Fear: Trump in the White House

by Bob Woodward

“Real power is—I don’t even want to use the word—fear.” Presidential candidate Donald J. Trump in an interview with Bob Woodward and Robert Costa on March 31, 2016, at the Old Post Office Pavilion, Trump International Hotel, Washington, D.C.

Next, Cohn repeated what everyone was saying: Interest rates were going to go up over the foreseeable future. I agree, Trump said. “We should just go borrow a lot of money right now, hold it, and then sell it and make money.” 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.

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 should be treasury secretary. You would be the best treasury secretary.” Mnuchin, right there, didn’t say a thing or show any reaction. “Come back and tell me what you want,” Trump said. “You’d be great to have on the team. It’d be fantastic.” Five minutes later while Cohn was still in the building, he saw a television flash breaking news: President-elect Trump has selected Steve Mnuchin as treasury secretary. “That’s crazy,” Jared said. “Mnuchin just put that out. You freaked him out so badly in the meeting.”

The FBI was familiar with the document. Steele had shared portions of the dossier with them, and on December 9 Senator John McCain had shared a copy with FBI director Comey.

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. As far as she was concerned, that described the press.

“I don’t believe in human sources,” Trump replied. “These are people who have sold their souls and sold out their country.” He wasn’t buying. “I don’t trust human intelligence and these spies.”

was loved. He was a great leader.” Some in the Oval Office had copies of the service records. None of what Trump cited was there. He was just making it up. He knew what the families wanted to hear.

Trump lashed out, suggesting that McCain had taken the coward’s way out of Vietnam as a prisoner of war. He said that as a Navy pilot during the Vietnam War McCain, whose father was Admiral John McCain, the Pacific commander, had been offered and taken early release, leaving other POWs behind. “No, Mr. President,” Mattis said quickly, “I think you’ve got it reversed.” McCain had turned down early release and been brutally tortured and held five years in the Hanoi Hilton.

Another general, perhaps? Bannon believed the media was Trump’s main concern. Everything was through the eyes of, “Does he look the part?” Everything was movies. Dunford and Mattis struck him as Marines because they were men of few words. They got to the point.

Bannon met with him at Mar-a-Lago and offered his usual advice: Don’t lecture Trump. He doesn’t like professors. He doesn’t like intellectuals. Trump was a guy who “never went to class. Never got the syllabus. Never took a note. Never went to a lecture. The night before the final, he comes in at midnight from the fraternity house, puts on a pot of coffee, takes your notes, memorizes as much as he can, walks in at 8 in the morning and gets a C. And that’s good enough. He’s going to be a billionaire.”

Graham and McCain had released a joint statement: “We fear this executive order will become a self-inflicted wound in the fight against terrorism. This executive order sends a signal, intended or not, that America does not want Muslims coming into our country. That is why we fear this executive order may do more to help terrorist recruitment than improve our security.”

“Before we go into lunch,” Graham said, “I want to apologize to you for a very fucked-up Republican majority. Congress is going to fuck up your presidency. We have no idea what we’re doing.

The president had to knock off the tweeting. The week prior, on March 4, he had sent out four tweets accusing Obama of wiretapping Trump Tower. “You got an upper cut to the jaw, delivered by you,” Graham said of the widespread negative reaction to the tweets. “They’re out to get you. Don’t help them.” “Tweeting,” the president said, “that’s the way I operate.” “It’s okay to tweet to your advantage, Mr. President. Don’t tweet to your disadvantage. They’re always trying to drag you into their swamp. You’ve got to have the discipline not to take the bait.”

Graham offered a hawkish view: “If a million people are going to die, they’re going to die over there, not here.”

Kushner told Harvey he had important and reliable intelligence that the key to Saudi Arabia was the deputy crown prince, the charismatic 31-year-old Mohammed bin Salman, known as MBS. The son of the Saudi king, MBS was also the defense minister, a key position and launching pad for influence in the Kingdom. MBS had vision, energy. He was charming and spoke of bold, modernizing reforms.

“Well,” Trump asked, “how does this end?” “It never ends,” Graham said. “It’s good versus evil. Good versus evil never ends. It’s just like the Nazis. It’s now radical Islam. It will be something else one day.

“I’m tired of hearing that we have to do this or that to protect our homeland or to ensure our national security,” Trump said.

So Porter, the 39-year-old staff secretary with no previous experience in the executive branch, became the coordinator for trade policy and took charge of one of the major pillars and promises of the Trump presidency. Porter began chairing 9:30 a.m. trade meetings every Tuesday in the Roosevelt Room.

It was a gruesome, brutal attack, killing dozens. Among the dead were women and children—babies, beautiful babies. Choking, mouths foaming, parents stricken with grief and despair. This was the work of the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad on his own people. “Let’s fucking kill him!” the president said. “Let’s go in. Let’s kill the fucking lot of them.”

Yes, Mattis said. He would get right on it. He hung up the phone. “We’re not going to do any of that,” he told a senior aide. “We’re going to be much more measured.”

Trump gave some private advice to a friend who had acknowledged some bad behavior toward women. Real power is fear. It’s all about strength. Never show weakness. You’ve always got to be strong. Don’t be bullied. There is no choice. “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.”

Porter knew the paper on the president’s desk was incendiary. Trump could pick it up, decide to read it out loud to the press or take it to Press Secretary Sean Spicer and say, put this out. When he had a chance, Porter took Pruitt’s draft statement from Trump’s desk.

Eventually, Trump agreed to hold off. He did not want an immediate resignation because he said he wanted them to get through the Sunday talk shows the next day.

“You promise me you’ll never quit?” “Yeah.” “Because it’s going to get worse.” “What do you mean?” Sessions asked. “It’s all a diversion.” “What do you mean?” “Jared’s testifying.” Trump’s son-in-law was appearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Monday and the House Intelligence Committee on Tuesday. “They didn’t think they had enough cover.” “He wouldn’t do that to me,” Sessions said. “He’d fucking do that to you in a second. He’s doing it to you! You watch! When Jared finishes testifying, if they think it’s good testimony, he’ll stop tweeting.”

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.

Mattis and Gary Cohn had several quiet conversations about 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.

It was also a belated effort to address the looming question: How does this administration establish its policy priorities and stick to them?

“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. Bannon sat off to the side, a backbencher with a line of sight to the president. He knew this globalist worldview too well. He viewed it as a kind of fetish. His own obsession was still America First.

“We’ve got to distract him from KORUS,” Porter said to Cohn. “We’ve got to distract him from NAFTA.” Cohn agreed. At least twice, Porter had the order drafted as the president had directed. And at least twice Cohn or Porter took it from his desk. Other times, they just delayed. Trump seemed not to remember his own decision because he did not ask about it. He had no list—in his mind or anywhere else—of tasks to complete.

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.”

As a general rule, in relations with Trump, the closer you were, the further away you got. You started with 100 points. You couldn’t get more. Kelly had started with 100 points in his jar, and they’d gone down. Being close to Trump, especially in the chief of staff role, meant going down in points. It meant you paid. The most important part of Trump’s world was the ring right outside of the bull’s-eye: the people that Trump thought perhaps he should have hired, or who had worked for him and he’d gotten rid of and now thought, maybe I shouldn’t have. It was the people who were either there or should have been there, or associates or acquaintances that owed nothing to him and were around him but didn’t come in for anything. It was that outside circle that had the most power, not the people on the inside. It wasn’t Kelly or Priebus or Bannon.

These were people who had no experience in government, an astonishingly common distinguishing characteristic. They had spent their lives dabbling in political opinions and in policy debates or were too young.

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. “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 suggestion that he had admitted doing wrong and was unsteady infuriated the president. “That was the biggest fucking mistake I’ve made,” the president told Porter. “You never make those concessions. You never apologize. I didn’t do anything wrong in the first place. Why look weak?”

But overlooked was that Trump had a way of appearing to strengthen his own hand by creating a situation, often risky, that did not previously exist.

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.

During Trump’s first six months in the White House, few understood how much media he consumed. It was scary. Trump didn’t show up for work until 11:00 in the morning. Many times he watched six to eight hours of television in a day. Think what your brain would be like if you did that? Bannon asked.

“You’re like 82 percent,” Trump said. “Well, some days I’m 100 percent. Some days I may be zero.” “I want you to be a 100 percent guy.” “Why would you want me to tell you you’re right when I think you’re wrong? What good does that do for you or me?” Graham asked. “Presidents need people that can tell them the truth as they see it. It’s up to you to see if I’m full of shit.”

“Haitians,” Trump said. “We don’t need more Haitians.” At that and the mention of immigrants from African countries, Trump said, “Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?” He had just met with the prime minister of Norway. Why not more Norwegians? Or Asians who could help the economy? Durbin was sickened. Graham was floored. “Time out,” Graham said, signaling for a halt with his hands. “I don’t like where this thing’s going.” America is an ideal, he said. “I want merit-based immigration from every corner of the globe, not just Europeans. A lot of us come from shitholes.”

“I didn’t say some of the things that he said I said,” Trump said, referring to Durbin. “Yeah, you did,” Graham insisted. “Well, some people like what I said.” “I’m not one of them,” Graham said. “I want to help you. I like playing golf with you. But if that’s the price of admission, count me out. Good luck. Hit ’em good.”