Team of Vipers Quotes

“This experience is both horrifying and liberating—realizing that, as Apple founder Steve Jobs once said, “Everything around you that you call life was made up by people who were no smarter than you.”
― Cliff Sims, Team of Vipers: My 500 Extraordinary Days in the Trump White House

“In fact, there was a pervasive view among some of the President’s most senior aides that there was something patriotic about undermining Trump’s most disruptive impulses. I know that many people reading this will say, “Thank God.” And if I give them the benefit of the doubt, it may have been a sincere effort to do what they thought was in the best interest of the country. But whether they were sincere or not, I found it cowardly. There’s nothing patriotic about being a part of “the resistance” inside the building. Imagine the arrogance of saying, “I know sixty-three million of my fellow Americans voted for this guy, but I’m going to sabotage him anyway because I know better.”
― Cliff Sims, Team of Vipers: My 500 Extraordinary Days in the Trump White House

“They’re going to say it’s not presidential,” he said. “But you know what? It’s modern-day presidential. I’m not going to stop telling the American people what I think because it makes some people uncomfortable”
― Cliff Sims, Team of Vipers: My 500 Extraordinary Days in the Trump White House

“I have found almost everything written or said about President Trump—by sympathizers as well as critics—to fall woefully short.”
― Cliff Sims, Team of Vipers: My 500 Extraordinary Days in the Trump White House

“Donald Trump is not a religious man—that’s no secret to anyone. He viewed the faith community as a political constituency.”
― Cliff Sims, Team of Vipers: My 500 Extraordinary Days in the Trump White House

“You can’t win a Democrat primary anymore unless you’re a kneeler. But you can’t win a general election if you hate the flag and the national anthem.” We walked off down the hallway back toward the West Wing and he tied a bow on his line of thought. “2020 will be fun, that I can tell you—a lot of fun,” he said. “The kneelers! Just watch.”
― Cliff Sims, Team of Vipers: My 500 Extraordinary Days in the Trump White House

“It’s almost like the entire nation has descended into an ends-justify-the-means dystopia.”
― Cliff Sims, Team of Vipers: My 500 Extraordinary Days in the Trump White House

“My test results revealed that while I was by disposition a polite person, I was not by nature a kind one. I was quick to seek revenge and slow to offer forgiveness. I had a warrior spirit, but lacked a servant heart. I was too quick to pass judgment on the motives of my “enemies,” while granting myself moral superiority in the process.”
― Cliff Sims, Team of Vipers: My 500 Extraordinary Days in the Trump White House

“As the nineteenth-century orator Robert G. Ingersoll wrote, reflecting on the legacy of Abraham Lincoln, “Most people can bear adversity. But if you wish to know what a man really is, give him power. This is the supreme test.”
― Cliff Sims, Team of Vipers: My 500 Extraordinary Days in the Trump White House

“Reputation is not, in fact, the most important thing. As famed UCLA basketball coach John Wooden once explained: “Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.”
― Cliff Sims, Team of Vipers: My 500 Extraordinary Days in the Trump White House

“But Kelly and Hagin got what they wanted: Johnny gone and the opportunity to plug their own spy—Jordan Karem—into that job. By any historical measure, he was a strange fit for the role, which usually goes to a single young man in his twenties. Karem was in his mid-thirties and recently married. But he fit the one description that Kelly and Hagin cared about: he was loyal to them over the President.”
― Cliff Sims, Team of Vipers: My 500 Extraordinary Days in the Trump White House

“The Wall Street Journal seemed to have the most rigorous reporting standards, which made it much more difficult for aides to take anonymous shots at one another.”
― Cliff Sims, Team of Vipers: My 500 Extraordinary Days in the Trump White House

“calling her the “No. 1 leaker” wasn’t fair, either, because all leaks are not created equal. Sure, the staff-on-staff backstabbing was a distraction and contributed to the toxic work environment, but the real-world damage those leaks inflicted paled in comparison to the national security leaks. And Kellyanne didn’t have anything to do with those.”
― Cliff Sims, Team of Vipers: My 500 Extraordinary Days in the Trump White House

“She seemed to be perennially cloaked in an invisible fur coat, casting an all-knowing smile, as if she’d already collected ninety-eight Dalmatians with only three more to go.”
― Cliff Sims, Team of Vipers: My 500 Extraordinary Days in the Trump White House

“People watch TV on mute,” the President told me, “so it’s those words, those sometimes beautiful, sometimes nasty little words that matter.” He had mastered television as a communications medium, and this was one of his smartest insights.”
― Cliff Sims, Team of Vipers: My 500 Extraordinary Days in the Trump White House

“He consumed TV like the late Roger Ebert must have watched movies. I imagine that, after being a film critic for almost a half century, it was difficult for Ebert to enjoy a movie just for the fun of it. He must have always been analyzing the plotline, character development, and cinematography. Trump was the same way about network news programming. He commented on the sets, the graphics, the wardrobe choices, the lighting, and just about every other visual component of a broadcast.”
― Cliff Sims, Team of Vipers: My 500 Extraordinary Days in the Trump White House

“That’s not to say that Trump’s press criticisms were insincere. Far from it. As with pretty much everything else, what he said publicly closely mirrored what he said in private.”
― Cliff Sims, Team of Vipers: My 500 Extraordinary Days in the Trump White House

“Trump came back to the West Wing enthused and playing media critic. “I actually think Jim handled himself well there,” he said. “Sometimes he’s so defensive—just so defensive. Not today. Very calm. Very professional. I thought he was good. I got the better of him, of course—they’re fake news, as we know—but he was good, Jim was good.”
― Cliff Sims, Team of Vipers: My 500 Extraordinary Days in the Trump White House

“According to a Gallup survey released in January 2018, less than half of Americans could name an “objective news source”—not a single one. The effect of this was that the more the “fake news” attacked Trump, the tighter his supporters clung to him.”
― Cliff Sims, Team of Vipers: My 500 Extraordinary Days in the Trump White House

“Let’s be real,” tweeted conservative commentator and frequent Trump critic Ben Shapiro, “The Cut Cut Cut Act is better branding than anything the GOP has come up with in 20 years.” Even the liberal publication The Atlantic declared it “effective branding,” adding that “Congress is manifestly awful at naming its own bills.”
― Cliff Sims, Team of Vipers: My 500 Extraordinary Days in the Trump White House

“Back at the White House, Trump worked the phones constantly.”
― Cliff Sims, Team of Vipers: My 500 Extraordinary Days in the Trump White House

“comment. TRUMP PROMISES “BIG, BEAUTIFUL” TAX CUTS FOR CHRISTMAS, read the Washington Examiner headline later that day. TRUMP: TAX CUT IS MY GIFT TO YOU and TRUMP SEES TAX PLAN AS CHRISTMAS GIFT added CNN and The Wall Street Journal. Expectations were set. The Speaker’s office never mentioned delaying the date again.”
― Cliff Sims, Team of Vipers: My 500 Extraordinary Days in the Trump White House

“He wasn’t even slightly interested in what some staff member in Ryan’s office was suggesting. Before I’d even finished my explanation—in which I planned to lay out their reasoning, then say I thought he should actually push harder—he had an idea. “Tax cuts for Christmas,” he said. “That’s what it’s going to be.”
― Cliff Sims, Team of Vipers: My 500 Extraordinary Days in the Trump White House

“It wasn’t entirely clear to anyone what was included in Schlapp’s portfolio, but what was clear to everyone was that being left out of tax reform—the administration’s number-one priority—was driving her up the wall. She would constantly insert herself into the process of planning tax events”
― Cliff Sims, Team of Vipers: My 500 Extraordinary Days in the Trump White House

“Bannon thought he was an action figure who had been stuck in a hermetically sealed package for decades until Trump finally freed him and brought him to life. I couldn’t help but appreciate anyone who had the stones to be that grandiose.”
― Cliff Sims, Team of Vipers: My 500 Extraordinary Days in the Trump White House

“The episode felt like a dramatic scene out of a spy movie, complete with me hopping out of my black sedan, 9mm pistol tucked in my waistband.”
― Cliff Sims, Team of Vipers: My 500 Extraordinary Days in the Trump White House

“The coverage was so positive that it was jarring. We had never experienced anything quite like this before. This must be what it feels like to be a Democrat.”
― Cliff Sims, Team of Vipers: My 500 Extraordinary Days in the Trump White House

“I silenced my phone and walked down to the fifth floor of Trump Tower, which once housed the set of The Apprentice. It was now a large, open, warehouse-style room, with some tables and chairs and a portable basketball hoop in the center, which had been brought in by campaign aides as a way to blow off steam. I grabbed a ball and shot by myself for a while”
― Cliff Sims, Team of Vipers: My 500 Extraordinary Days in the Trump White House

“I was there. This is what I saw. And, unlike the many leakers in the White House, I have put my name on it. —Cliff Sims
Washington, D.C.
October 2018”
― Cliff Sims, Team of Vipers: My 500 Extraordinary Days in the Trump White House