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February 19 - February 27, 2020
From the moment Trump swore an oath to defend the Constitution and commit to serve the nation, he governed largely to protect and promote himself.
Trump’s North Star was the perpetuation of his own power, even when it meant imperiling our shaky democracy.
Some of them also harked back to the 1950s, envisioning a simpler, halcyon America in which white male patriarchs ruled the roost, decorous women kept home and hearth, and minorities were silent or subservient.
The universal value of the Trump administration was loyalty—loyalty not to the country but to the president himself.
Two kinds of people went to work for the administration: those who thought Trump was saving the world and those who thought the world needed to be saved from Trump.
Trump’s ego prevented him from making sound, well-informed judgments. He stepped into the presidency so certain that his knowledge was the most complete and his facts supreme that he turned away the expertise of career professionals upon whom previous presidents had relied. This amounted to a wholesale rejection of America’s model of governing, which some of his advisers concluded was born of a deep insecurity. “Instead of his pride being built on making a good decision, it’s built on knowing the right answer from the onset,” a senior administration official said.
“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.
“Rage and phrenzy will pull down more in half an hour than prudence, deliberation, and foresight can build up in a hundred years.”
Nobody bothered to vet Flynn. There was no review of his tenure as a U.S. military intelligence chief in Afghanistan, which had been the subject of a misconduct investigation. Nor of his time as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, which President Obama had cut short. Nor of his international consulting firm and his contracts with Kremlin-aligned companies. Nor of his attendance at a 2015 Moscow gala as a guest of Russia, seated at the table of President Vladimir Putin.
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.”
By helping Bashar al-Assad in Syria, Putin was creating a toehold for Russia in the Middle East. In North Korea, Putin was hoping to befriend Kim Jong Un and keep the United States from consolidating power in the Asia Pacific. And Putin annexed Crimea in eastern Ukraine, dead set on proving that Mother Russia was the rightful ruler of the land and showing resolve on a matter of nationalistic pride.
Kim was a pariah, arguably the world’s greatest abuser of human rights, and committed to nuclear armament. But Trump threw Kim a party, showering him with respect and declaring himself honored to be in his presence. The summit was carefully staged to put both leaders on equal footing, which normalized the authoritarian Kim. The spectacle was so jarring that even Kim acknowledged the oddity. He was overheard telling Trump, through an interpreter, “Many people will think of this as a form of fantasy . . . a science fiction movie.”
sound of Erdogan’s voice. “It’s un-fucking-believable,” one of Trump’s senior advisers recalled. “I can’t describe it. When he’s on that speakerphone, it is like you’re hearing Hitler at a Nuremberg rally. You’ve heard Hitler’s voice and it’s just different. There’s something about it that’s powerful and chilling. You feel like you’re maybe hearing Satan talking or whatever. When Erdogan talks, it’s so powerful it’s disturbing. It’s just like this booming voice, and said in a cadence.”
