Fear: Trump in the White House

by Bob Woodward

Bannon added that Trump had another advantage. He spoke in a voice that did not sound political. This was what Barack Obama had in 2008 in the primary contest against Clinton, who spoke like the trained politician she was. Her tempo was overly practiced. Even when telling the truth, she sounded like she was lying to you.

Politicians like Hillary can’t talk naturally, Bannon said. It was a mechanical way of speaking, right out of the polling and focus groups, answering the questions in political speak. It was soothing, not jarring, not from the heart or from deep conviction, but from some highly paid consultant’s talking points—not angry.

“My counsel to the boss, I said we are going to have to devote time, energy and resources to this.” He said Trump’s plan was to talk and act tough—send “a shot across the bow” of Putin. He added, “We will be leaning on the Reagan playbook.” Be aggressive and then negotiate.

Hicks was convinced the media had “oppositional defiance syndrome,” which is a term from clinical psychology most often applied to rebellious children. “Oppositional defiance syndrome” is characterized by excessive anger against authority, vindictiveness and temper tantrums.

The dossier alleged that Trump had been with prostitutes in a Moscow hotel in 2013 and the Russians had filmed it. Comey did not mention the allegation in the dossier that Trump had prostitutes urinate on each other on the bed President Obama and Michelle Obama had once used. Comey later wrote, “I figured that single detail was not necessary to put him on notice about the material. This whole thing was weird enough. As I spoke, I felt a strange out-of-body experience, as if I were watching myself speak to the new president about prostitutes in Russia.” Trump denied the allegations. Did he seem like a guy who needed prostitutes?

The Afghan leaders were corrupt and making money off of the United States, he insisted. The poppy fields, largely in Taliban territory, are out of control.

Better draining Taliban's resources such as poppy fields and friends in high places.

“But how many more deaths?” Trump asked. “How many more lost limbs? How much longer are we going to be there?” His antiwar argument, practically ripped from a Bob Dylan song lyric, reflected the desires of his political base whose families were overrepresented in the military forces. “The quickest way out is to lose,” Mattis said.

At the White House, Trump began repeating a line he had heard at a meeting: “The way we’re going to win is to run an insurgency against the insurgency of the Taliban.”

It was piloted in Syria: it doesn't work.

They were trying to make policy on a string of one-sentence clichés.