A Warning

by Anonymous

“Character, in the long run, is the decisive factor in the life of an individual and of nations alike.” —Theodore Roosevelt

“Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionaries and rebels—men and women who dared to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.” —Dwight D. Eisenhower

They will write that his advisors came to find him unfit for the job.

It was no secret that Donald J. Trump hated John McCain. “He is not a war hero,” Trump remarked in 2015 to a stunned audience in Iowa. “I like people who weren’t captured.”

It was no secret that Donald J. Trump hated John McCain. “He is not a war hero,” Trump remarked in 2015 to a stunned audience in Iowa. “I like people who weren’t captured.

It was no surprise that the president was agitated by the outpouring of public appreciation toward the senator. He is flustered whenever the spotlight shifts away from him, but especially if it moves toward a perceived rival, even a deceased one.

“The President’s efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful,” he wrote, “but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the President declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests.” This included the president’s demand that White House counsel Don McGahn fire the special counsel, a request McGahn rebuffed for fear it would “trigger what he regarded as a potential Saturday Night Massacre” and lead to Donald Trump’s impeachment. It probably would have.

They will fear the costs of a reelected Donald Trump, and they are right to be concerned. Unsavory figures in his orbit have relished the possibility of another four years—not in the “we can do good for the country” way you would hope, but rather with the attitude that “no one will be able to stop us.” I share your worry.

There are many “leaks” from this administration, perhaps more than any before it. While some officials tell stories to reporters to brag, to advance a personal agenda, or to retaliate against others, many appear to be doing so because they are alarmed at what they have seen in this White House.

Sources decline to attach their names to these anecdotes out of fear of retribution. The reluctance is not surprising given the president’s penchant for using his position to mock, bully, berate, and punish. I have heard his words of warning to administration officials thinking about departing, and I have seen how his supporters torment those who have crossed him, including going after the innocent family members of dissenters.

Sources decline to attach their names to these anecdotes out of fear of retribution. The reluctance is not surprising given the president’s penchant for using his position to mock, bully, berate, and punish. I have heard his words of warning to administration officials thinking about departing, and I have seen how his supporters torment th...

Donald Trump is fond of telling officials that he learned an important lesson in business: People are not scared when you threaten a lawsuit, but they are scared when you actually sue them. That is among his favored methods of argument—attacking crit...

After I published the op-ed in the Times, Trump responded with a one-word tweet: “TREASON?” Those seven letters say it all. To the president, criticism is treasonous. ...

He has suggested worse be done to his critics. In September 2019, the president issued a veiled threat against an intelligence community employee who reported the president for inappropriately coaxing a foreign government to investigate one of his political opponents. Trump said the employee was “close to a spy.” He continued, “You know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart, right? The spies and treason, we used to handle it a little differently than we do now.” The implicit suggestion was that the whistleblower should be hanged.

In September 2019, the president issued a veiled threat against an intelligence community employee who reported the president for inappropriately coaxing a foreign government to investigate one of his political opponents. Trump said the employee was “close to a spy.” He continued, “You know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart, right? The spies and treason, we used to handle it a little differently than we do now.” The implicit suggestion was that the whistleblower should be hanged.

Such behavior is unbecoming of a president and the presidency. To anyone with even a modest reverence for the principle of fr...

The nation’s chief executive should never under any circumstances use his office and its extraordinary powers to seek revenge against whistleblowers and political opponents. These are actions we would expect from tin-pot dictators in repressive countries and which we would openly decry as a nation. Yet it is happening in re...

Some will find it disloyal, but too many people have confused loyalty to a man with loyalty to the country.

“No government, any more than an individual, will long be respected without being truly respectable; nor be truly respectable without possessing a certain portion of order and stability.” —James Madison

“People are going to fucking die because of this,” a top aide angrily remarked. We all scrambled to figure out what had happened and what Trump’s plans were. US allies were baffled and alarmed.

Although a long list of highly experienced Republican leaders were de facto barred from the incoming administration for being “Never-Trumpers,” those who didn’t sign their names onto anti-Trump screeds, myself included, had a shot.

Trump carried around maps outlining his electoral victory, which he would pull out at odd times in discussions meant to focus on preparing him to take office. He would beckon his guests, as well as aides, advisors, and incoming cabinet officers, to gaze at the sea of red on the map, visual proof that he’d won. “Yeah, we know you won,” we would think to ourselves. “That’s why we’re here.”

The slimmed-down group was comprised of White House officials and cabinet secretaries. “About a third of the things the president wants us to do are flat-out stupid. Another third would be impossible to implement and wouldn’t even solve the problem. And a third of them would be flat-out illegal.” Heads nodded.

Trump wasn’t halfway through year one, and he wanted to shut down the government because he was unhappy with congressional budget negotiations. He’d been talking about it behind closed doors for weeks. Now he was bringing it up in press conferences and tweeted that the government needed a “good shutdown.”

We tipped off Republican leaders in Congress that they needed to take it seriously. The president wasn’t just playing a game. “He’s crazy as a lunatic,” one West Wing advisor told the Speaker’s office.

He suggested to aides that weapons be given to all of America’s teachers so they could fight back against mass shooters. This was typical Trump. An idea was formed in the ether of his mind, and he decided it was brilliant because he thought of it. Most sane folks raised an eyebrow. The teachers we remembered tended to be gentler souls like Betty White, not Annie Oakley. We wanted to hand Betty and all of her colleagues a pistol?

the president had no conception of what was doable and what was nuts.

One Harvard gun violence expert summed up the public reaction: “It’s a crazy proposal. So what should we do about reducing airline hijacking? Give all the passengers guns as they walk on?”

no one else took it seriously, much like the president’s claim that he would be the citizen-hero if he was on the scene of a school massacre. “I really believe I’d run in there, even if I didn’t have a...

when Trump suggests doing something unlawful, it’s not necessarily nefarious. More often than not, it’s because he doesn’t understand the limits of federal law.

The president doesn’t police bad behavior in his cabinet, he encourages it. Aides have to self-police.

At one point, Trump warmed to a new idea for solving what he viewed as the biggest crisis in American history: to label migrants as “enemy combatants.” Keep in mind this is the same designation given to hardcore terrorist suspects. If we said these illegals were a national security threat, Trump reasoned, then the administration had an excuse to keep all of them out of the country.

The rumor escaped the confines of the White House. “Are you fucking kidding me?” one career State Department official blurted when informed of the proposal. “This is completely batshit.” Advisors worked to shut it down quickly and quietly.

“Every time I ask Mnuchin about this, he’s got another excuse. ‘We can’t do this, we can’t do that,’ ” he said, half faking the voice of Mnuchin, a man he has known for close to two decades. “What good is he? I thought we had the right guy at Treasury. But now I don’t know. Maybe not so much. What do you think—personnel mistake?” He likes to poll the room when someone is on the ropes. People laugh or offer approving facial expressions, usually relieved that the anvil isn’t hovering over their own head. Trump will leave people in the lurch for weeks, months, or longer. He notoriously kept Kirstjen Nielsen, his homeland security chief, flummoxed about whether and when she might get sacked.

On more than one occasion, Trump has discussed with staff the possibility of dropping Vice President Pence in advance of the 2020 election.

Trump’s view of loyalty, of course, is self-serving to the extreme.

Trump avoids directly firing people, contrary to his television image. Instead he takes the cowardly way out and cuts them loose by way of social media.

Over time, a feeling of insecurity returned to the administration, and the Steady State recognized that Trump’s demeanor couldn’t be moderated.

Senior advisors and cabinet-level officials pondered a mass resignation, a “midnight self-massacre,” as noted earlier, to draw the public’s attention to the disarray.

At any given time during the Trump administration, there are at least a handful of top aides on the brink of resigning, either out of principle or exhaustion. Several departure timelines appeared to be converging in 2018, creating the possibility for a simultaneous walkout to prove our point about the president’s faltering administration. Every time this was contemplated, it was rejected.

Trump’s children are his chiefs of staff. Random Fox News hosts are his chiefs of staff. Everyone is the chief of staff but the chief of staff.

It’s no wonder people aren’t jumping at the opportunity. The high rate of turnover was a direct result of the president’s leadership. He ejected people who were willing to stand up to him. He got bored with officials who weren’t dynamic enough or didn’t defend him on television. Some escaped the administration because of policy differences, and still others departed to avoid what they perceived to be an inevitably sinking ship. For certain people, it was a combination of all of these factors.

“I don’t fucking care. Ooh ooh ‘excuses, excuses.’ Just stick it to them. I promise you, they will be kissing our asses afterwards.” “I’m hotter than I was then, okay? Because you know you also cool off, right? You do. But I’m much hotter.” “It is very unfair to me. And it’s presidential harassment frankly. You can’t harass a president.” “Sweetie, your face looked very tired on television. Have you lost weight?” “I think I’ve done more than any other first-term president ever.” “If you’re going to cough, please leave the room…Do you agree with the cough?” “I think it’s probably, uh, I want them to think whatever they think, they do say, I mean, I’ve seen and I’ve read and I’ve heard, and I did have one very brief meeting on it. But people are saying they’re seeing UFOs, do I believe it? Not particularly.” “We have the worst laws and the stupidest judges.” “This guy, have you seen him? ‘My Pillow.’ He’s unbelievable. He buys all the airtime on TV. It’s terrific. And he’s a big, big Trump supporter.” “This is one of the great inventions of all times—TiVo.” “You’re saying it’s MY fault? It’s all fucked, and it’s your fault.” These are the sounds bouncing off those rounded walls today, or on any given day of the Trump presidency. Some of these have been said with television cameras in the room and others with the doors closed. All of them reflect the real Donald Trump. Not everyone sees the full Trump, especially the one who is red-faced, consumed with fury, and teetering at t...

“It’s worse than you can imagine,” former economic advisor Gary Cohn reportedly wrote in an email. “Trump won’t read anything—not one-page memos, not the brief policy papers, nothing. He gets up halfway through meetings with world leaders because he is bored.”

The sheer level of intellectual laziness is astounding. I found myself bewildered how anyone could have run a private company on the empty mental tank President Trump relies upon every day to run the government.

In 2013, he tweeted: “Sorry losers and haters, but my I.Q. is one of the highest—and you all know it! Please don’t feel so stupid or insecure, it’s not your fault.”

Intelligence is one of those qualities that, if you insist you have it, you probably don’t.

LMAO!! So true!

The president frequently claims to be an expert on issues about which, in reality, advisors will have found out he knows very little. Here is a sample from a much larger list put together by astute observers: On campaign finance: “I think nobody knows more about campaign finance than I do, because I’m the biggest contributor.” On the courts: “I know more about courts than any human being on Earth.” On trade: “Nobody knows more about trade than me.” On taxes: “Nobody knows more about taxes than I do.” On ISIS: “I know more about ISIS than the generals do.” On the US government: “Nobody knows the system better than I do.” On technology: “Technology—nobody knows more about technology than me.” On drone technology, specifically: “I know more about drones than anybody. I know about every form of safety that you can have.” On the contrary, I’ve seen the president fall flat on his face when trying to speak intelligently about most of these topics. You can see why behind closed doors his own top officials deride him as an “idiot” and a “moron” with the understanding of a “fifth or sixth grader.” Folks have been forced to publicly deny those specific quotes, usually with non-denial denials.

Among many other conspiracy theories, Trump suggested without evidence that Senator Ted Cruz’s dad was involved in the Kennedy assassination, that Justice Antonin Scalia may have been murdered, that MSNBC host Joe Scarborough might have been involved in a former intern’s death, that a former Clinton advisor’s suicide could have been something more nefarious, that Muslim Americans near New York City celebrated in the streets after 9/11, that vaccines cause autism, and more. External observers can barely keep these lists of his claims updated. Internal observers are no better off. We wonder, does he actually believe these conspiracies? Does he just say this stuff to get attention? I can’t get into his head, but my guess is a little bit of both.

Trump will wrap his arms around bogus claims like they are old friends, and he doesn’t care if the person spewing them is a fraud, as long as their words serve whatever purpose Trump has in mind at the moment.