A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump's Testing of America

by Philip Rucker

Trump said, folding his arms and staring straight into the cameras.

The bellicose threat was interpreted as yet another unscr...

eruption, but one with the consequence of escalating the war of words between the two countries and...

Trump’s advisers rushed to reassure suddenly jittery world leaders that Trump’s statement was part of an agreed ...

But Trump’s intimates recognized that there was no grand strategy at play and that th...

Trump said there were “very fine people on both sides” and initially refused to condemn white supremacy, a stunning ambiguity that drew bipartisan opprobrium.

This abdication of moral leadership was one of the lowest points of his presidency

The discarding of Bannon underscored the fact that the president wanted all the glory for himself. He had deeply resented the Saturday Night Live portrayal of Bannon as the Grim Reaper making presidential decisions behind the Resolute Desk while Trump played with an expandable toy from behind a kiddie desk.

Just about everything Kelly did ran counter to Trump’s spontaneity, setting the two men on a collision course.

Worse, though, Trump thought Kelly was acting morally superior. Trump started derisively dubbing him “the church lady” behind his back.

The danger for Kelly was that insiders, too, were starting to turn against him over his strict new procedures.

But once their wings were clipped, they sought to undermine Kelly, in ways the new chief of staff did not necessarily see.

At the outset, Kelly decided not to give Ivanka and Kushner special treatment,

a move that would later lead the kids to conspire against him and imperil his ability to manage effectively.

Privately, Kelly told Mattis and other administration officials that he thought Ivanka and Kushner were “idiots” and needed to leave the White House because “we’ve just got to run this country.”

Naturally, the kids came to resent Kelly, believing he and his enforcers, chief among them Nielsen, were trying to erode their influence and access, which in the Priebus era had largely been unfettered.

“They’re trying to fuck me,” Kushner to...

Until Trump came down from the residence, usually between 11:00 a.m. and noon—a remarkably late start time for a commander in chief—Kelly did normal staff work.

But the moment the president arrived in the Oval Office, all normalcy flew out the window, and Kelly

stayed glued to h...

Once Trump went back to the residence, around 5:00 or 6:00 in the evening, Kelly snuck in a couple more hours of work. On many da...

Famously blunt, Kelly routinely commiserated with other staffers about the difficulties of working for Trump. “He can’t make up his mind,” the chief of staff once told aides. “He says one thing an...

“It’s a shame the White House has become an adult day care center. Someone obviously missed their shift this morning.”

Very true statement.

As with most of his foreign leader meetings, Trump had been briefed but didn’t appear to have retained the material and instead tried to wing it.

When Modi mentioned his concern about China’s ambitions and aggression in the region, Trump revealed a stunning ignorance about geography.

“It’s not like you’ve got China on your border,” Trump said, seeming to dismiss the threat to India.

Modi’s eyes bulged out in...

Aides noticed him giving a sidelong glance at Tillerson, who accompanied Trump as par...

The Indian prime minister considered Tillerson among the best-versed Americans on the region’s security challenges, and together they had been plotting a new partnership. Tillerson’s eyes flashed open wide at ...

appearing to the Indian delegation to attempt not to offend the president as well as to signal to Modi that h...

Trump did not appear to notice their silent exchange. He just kept rolling, droning o...

Modi tried to keep the conversation on an elevated plane, hoping to follow the path Tillerson had laid out for them in the previous weeks to work together to protect India and fend off China’s Belt and Road Initiative. But each time Modi tried to get Trump to engage on the substance of U.S.-India relations, the American president vee...

Those who witnessed the meeting that day in Manila w...

Modi’s exp...

gradually shifted, from shock and concern ...

“I think he left that meeting and said, ‘This is n...

I cannot count on this man as a partner,’” one Tru...

After that meeting, “the Indians took a step back” in their diplomatic relations...

The meeting with Modi was a major setback not only for U.S.-India relations but also for the administration’s hopes o...

But his briefings to Trump were academic and detail-oriented, and the two men’s stylistic differences inspired epic clashes.

Indeed, Trump constantly shifted and grumbled when staff were trying to bring him up to speed on a topic, immediately threatened by the notion that his knowledge wasn’t sufficient if he needed experts.

As the president repeatedly told Kelly when he proposed a subject briefing: “I don’t want to talk to anyone. I know more than they do. I know better than anybody else.”

Idiota

but McMaster and his team almost immediately realized the president wasn’t reading any of the briefing books, or even the concise three-page version.

Staff secretary Rob Porter would synthesize the memos in a one-page cover letter, written in prose the president might find easier to digest.

As one of Trump’s confidants said, “I call the president the two-minute man. The president has patience for a half page.” But McMaster understandably resented the fact that Tr...

briefings to Trump. Nothing in writing. “Everyone agreed we needed to stop giving the...

As a passenger boat ferried the Trumps

to the stark white memorial, the president pulled Kelly aside for a quiet consult. “Hey, John, what’s this all about? What’s this a tour of?” Trump asked his chief of staff.

Kelly was momentarily...

Trump had heard the phrase “Pearl Harbor” and appeared to understand that he was visiting the scene of a historic battle, but...