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July 21 - August 2, 2021
“I’ve served the man for two years. I think he’s a long-term and immediate danger to the country,” a senior national security official told us.
British philosopher and statesman Edmund Burke, who wrote in his 1790 pamphlet, Reflections on the Revolution in France, that “the rudest hand” of any mob could annihilate an institution but rebuilding one from the rubble would be far more difficult. “Rage and phrenzy will pull down more in half an hour than prudence, deliberation, and foresight can build up in a hundred years.”
During the March 5 Kansas caucuses, Pompeo had warned that Trump would be “an authoritarian president who ignored our Constitution,” and he urged his fellow Kansans to “turn down the lights on the circus.”
Tillerson emphasized the most important trait he thought Trump should know: Putin’s moves might seem slick and quick, but he was playing a long game, always thinking several moves ahead, years in the distance. He impressed upon Trump the fact that Putin sought to destabilize Western alliances and remake the post–World War II power structure to weaken America’s global influence.
Bob Corker, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, gave voice to this sentiment on October 4, when he told reporters, “I think Secretary Tillerson, Secretary Mattis and Chief of Staff Kelly are those people that
help separate our country from chaos, and I support them very much.”
Trump had heard the phrase “Pearl Harbor” and appeared to understand that he was visiting the scene of a historic battle, but he did not seem to know much else. Kelly explained to him that the stealth Japanese attack here had devastated the U.S. Pacific Fleet and prompted the country’s entrance into World War II, eventually leading the United States to drop atom bombs on Japan. If Trump had learned about “a date which will live in infamy” in school, it hadn’t really pierced his consciousness or stuck with him. “He was at times dangerously uninformed,” said one senior former adviser.
In words and sometimes simply facial expressions, they communicated a shared concern: “This guy doesn’t know what he’s doing.”
Lying has been part of Trump’s act all his life. “People ask me if the president lies. Are you nuts? He’s a fucking total liar,” Anthony Scaramucci said. “He lies all the time.
Scaramucci recalled that he then asked Trump, “Are you an act?” Trump replied, “I’m a total act and I don’t understand why people don’t get it.”
“The American people read the papers,
and they hear lots of talk on cable TV and social media. But they see and experience the actual work you do—keeping communities safe and our nation secure, often dealing with sensitive matters and making decisions under difficult circumstances,” Wray said. “And that work will always matter more. Talk is cheap; the work you do is what will endure.”
Kelly uttered an ominous view to a handful of other aides: “The forces of darkness have won today.”
Eliot A. Cohen, a neoconservative who served as a top State Department official in the George W. Bush administration and was a critic of Trump’s candidacy, said in the aftermath that the Singapore summit was “just the latest manifestation” of Trump’s authoritarianism. He “has classic traits of the authoritarian leader. The one that’s always struck me most is this visceral instinct of people’s weaknesses and a corresponding desire to be seen as strong and respected and admired,” Cohen said. He added, “We’ve been very fortunate that the institutions have contained him.”
When a reporter asked Trump if he might attack NATO on Twitter after departing, just as he had maligned Trudeau following the G7 in Quebec, the president replied, “No, that’s other people that do that. I don’t. I’m very consistent. I’m a very stable genius.”
“He’s ruined that magic,” this aide said of Trump. “The disdain he shows for our country’s foundation and its principles. The disregard he has for right and wrong. Your fist clenches. Your teeth grate. The hair goes up on the back of your neck. I have to remind myself I said an oath to a document in the National Archives. I swore to the Constitution. I didn’t swear an oath to this jackass.”
patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism: nationalism is a betrayal of it.
