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April 9 - April 16, 2020
I alone can fix it.” On July 21, 2016, as he accepted the Republican presidential nomination in Cleveland, Donald John Trump spoke more than four thousand words, but these five would soon become the tenet by which he would lead the nation.
His presidency would be powered by solipsism. 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.
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.
You just rip. Do not wait for a question, because there won’t be a question. He doesn’t even know what intelligence is. Just rip.”
Pelosi assumed Trump would open the conversation on a unifying note, such as by quoting the Founding Fathers or the Bible. Instead, the new president began with a lie: “You know, I won the popular vote.”
They’re the FBI. You’re just a guy passing through here. They’re the FBI and they’re going to be here a hundred years from now.”
“You always take the path of the hard right against the easy wrong,” he said. “You never compromise your principles. You do what is right no matter what is the cost. What matters is honesty, integrity, loyalty to your family and to your principles.
“He literally would cross out ‘I’—every time—and replace it with ‘we’ or ‘the FBI and its partners,’” Monaco said. “The theme was, it’s never about him. I started getting out my red pen and taking ‘I’ out so he didn’t have to do it. I just knew no ‘I’ could ever survive first contact with him.”
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.”
Trump said he did not realize until seeing the parade that France had had such a rich history of military conquest. He told Macron something along the lines of “You know, I really didn’t know, but the French have won a lot of battles. I didn’t know.”
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.”
“No, that’s other people that do that. I don’t. I’m very consistent. I’m a very stable genius.”
A good leader tries to embody the best qualities of his or her organization. A good leader sets the example for others to follow. A good leader always puts the welfare of others before himself or herself.
Yet Sessions still admired the man he met at that Senate hearing on the United Nations all those years before. Sessions was still in awe of the passions Trump stirred with his former constituents back home in Alabama. He saw in Trump so much fight, so much moxie. “You know, this guy just has that dragon energy,” Sessions remarked to one of his political friends. “He can’t be tamed.”
“Look at this! A ray of sunshine has entered the building,” Mattis said. “To what do I owe that compliment, General?” Christie asked. They shook hands and Mattis said, “Because you’re smart enough not to get into the shitshow.”
A bachelor who never married, the commander made it a tradition that he would volunteer to take a junior officer’s shift on Christmas Day so his subordinates could spend the holiday with their families.
Trump had grown increasingly emboldened to make his own decisions and to enforce them. “It’s very easy actually to work with me. You know why it’s easy? Because I make all the decisions,” Trump quipped on September 12, reflecting on John Bolton’s abrupt exit as national security adviser.
“What we’re discovering is that the Constitution is not a mechanism that runs by itself,” Galston added. “Ultimately, we are a government of men and not law. The law has no force without people who are willing to enforce it.”
