Siege: Trump Under Fire

by Michael Wolff

“The ‘M’ in MBS is for Madoff,” said one U.S. financier brought in to consult on the Aramco deal. MBS’s power, not to mention his future, was predicated on his ability to sell something very much like a pyramid scheme, to which Kushner had become a party and a sponsor.

She told Trump she wanted to be secretary of state. In their initial meeting, she proudly proclaimed her great success, and singular experience, in foreign negotiations: she had persuaded the Germans to put a Mercedes-Benz plant in South Carolina.

In the fall of 2017, Trump told multiple confidants that Haley had given him a blow job—his words.

The gunman, forty-six-year-old Robert Gregory Bowers, an anti-Semite who was active on social media, had been aroused by the president’s talk of the caravan heading to the United States. “I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered,” Bowers posted shortly before the attack. “Screw your optics, I’m going in.”

Trump, speaking about his choice of women, had once told Tucker Carlson that he liked a “little chocolate in his diet.”

They looked like America the way America looked in 1965, said Bannon, sentimental at the sight of his deplorables.

“I think he’ll kill himself,” said Bannon, answering his own question. “No, no,” said Trump’s old friend. “He’ll fake a heart attack.” Yes, Bannon laughed, that would certainly be the Trump way out.

“He has no idea what can happen, no fucking idea,” said Bannon. “Totally la-la. He thinks Nancy Pelosi is an annoying elderly lady rather than a steel-tipped bullet aimed directly at him.”

In fact, the problem was not that the national Republicans didn’t have enough money; they had plenty. The problem was that they were spending it in the sky, not on the ground.

“After Donald Trump, be that tomorrow or several years from now, the movement still has to get out the vote.”

class. China’s exploding middle class was created at the expense of our own by undermining and then transferring the U.S. manufacturing base.

The Democrats were the party of Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sachs was the investment bank of China. And if Trump needed to save himself from a Democratic Congress, he would surely make a deal with the Chinese, one that would appease Goldman Sachs.

“Nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism,” said Macron in his speech. “By saying, ‘Our interests first, who cares about the others,’ we erase what a nation holds dearest, what gives it life, what makes it great and what is essential: its moral values.”

Sean Hannity told Steve Bannon that Trump seemed “totally fucking crazy.”

But Ayers’s takeover quickly unraveled: on Sunday, having spent four days working for, as he told a friend, “Mr. Fucking-out-of-his-mind-totally-crazy,” Ayers informed the president that he would not be taking the job after all. In yet another head-spinning episode of the West Wing’s soap opera, Ayers was quitting before he had officially started. Hence, by Monday there was no Ayers, no Kelly, and no chief of staff.

A friend who spoke to Trump that evening was startled by the intensity of the president’s reaction. “Honestly, his voice was breaking,” said the friend. “Ann really fucked him up. The base, the base. He was completely panicked.”

“Melania didn’t think that was funny,” said one aide. Trump was “clearly a guy who had never dealt with a seven-year-old.”

Trump, who had first taken notice of the woman during the transition, kept repeating, “She’s got a way about her,” his signature, and creepy, stamp of approval for young women. Now the president was telling friends that he wasn’t staying at the White House because of the shutdown—he was staying because he was “banging” the young West Wing aide.

He was once again in a familiar fix. He wanted what he wanted but lacked any clear understanding of how to get it.

“Well, he won’t go out classy,” answered Bannon. “Nixon was classy even though he was Nixon—and he was smart. We don’t have smart and we don’t have classy. If you think about it, American history doesn’t have that many unseemly moments. Even bad guys, looking at the end, take their medicine. This is not going to be like that. This is going to be very … unseemly.”

“Romney—hated,” said Bannon. “Mitch? Hated, too, but Mitch is a deal guy. You can’t go to Trump and walk him through a process. You’ve got to go to him with a deal; the only way Trump leaves is with a release. DOJ, State AG, Labor Department, all the RICO stuff, no prison time—and he keeps all his money. It’s got to be clean.”

“David Eisenhower was Eisenhower’s grandson,” said Bannon. “Jared and Ivanka are coming from very different stock. They are grifters”—a word that Bannon had been using since the early days of the administration, introducing it into the modern political lexicon. “They understand that if he’s out, the

grift is over. The grift only keeps going as long as he’s around. That’s the scam. That’s how they get their phone calls returned from Apple, that’s how she gets her trademarks from the Chinese. Come on, they are nothing burgers. If he’s gone, nobody’s gonna rally around them. What, Jared and Ivanka will keep Camelot alive?”

He had publicly expressed misgivings about the Mueller investigation, especially its emphasis on obstruction of justice. In June 2018, Barr had stated his opinion in an unsolicited memo to the Justice Department; the memo struck many legal observers as little better than an effort by a first-year law student, its purpose solely to curry favor with the president.

So here was an idea: What if he pardoned everybody? Everybody! For the good of the country! He returned once again to the magic of his pardon powers. “I could pardon El Chapo,” he said.

“Am I safe?” Trump persisted in asking the caller. “Am I safe?” He answered his own question: “They are going to keep coming after me.”