he were advising Pence, Cohn would have had him do exactly that—stay out of it.

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.”

cutting. In the end, the law would add an estimated $1.5 trillion to the annual deficit over 10 years.

Colin Kahl, Obama’s former deputy assistant secretary of defense, tweeted, “Folks aren’t freaking out about a literal button. They are freaking out about the mental instability of a man who can kill millions without permission from anybody.”