The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir

by John Bolton

Ironically, the next day, the Washington Post reported unhappily that Trump and I were actually on the same page on Syria25—unhappily because the Post was contradicting its own story from the day before.26 All this confused press coverage reveals both the inconsistencies within Trump’s own thinking, and reporting based on second- and third-hand sources, exacerbated under a President who spent a disproportionate share of his time watching his Administration being covered in the press. It is difficult beyond description to pursue a complex policy in a contentious part of the world when the policy is subject to instant modification based on the boss’s perception of how inaccurate and often-already-outdated information is reported by writers who don’t have the Administration’s best interests at heart in the first place. It was like making and executing policy inside a pinball machine, not the West Wing of the White House.