Rage

by Bob Woodward

“The president has no moral compass,” Mattis replied. The bluntness should have shocked Coats, but he’d arrived at his own hard truths about the most powerful man in the world.

“True,” Coats agreed. “To him, a lie is not a lie. It’s just what he thinks. He doesn’t know the difference between the truth and a lie.”

Trump’s impact on the country would be lasting. “This degradation of the American experiment is real. This is tangible. Truth is no longer governing the White House statements. Nobody believes—even the people who believe in him somehow believe in him without believing what he says.”

Mattis summarized, “When I was basically directed to do something that I thought went beyond stupid to felony stupid, strategically jeopardizing our place in the world and everything else, that’s when I quit.”

Trump is an idiot.

After Trump’s controversial 2017 meeting with Putin in Hamburg where he confiscated the translator’s notes, they debated—but only in jest—about subpoenaing the translator’s notes. They knew if they dared, they would be fired.

The result was a compromise that is one of the most confusing lines in the history of high-profile investigations: “While this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”

he said again. He returned to the new

the best pollsters in the country, and they said Trump’s going to win in a

So at Trump’s next PDB, January 28, O’Brien issued his declaration that the virus would be “the biggest national security threat you face in your presidency,” and Pottinger backed him up.I

A shrinking minority of Republicans genuinely supported Trump. The others had made a political survival decision.

With all the “formers” attached to his name, Coats did not want to be the person to speak out and say, “Hey, you guys got to stand up.” So he remained silent.

After the travel restrictions were imposed, China was still not allowing American government health officials in, O’Brien and Pottinger r...

Over 25 state governors, in town for a National Governors Association meeting and scheduled to attend a black-tie dinner with Trump later that night, had asked for a briefing on the coronavirus. Sitting at three long tables in a U-shaped layout, the governors wanted guidance and seemed to be looking for the inside story.

agree completely, Fauci told the governors. This is very serious business. You need to be prepared for problems in your cities and your states. Fauci could see the alarm on the governors’ faces. “I think we scared the shit out of them,” Fauci said after the meeting.

The official press release from the Department of Health and Human Services describing the meeting read: “The panel reiterated that while this is a serious public health matter, the risk to the American public remains low at this time, and that the federal government will continue working in close coordination with state and local governments to keep it that way.”

Lies.company line. The Fed gov was ill prepared. More concerned about economy, trade, than safety of American people.

The next day, President Trump said publicly three times—once at the White House, once on TV and once at a New Hampshire rally—that the virus would go away on its own. “When it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away,” he said at the packed rally. “I think it’s going to work out good. We only have 11 cases and they’re all getting better.”

Denial. TO the third power.

During this period, from February 11 to 14, Trump repeatedly said the U.S. had only about 12 cases.

Asked by another panel member to reiterate that the public should not be buying respirator masks needed by health care workers, Fauci laughed. “I don’t want to denigrate people who walk around wearing masks” but masks, he said, should be worn by sick people. “Put a mask on them, not yourself.” He later added, to laughter from the audience, “I don’t want to be pejorative against cruise ships, but if there’s one thing you don’t want to do right now, it’s to take a cruise in Asia.”

Early on fancy did downplay the wearing of masks. But into 10,000 death or less, file she said it's good to wear masks.

Anyone who has watched Trump’s press conferences knows how he avoids issues, splits hairs and won’t deal with hard questions. This is only amplified in a one-on-one setting—that maddening, convoluted dodging that drove Mattis, Tillerson, Coats and others crazy.

That's because he is a liar and he does not have control of the issues. He knows nothing about foreign policy.He does not listen to experts and they respect the fields. And he left does not believe in science. He is a true narcissist that should not be president. He is The reality show president. He is a cartoon caricature president.

Lane also said he’d been impressed with the high-tech capabilities of the hospitals in Beijing. But neither American on the delegation had been allowed into Wuhan, the epicenter of the disease.

But on February 25, as Trump boarded Air Force One to return from a state visit to India, the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the CDC, Dr. Nancy Messonnier, issued a stark public warning. Schools might have to close, conferences might be curtailed, and businesses may have to have employees work from home. “The disruption to everyday life may be severe,” she told reporters. “It’s not so much a question of if this will happen anymore, but rather more a question of when this will happen, and

how many people in this country will have severe illness.” Some conservatives,

including Rush Limbaugh, immediately jumped on Messonnier as part of a deep state conspiracy to use the virus to undermine Trump. They pointed out that Messonnier was the sister of Rod Rosenstein, the former deputy attorney general, who had overseen the Mueller investigation and resigned in spring 2019.

Rush Limbaugh has a role to play in causing confusion and denial and conspiracy theories about covert 19.His outlandish claims of a deep state conspiracy has calls trumps base to not even believe in the seriousness of the coronavirus.

Community spread, a public health term for an infection where the source is unknown, would open a new front in the battle against Covid in the U.S.

In testimony before the House on the 27th, Azar said, “The immediate risk to the public remains low.” He added, “It will look and feel to the American people more like a severe flu season.”

Later that day at a rally in South Carolina, Trump said, “The Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus, you know that, right? Coronavirus, they’re politicizing it.” He called Democrats’ criticism of his handling of the virus “their new hoax,” after the Russian investigation and impeachment, and their “single talking point.”

“The American public needs to go on with their normal lives,” Redfield said. “The risk is low. We need to go on with our normal lives.”

Early on the government officials really did not know how dangerous coded 19 was.Even Anthony FAUCI Did not know how dangerous coded was. The government did down play it Because of financial reasons and they wanted to make sure that the trump administration looked like it was hand in line Things.They were Extremely concerned about the optics

conservative speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan, Noonan wrote that with Trump, “We are not talking about being colorfully, craftily unpredictable, as political masters like FDR and Reagan sometimes were, but something more unfortunate, an unhinged or not-fully-hinged quality that feels like screwball tragedy.”

In a chapter on the Trump presidency added in March 2018, Whipple wrote that Trump “clearly had no idea how to govern” in his first year in office, yet was reluctant to follow the advice of his first two chiefs of staff, Reince Priebus and John Kelly. “What seems clear, as of this writing and almost a year into his presidency, is that Trump will be Trump, no matter his chief of staff,” Whipple concluded.

A fourth text Kushner advised was necessary to understand Trump was Scott Adams’s book Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don’t Matter. Adams, the creator of the Dilbert comic strip, explains in Win Bigly that Trump’s misstatements of fact are not regrettable errors or ethical lapses, but part of a technique called “intentional wrongness persuasion.” Adams argues Trump “can invent any reality” for most voters on most issues, and “all you will remember is that he provided his reasons, he didn’t apologize, and his opponents called him a liar like they always do.”

When combined, Kushner’s four texts painted President Trump as crazy, aimless, stubborn and manipulative. I could hardly believe anyone would recommend these as ways to understand their father-in-law, much less the president they believed in and served.

Which Democrats caused Trump the most trouble? “The more mainstream. The more they appeal to moderates. Look, this election is about moderates. That’s who determines elections.”

remarks to reporters following a meeting with Republican senators, Trump said, “We’re doing a great job with it. And it will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away.” Virus cases in the United States were up by more than 200 from the day before.

The other key player recently appointed to the team was Dr. Deborah Birx, whose decorated career as a physician, HIV/AIDS researcher and diplomat in federal government spanned more than 40 years. She was named the response coordinator for the White House Coronavirus Task Force. Birx had spent most of her career in the search for a vaccine for HIV, and in 2003 had helped lead the clinical trial that produced the first evidence of any vaccine to be effective in lowering the risk of HIV. Also the U.S. global AIDS coordinator at the State Department, she had worked closely with Fauci and Redfield throughout her career.

Birx reported that 35 states had Covid-19 cases now and 30 of those had been traced to travelers that had come from Europe, primarily through John F. Kennedy Airport. O’Brien, Pottinger, Fauci and Redfield thought it was well past time to restrict travel from Europe.

In the Oval Office that morning, there was a consensus among the national security and health officials that they needed to act immediately to close down travel from Europe. Treasury Secretary Mnuchin was opposed. Travel from Europe was about five times that from China. “This is going to bankrupt everyone,” he said dramatically. “It’s going to destroy the economy.”

That day, March 11, marked the beginning of a new consciousness in the country. There were over 1,000 cases and 37 deaths in the country. Colleges across the U.S. announced they were suspending classes. The actor Tom Hanks said that he and his wife, Rita Wilson, had tested positive for Covid-19 and would quarantine. More dominoes fell. The next day, the NCAA announced it was canceling basketball tournaments and suspending all remaining games for the season. Trump acknowledged he would likely have to cancel his upcoming rallies. Broadway theaters closed. Testifying before Congress, Fauci said that testing for the virus was “failing. I mean, let’s admit it.” The distribution of faulty test kits had prevented

On March 13, Trump declared a national emergency, the sixth of his presidency. He also announced the launch of a Google-related website that could “determine whether a test is warranted and to facilitate testing at a nearby convenient location.” This would “cover the country in large part.” Shortly after, Google tweeted that the tool in one of its small subsidiaries was still in development and was only intended to cover the Bay Area.

When Senator Lindsey Graham first heard early discussion about shutting down the country, he thought it was crazy. Then he saw projections of possible 2.2 million dead. “I’m no expert here,” Graham told Trump, “but if these projections are anywhere near right and you ignore them, you’re going to have a unique place in history. Mr. President, if these things are remotely right and you don’t act, it would be devastating to your presidency.”

Fauci and Birx unrolled the guidelines to Trump. Physical separation is the key, they said. We should close down for at least 15 days to see what happens. They wanted to ask all Americans to work and attend school from home; to avoid gatherings of more than 10 people; to stay away from restaurants and bars; and to avoid traveling, shopping and visiting loved ones at nursing homes. They would recite the now familiar public health litany: wash your hands, don’t touch your face, sneeze into a tissue, and disinfect surfaces.

The current race again the virus

Three days after Trump announced “15 Days to Slow the Spread,” I conducted my eighth interview with him. “This thing is a nasty—it’s a nasty situation,” Trump told me about the coronavirus on March 19, 2020.

Earlier that day, California governor Gavin Newsom had become the first governor to order residents to stay home except for essential needs—the first of a wave of shutdown orders across all 50 states that would eventually lead to tens of millions of unemployment claims and the nation’s greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression.

In our interview, the president spoke with pride about his leadership. He blamed China and President Obama and continued to accept no responsibility. “I think we’re doing very well,” the president said. “We have to see what happens. We have it very well shut down. The American people are terrific. You know, what they’re putting up with.”

was apparent the president was aware of the criticism he was receiving about his handling of the coronavirus. After surviving the 22-month-long Mueller investigation and the third impeachment trial in United States history, the real dynamite behind the door was the virus. The lives and livelihoods of tens of millions of Americans hung in the balance with every decision he made in dealing with the coronavirus. In our interview, he seemed to understand the deadly severity of the disease.

“Part of it is the mystery,” Trump said. “Part of it’s the viciousness. You know when it attacks, it attacks the lungs. And I don’t know—when people get hit, when they get hit, and now it’s turning out it’s not just old people, Bob. Just today and yesterday, some startling facts came out. It’s not just old, older. Young people too, plenty of young people.” I asked Trump what had caused the shift in his thinking about the virus. “It’s clear just from what’s on the public record that you went through a pivot on this,” I said, “to, oh my God, the gravity is almost inexplicable and unexplainable.”

The president maintained his upbeat rhetoric in the early weeks of the virus had been deliberate. “I wanted to always play it down,” Trump told me, as I reported earlier in this book. “I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.”

Shortly before midnight on March 22, Trump tweeted in all-caps, “WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF. AT THE END OF THE 15 DAY PERIOD, WE WILL MAKE A DECISION AS TO WHICH WAY WE WANT TO GO!”

As the end of the “15 Days to Slow the Spread” inched closer, Trump said he wanted to reopen the country for Easter. We really want to have people at church, he said. “I’m a Catholic,” Fauci said. “I went to Catholic schools. I understand the importance of Easter, but I’m a little concerned that if you want to have people go back to churches on Easter, that might not be a good idea.”