Rage

by Bob Woodward

The rhetorical overkill seemed mindless to Mattis. He believed that ridicule and taunting was unproductive, childish and dangerous. “I got over enjoying public humiliation by second grade,” Mattis once told the president.

Mattis believed there were ways for a president to be tough and keep the peace. “But not with the current occupant. Because he doesn’t understand. He has no mental framework or mode for these things. He hasn’t read, you know,” he told an associate.

Reading, listening, debating and having a process for weighing alternatives and determining policy were essential, Mattis believed. “I was often trying to impose reason over impulse. And you see where I wasn’t able to, because the tweets would get out there.”

“All the victories,” he said, “were becoming just submerged by this mercurial, capricious tweeting form of decision making.”

Mattis was frustrated with the message being sent to China, Russia and North Korea. “What we’re doing is we’re actually showing how to destroy America,” he said later. “That’s what we’re showing them. How to isolate us from all of our allies. How to take us down. And it’s working very well. We are declaring war on one another inside America. It’s actually working against us right now.”

the Russians had placed malware in the election registration system in at least two counties in Florida—St. Lucie County and Washington County. There was no evidence yet that the malware had been activated. It was sitting there to be used. The voting system vendor used by Florida was used by state election registration systems all around the country. The Russian malware was sophisticated and could be activated in counties with particular demographics. For instance, in areas with higher percentages of Black residents, the malware could erase every tenth voter, almost certainly reducing the total vote count for Democrats. The same could potentially be activated to reduce Trump votes in Republican districts. The bottom line: The Russians are here.

He reminded me again of his late uncle, Dr. John Trump, a physicist who taught electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1983. “He was at MIT for 42 years or something. He was a great—so I understand that stuff. You know, genetically.”

“I have this reputation of not being willing to apologize,” Trump said. “It’s wrong. I will apologize, if I’m wrong.” “When’s the last time you apologized?” “Oh, I don’t know, but I think over a period—I would apologize. Here’s the thing: I’m never wrong. Okay. No, if I’m wrong—if I’m wrong—I believe in apologizing. This was a totally appropriate conversation. It was perfect. And again, if I did something wrong, I would apologize. Okay?”

The result was making the judiciary more ideological, Graham realized. The rule change had removed the need to strive for compromise. “If you’ve got to reach across the aisle and pick up 10 votes, you’re going to have a different judge than if you don’t.” When the Democrats got back in power with a Senate majority they would do the same thing, he predicted.

“But we have weeded out some really wackos. It’s only going to get worse over time, though. The judiciary is going to get far more ideological. It changes the Senate. It’s just a matter of time until the Senate becomes the House”—more ideological, more partisan and focused on the short term rather than able to take a long view.