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“This will be the biggest national security threat you face in your presidency,” Robert O’Brien, the national security adviser, told Trump, expressing a jarring, contrarian view as deliberately and as strongly as possible.
“Don’t think SARS 2003,” the expert replied. “Think influenza pandemic 1918.”
“I wanted to always play it down,” Trump told me.
“I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.”
“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.
“Trump is so controversial,” she later said to an associate. “He’s the kind of person that would inspire crazy people.”
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.
Trump added, “Not to mention my fucking generals are a bunch of pussies. They care more about their alliances than they do about trade deals.”
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.
Too many right-wing nuts had influence.
Tillerson thought Kushner’s dealings with Netanyahu were “nauseating to watch. It was stomach churning.”
Trump eventually ordered the closure of the Palestinian Liberation Organization office in Washington, D.C. in September 2018 and canceled nearly all U.S. aid to the West Bank and Gaza, as well as $360 million in annual aid previously given to the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees.
“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 problem extended further, to the president’s failure to build a smooth working team—to listen, gather various informed opinions, debate, identify options, debate some more and bring everyone on board with a decision. “I consider myself the most reluctant person on earth to go to war,” Mattis wrote in his 2019 book on leadership. But it had to be asked: What might it mean if a war came and the best person was not in the chairmanship? Suppose the great military leaders of World War II had been cast aside on the impulse of the commander in chief? In that environment, would there have been
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The decision announcements by tweet were all wrong, in Mattis’s view. Trump lived in his own head and if he wanted, out came an idea or a decision. It did not matter what anybody else thought.
Mattis once said, “In any organization you become complicit with what the organization is doing.” For nearly two years Mattis had gone along. As the commander in chief, Trump called the shots. Mattis decided he was no longer going to be complicit.
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.”
The linkage between the withheld aid, which in the end totaled about $400 million, and Trump’s request for an investigation into the Bidens ultimately led the House of Representatives to impeach Trump.
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.
I was surprised that he would make such an extreme statement—that South Korea’s very existence depended on the United States “allowing” 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.”
“Controversy elevates message,” Kushner said. This was his core understanding of communication strategy in the age of the internet and Trump.
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.”
Liberated from constraints, they moved money from Pentagon budgets for construction and antidrug programs to pay for the wall. “We looked under every seat cushion and found all the money we needed,” Kushner said.
In our interview, the president spoke with pride about his leadership. He blamed China and President Obama and continued to accept no responsibility.
the real dynamite behind the door was the virus.
Trump later announced that he was going to discontinue funding for the World Health Organization because he felt the organization had protected China during the crisis. In a tweet on April 15, Gates blasted the decision, writing, “Halting funding for the World Health Organization during a world health crisis is as dangerous as it sounds.… The world needs WHO now more than ever.”
Trump never did seem willing to fully mobilize the federal government and continually seemed to push problems off on the states. There was no real management theory of the case or how to organize a massive enterprise to deal with one of the most complex emergencies the United States had ever faced. Beyond being a reporter, I was worried for the country.
“His attention span is like a minus number,” Fauci said privately. Trump seemed interested in one outcome. “His sole purpose is to get reelected,” Fauci told an associate.
