Rage

by Bob Woodward

“There’s dynamite behind every door” seemed the most self-aware statement about the jeopardy, pressures and responsibilities of the presidency I had heard Trump make in public or private.

Yet the unexpected headline from the call was also his detailed knowledge of the virus and his description of it as so deadly so early in February, more than a month before it began to engulf him, his presidency and the United States. And so at odds with his public tone.

Coats began to think Trump was impervious to facts. Trump had his own facts: Nearly everyone was an idiot, and almost every country was ripping off the United States. The steady stream of ranting was debilitating. The tension never abated, and Coats would not bend facts to suit the president’s preconceptions or desires. Coats was shocked. “Trump was on a different page than just about anything I believed in.”

Mattis made it clear he did not want any daylight in public between himself and President Trump on any issue. That way Mattis could have influence. Any public daylight could be fatal.

“You know what? I would’ve been a great wrestler. I never wrestled in my life, but I would’ve been a great wrestler. You know why?” “No sir. Why?” “Because I’m tough,” Trump said. “And you’ve got to be tough to be a wrestler.”

On March 17, two months after his inauguration, Trump decided on a policy of maximum pressure—ratcheting up economic, rhetorical, military, diplomatic pressure and, if necessary, covert action. The campaign was designed to show Kim he was in greater danger and would pay a bigger price with nuclear weapons than he would without them. The overall goal was denuclearization.

Rosenstein was new to White House meetings and the private Trump, so he kept quiet. He was astounded how the president’s rambling monologue continued in every way but a straight line. He found it important, though, that Trump did not say he wanted to get rid of the Russia investigation—he wanted to get rid of Comey.

To Rosenstein, it was pretty clear that the FBI leadership thought a group of Russian sympathizers had taken over the United States government. Rosenstein should have been told about the memos. The FBI clearly didn’t trust the Justice Department, or him. He thought the bureau was operating like J. Edgar Hoover—a power unto itself. “I don’t understand why The New York Times has these,” he said to McCabe, “and I don’t have them, and my prosecutors don’t have them.” Outraged, Rosenstein sent one of his deputies to the FBI to get copies of the Comey memos. He felt sandbagged. This was clearly bad faith. He had been set up.

“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.”

He has no mental framework or mode for these things. He hasn’t read, you know,” he told an associate.

A country always needed allies, he was sure. A person always needed allies. And this was the tragedy of Trump’s leadership and the bottom line: “It was inexplicable to think otherwise. It was indefensible. It was jingoism. It was a misguided form of nationalism. It was not patriotism.”

“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.”

But really the job of a president is to keep our country safe, to keep it prosperous. Okay? Prosperous is a big thing. But sometimes you have so much prosperity that people want to use that in a bad way, and you have to be careful with it.”

As I listened, I was struck by the vague, directionless nature of Trump’s comments. He had been president for just under three years, but couldn’t seem to articulate a strategy or plan for the country. I was surprised he would go into 2020, the year he hoped to win reelection, without more clarity to his message.

It's all word salad.

Redfield was deeply concerned by Gao’s tone, which was different from his previous experiences with him. Gao sounded like a hostage and expressed serious anxiety. When pressed, he offered nothing about possible human-to-human spread. In an unexpected turn Gao wanted the United States to send their experts but he said he couldn’t issue the invitation. Instead could Redfield request the Chinese ask for U.S. experts?

Fauci was intensely focused on the efficiency of transmission question. Just how infectious was the new virus? The feedback he got from China was happy talk. The official Chinese line continued to be that the virus was not a big deal. It is not that efficient. It is less deadly than SARS. We have it under control.

“It’s one person coming in from China. We have it under control. It’s going to be just fine,” Trump said, making his first public comment on the coronavirus during an interview in Davos. “We think it is going to be handled very well,” he said during a separate interview. “We’ve already handled it very well.”

Trump's first COVID remark.

“But for me it works out good. It’s funny, the relationships I have, the tougher and meaner they are, the better I get along with them. You know? Explain that to me someday, okay?”

I had known Bezos for more than 20 years and worked at the Post for 49 years. I told Trump that I believed that was true. There was an iron curtain between the newsroom and ownership. “Hard to believe,” Trump said. “If I really knew it was true, I’d treat him much differently. Because I haven’t been very nice to him, you know.” The Washington Post’s strong independence from Bezos seemed to genuinely strain credulity for Trump. “It’s just hard for me. Maybe it’s a different personality. But it’s hard for me to believe.”

At the White House that day, halfway through the Top Secret President’s Daily Brief in the Oval Office, chief briefer Beth Sanner told President Trump at that point the intelligence community had a pretty benign take on the coronavirus.

“Just like the flu,” Sanner said in terms of severity. “We don’t think it’s as deadly as SARS.” We do not believe this is going to be a global pandemic, she said.

The Chinese were effectively saying we don’t want our people getting together with yours. We want to keep them separate. We do not want collaboration. As the case numbers escalated in Wuhan, Pottinger noted the Chinese were increasing information barriers and trying to keep U.S. reporters out of Wuhan. The few who slipped in were put in hotel rooms and told not to leave. Others were later expelled. Pottinger concluded the Chinese were more aggressive with expulsions than the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War. All signs were pointing to an effort to hide something.

In a Michigan speech January 30 Trump said, “We have very little problem in this country at this moment—five. And those people are all recuperating successfully. But we’re working very closely with China and other countries, and we think it’s going to have a very good ending for it, so that I can assure you.”

Azar, Redfield and Fauci were recommending strong travel restrictions on China.

“Today President Trump took decisive action to minimize the risk of the spread of novel coronavirus in the United States,” he announced. “I have today declared that the coronavirus presents a public health emergency in the United States.” He said that U.S. citizens returning from China would undergo 14 days of mandatory quarantine, and that Trump had signed a presidential proclamation “temporarily suspending the entry into the United States of foreign nationals who pose a risk of transmitting the 2019 novel coronavirus”—namely foreign nationals who had traveled in China within the last 14 days. Azar called the measure “prudent, targeted and temporary” and stressed once more that “the risk of infection for Americans remains low.”

“It was inappropriate for the president to ask a foreign leader to investigate his political opponent and to withhold United States aid to encourage that investigation,” Alexander said. “When elected officials inappropriately interfere with such investigations, it undermines the principle of equal justice under the law.”

But to remove a president with a such a strong base in their party was pretty much unthinkable. A shrinking minority of Republicans genuinely supported Trump. The others had made a political survival decision.

“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.”

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.”

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.

In late February, China finally allowed World Health Organization scientists to enter the country to investigate. Redfield had wanted to send his team of investigators but only one CDC official was allowed in the group. Fauci’s deputy director, Dr. Clifford Lane, was the only other American allowed to join the delegation to China from February 16 to February 24. The report released by the group indicated that asymptomatic infection was “relatively rare and does not appear to be a major driver of transmission” and praised China for “perhaps the most ambitious, agile and aggressive disease containment effort in history.”

China lied

The WHO report contained a stark warning: “Much of the global community is not yet ready, in mindset and materially, to implement the measures that have been employed to contain Covid-19 in China. These are the only measures that are currently proven to interrupt or minimize” the spread of the coronavirus. Those measures included surveillance, public engagement, cancellation of mass gatherings, traffic controls, rapid diagnosis, immediate case isolation, and “rigorous tracking and quarantine of close contacts.”

“We have it very much under control,” Trump told reporters on February 23. “Very interestingly, we’ve had no deaths.” The next day he tweeted, “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA,” and added, “Stock Market starting to look very good to me!”

On February 26, Trump announced at a news conference that Vice President Pence would replace Azar as the head of the Coronavirus Task Force. “When you have 15 people—and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero—that’s a pretty good job we’ve done,” the president said. “This is a flu. This is like a flu.”

Says this after hearing from experts that this was worse than the flu.

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.”

Fauci, who was fast becoming the most recognizable face of U.S. government’s coronavirus response, appeared on the Today show on February 29. NBC reporter Peter Alexander asked the question on many people’s minds: “So, Dr. Fauci, it’s Saturday morning in America. People are waking up right now with real concerns about this. They want to go to malls and movies, maybe the gym as well. Should we be changing our habits and, if so, how?” “No,” Fauci said. “Right now, at this moment, there’s no need to change anything that you’re doing on a day-by-day basis. Right now the risk is still low, but this could change.” He was later glad he had added “but this could change.” Yet as a practical matter, America’s Doctor had given the green light to proceed with the weekend routine.

“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.”

Kushner’s four texts painted President Trump as crazy, aimless, stubborn and manipulative.

But Kushner was an optimist. Trump, he said, “has walked through many doors with dynamite” and survived. “He has mastered the presidency like never before.” He summarized, “The president has pushed the boundaries, yes. He’s not done the normal thing. But it was the right thing for people. Everything is on track for the big blowout.”

“And by the way,” Kushner added, “that’s why the most dangerous people around the president are overconfident idiots.” It was apparently a reference to Mattis, Tillerson and former White House economic adviser Gary Cohn. All had left. “If you look at the evolution over time, we’ve gotten rid of a lot of the overconfident idiots. And now he’s got a lot more thoughtful people who kind of know their place and know what to do.”

Trump had united the Republican Party behind himself. “I don’t think it’s even about the issues,” Kushner said. “I think it’s about the attitude.” He said Trump “did a full hostile takeover of the Republican Party.”

Kushner is exactly right about this.

Parscale was so proud of the campaign he was managing that he said, “They’ll make movies about us someday.”

A visitor asked Parscale where the hole in reelection might be. “The coronavirus,” he said emphatically.

Speaking at the CDC, Trump promised, “Anybody that needs a test can have a test,” seeming to contradict widespread reporting about the difficulty of being tested. Administration officials later worked to clarify that people need to go through their doctors or public health officials to access testing.

On March 9, with the stock market reeling, Trump tweeted, “Last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that!”

“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.

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 officials and scientists from getting a clear picture of the number of infections in the crucial early days of the virus’s spread across the U.S. By the beginning of March, fewer than 500 tests had been conducted.

The final draft shows the weakness of having too many hands on the drafting process. Nowhere do the guidelines urge social distancing—staying six feet away from others—one of the most effective universal mitigations.

For Redfield it was one of the most difficult times of his four-decade professional life. “15 Days to Slow the Spread” was important, but not enough. In private he told others of his deepest fears. “It’s not to stop the spread,” Redfield said. “We were now in a race. I think we all understood now we were in a race. We’re in a marathon. We’re in a two-year, three-year race. Not a one-year, not a six-month race. The race is to slow and contain this virus as much as humanly possible, with all our efforts, till we can get a highly efficacious vaccine deployed for all the American people and then beyond that to the rest of the world.”

All the talk about the virus going away or disappearing was medically false.