Rage

by Bob Woodward

“I bring rage out. I do bring rage out. I always have. I don’t know if that’s an asset or a liability, but whatever it is, I do.”

“Look,” Trump said, “when you’re running a country it’s full of surprises. There’s dynamite behind every door.”

Mattis knew from memory one of President Abraham Lincoln’s codes of war from the midst of the Civil War in 1863: “Men who take up arms against one another in public war do not cease on this account to be moral beings responsible to one another and to God.” War could not be divorced from moral responsibility.

Trump had continued to rail against state dinners in general, adding that instead, “We should be eating a hamburger on a conference table.”

Trump questioned Mattis when they met for lunch not long after Tillerson’s firing. “Aren’t you friends with him?” Trump asked. “No, no, we weren’t friends,” Mattis said. “We’re best of friends. But I’ll work with whoever you put in, because you’re the president. You’re the one who was elected, not me.”

Milley also improved the physical fitness of the Army, an issue of immense importance to Mattis. “It was humiliating to watch the U.S. Army march in a parade and then go watch the Mexican army or the Ukrainian army or the Norwegians,” Mattis said. The armies of other nations were so much more fit.

Rosenstein felt that on the Mueller investigation he had made Trump bulletproof for the election and had done him a favor.

Early in the interview I mentioned Nixon’s famous quote to David Frost in 1977 after he had resigned the presidency: Of his opponents, Nixon had said, “I gave them a sword. And they stuck it in. And they twisted it with relish. And, I guess, if I’d been in their position I’d have done the same thing.”

“When you’re number one and when you have hundreds of millions of people, whether they’re against you or not they still read what you say. I don’t need commercials. When you’re number one, you don’t need commercials.

Kushner’s second recommendation for understanding Trump was, surprisingly, the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland. He paraphrased the cat: “If you don’t know where you’re going, any path will get you there.”

“The media is hysterical about Trump—so hysterical they can’t be a check on him,” Kushner argued. “Reporters are afraid to break the line on Trump’s dysfunction. And if they do, they will be ostracized.”

“He’s unpredictable, which is a great strength. Nobody knows where that line is” that Trump won’t cross. According to Kushner, Trump himself does not know. “This is the difference between a businessperson and politician, in the sense that every day the facts change. And so the line changes too.”

“He’s not afraid to step into a controversial situation,” Kushner said. “I think he’s shown over time he’s built up his courage to do it. Because he’s stepped into a lot of situations where people said if you do this the world’s going to end, and then the next morning the sun rises, the next evening the sun sets.”

Kim never once, directly or indirectly, raised the issue of the 30,000 U.S. troops stationed in South Korea. Kim wanted them there, Pompeo concluded, because they were a restraint on China.

Trump could have a consequential presidency despite all the drama, and Graham wanted to remain a Trump ally. If the president considered someone an ally, he would accept their criticism. He would never accept criticism if he came to see them as an enemy.

Kushner continued, “The whole thing with polling is it’s about getting likely voters, number one, as opposed to registered voters. Public polling is using registered voters, not likely, and they’re definitely skewing the turnout model.

The election was over. I was going to win easily. And all of a sudden we got hit with the China virus. And now I’m working my ass off.” And he abruptly said, “So long, Bob. Good luck.”