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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.
before my second interview with President Trump on the afternoon of Friday, December 13, the House Judiciary Committee had voted to send two impeachment articles against the president to the full House of Representatives.
The “Monica Room,” Trump called it, and gave a knowing smirk.
They say I spent 25 percent what Hillary did but I got $6 billion worth of earned media.” It was actually 50 percent, according to analysis firm mediaQuant.
“You meet a woman. In one second, you know whether or not it’s all going to happen. It doesn’t take you 10 minutes, and it doesn’t take you six weeks. It’s like, whoa. Okay. You know? It takes somewhat less than a second.”
In the rough transcript of the July 25 call with the Ukrainian president that the White House had released, Trump says, “There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it.… It sounds horrible to me.”
“I’m just asking the policy question,” I said. “Would you want the next president of the United States to be talking to foreign leaders about investigating political opponents?”
He did not seem to understand or accept my central point—the president of the United States had no business asking for a criminal investigation of his political opponent. It was clear we were not going to agree, so I decided to move on.
“Have you ever found that you did nothing wrong, but apology is the path to ending the issue?” I asked. “I wouldn’t apologize if I did nothing,” Trump said. “Can’t do it. If I did something wrong I could apologize.”
“Who’s the person you trust most in the world?”
“When’s the last time you apologized?”
Here’s the thing: I’m never wrong.
A filibuster effectively allowed one senator to block the appointment of a judge. Senate rules required 60 votes to overcome a filibuster, meaning in effect each nominee needed the support of at least 60 senators.
Fauci had been director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for 36 years, a nearly unheard of longevity in a top government post, and oversaw a vast research effort to detect, treat and prevent a wide array of infections and immunological diseases.
As late as fall 2019 he was working on the hunt for a universal flu vaccine and an HIV vaccine, two Holy Grails of infectious disease research.
Redfield, 68, an expert virologist and the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the public health agency charged with protecting Americans’ health, read an “urgent notice on the treatment of pneumonia of unknown cause” released online by the Wuhan Municipal Health Committee in China. One of the CDC’s major responsibilities was to monitor global health threats to try to stop them before they reached the United States.
A devout Catholic, Redfield had gone through a religious awakening during a private 10-minute conversation with Pope John Paul II in 1989 and believed in the redemptive power of suffering. Redfield prayed every day, including a prayer for President Trump.
“China Pneumonia of Unknown Etiology Situational Report,” it is dated January 1, 2020, and marked “For Internal Use Only/Not for Distribution.” The report was disseminated to other top health officials, including Health and Human Services secretary Alex Azar.
Gao sounded like a hostage and expressed serious anxiety.
Redfield grew increasingly worried as reported cases increased. On January 7, he stood up his Incident Management Structure, a process reserved only for serious health matters.
CDC Situational Report for January 13 alerted readers that “Thailand reported a confirmed case of nCoV in a traveler from Wuhan City to Thailand. This is the first infection with novel coronavirus 2019 detected outside China.”
told Redfield he was gathering evidence not only of human-to-human spread but also asymptomatic spread, meaning a person without symptoms could be a carrier and infect others.
On January 17, Redfield activated the entire CDC and assigned thousands of his staff to work on the new virus. Screening
Trump cited a Rasmussen poll showing he had a 51 percent approval rating among likely voters as of January 16. He said it was wonderful. “You don’t believe polls, do you?” I asked. “Well, no,” Trump said, “I don’t. I don’t believe them.” Polling had widely predicted a Hillary Clinton victory in 2016.
Rasmussen polls have consistently shown higher results for Trump than those conducted by other firms. The national average of presidential job approval polls that day showed he had an approval rating of about 44 percent. Rasmussen was called one of the most accurate of all major pollsters in 2016, showing Clinton up two points on the day before the election. Most other polls had Clinton leading by three to six points.
Erdogan is a repressive leader with a terrible record on human rights. “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,
Trump said he had just “signed my 187th federal judge,” and reminded me of his two Supreme Court appointments. “When I get out, I’ll probably have more than 50 percent of the federal judges in the country appointed under Trump,” he bragged. “The only one that has a better percentage is George Washington, because he appointed 100 percent.” Although Trump has repeated this claim often, it is not factual. Among recent presidents, Clinton, Carter and Nixon had each filled a greater percentage of federal judgeships by late January of the fourth year of their first term. He was also not alone in
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January 23, in the midst of Trump’s impeachment, Chinese health authorities locked down Wuhan and several nearby cities, suspending outbound flights, trains and buses and locking down more than 35 million people.
“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.
Despite the conclusive evidence that at least five people wanted the restrictions—Fauci, Azar, Redfield, O’Brien and Pottinger—in an interview March 19, President Trump told me he deserved exclusive credit for the travel restrictions from China. “I had 21 people in my office, in the Oval Office, and of the 21 there was one person that said we have to close it down. That was me. Nobody wanted to because it was too early.”
all the credit for himself.
Senator Mitt Romney of Utah was the sole Republican who voted to convict the president along with all the Democrats, and did so only on the abuse of power count.
Corrupting an election to keep oneself in office is perhaps the most abusive and destructive violation of one’s oath of office I can imagine.”
Lamar Alexander—at
Questions about whether Trump deserved to remain in the presidency, he said, should be left to voters in the 2020 election, now only nine months away.
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.”
February 19, 2020.
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
Today show on February 29.
son-in-law had to know that Noonan’s column, dated March 8, 2018, and titled “Over Trump, We’re As Divided As Ever,” was not positive. Rather it was quite devastating. In it she called Trump a “circus act” and “a living insult.”
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 Cheshire Cat’s strategy was one of endurance and persistence, not direction.
“Controversy elevates message,”
“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.”
“In the beginning,” Kushner told others, referring to the first years of the administration, “20 percent of the people we had thought Trump was saving the world, and 80 percent thought they were saving the world from Trump. “Now, I think we have the inverse. I think 80 of the people working for him think that he’s saving the world, and 20 percent—maybe less now—think they’re saving the world from Trump.” Let that analysis sink in: Twenty percent of the president’s staff think they are “saving the world” from the president.
Kushner said one of Trump’s greatest strengths was “he somehow manages to have his enemies self-destruct and make stupid mistakes. He’s just able to play the media like a fiddle, and the Democrats too. They run like dogs after a fire truck, chasing whatever he throws out there. And then he solves the problem and does the next—then they go on to the next thing.”
overconfident idiots.” It was apparently a reference to Mattis, Tillerson and former White House economic adviser Gary Cohn.
dinner for Saturday night, March 7. Trump and Bolsonaro sat at a table with O’Brien, Ivanka, Kushner and some of the other Brazilians traveling with Bolsonaro. O’Brien was later notified that three of the Brazilians at the table, but not Bolsonaro, tested positive for Covid-19.
Later, Bolsonaro tested positive. The virus was starting to feel real.
