Bob Woodward Quotes

Bannon said. As for running for president, “Zero chance. First off, those two action items. The fucker will not write one check. He’s not a guy who writes checks.

Haitians,” Trump said. “We don’t need more Haitians.

Grievance was a big part of Trump’s core, very much like a 14-year-old boy who felt he was being picked on unfairly. You couldn’t talk to him in adult logic. Teenage logic was necessary.

Dowd remained convinced that Mueller never had a Russian case or an obstruction case. He was looking for the perjury trap. And in a brutally honest self-evaluation, he believed that Mueller had played him, and the president, for suckers in order to get their cooperation on witnesses and documents. Dowd was disappointed in Mueller, pulling such a sleight of hand. After 47 years, Dowd knew the game, knew prosecutors. They built cases. With all the testimony and documents, Mueller could string together something that would look bad. Maybe they had something new and damning as he now more than half-suspected. Maybe some witness like Flynn had changed his testimony. Things like that happened and that could change the ball game dramatically. Former top aide comes clean, admits to lying, turns on the president. Dowd didn't think so but he had to worry and consider the possibility.

At the heart of Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign was his pledge to fix the economy and to use the presidency to do it. The fundamental difference between George Bush and himself, Clinton said, was his belief in an activist role for the government. "I know how President Lincoln felt when General McClellan wouldn't attack in the Civil War," Clinton said when he accepted the Democratic Party's nomination on July 16, 1992. "He asked him, 'If you're not going to use your army, may I borrow it?' And so I say: George Bush, if you won't use your power to help people, step aside, I will." This book is about President Clinton's effort to make good on his promise, "I will."

In 2016, candidate Trump gave Bob Costa and myself his definition of the job of president: "More than anything else, it's the security of our nation... That's number one, two and three... The military, being strong, not letting bad things happen to our country from the outside. And I certainly think that's always going to be my number-one part of that definition." The reality was that the United States in 2017 was tethered to the words and actions of an emotionally overwrought, mercurial and unpredictable leader. Members of his staff had joined to purposefully block some of what they believed were the president's most dangerous impulses. It was a nervous breakdown of the executive power of the most powerful country in the world. What follows is that story.

And is there anybody in charge at the White House who was doing anything but kissing his fat butt all over this?

Cohn and Porter worked together to derail what they believed were Trump’s most impulsive and dangerous orders. That document and others like it just disappeared. When Trump had a draft on his desk to proofread, Cohn at times would just yank it, and the president would forget about it. But if it was on his desk, he’d sign it. “It’s not what we did for the country,” Cohn said privately. “It’s what we saved him from doing.

"The important thing is the presidency," Nixon continued. "If need be, save the presidency from the President."

Kelly said of the president, “He’s an idiot. It’s pointless to try to convince him of anything. He’s gone off the rails. We’re in crazytown. “I don’t even know why any of us are here. This is the worst job I’ve ever had.

Trump had no understanding of how government functioned. At times he would just start drafting orders himself or dictating.

"It's all over," he said to Cooke. "You've got to come clean. The notes show us the story is wrong. We know it. We can show you point by point how you concocted it."

The dead-seated hatreds of American politics flourished in the Trump years. He stoked them, and did not make concerted efforts to bring the country together. Nor did the Democrats. Trump felt deeply wronged by the Democrats who felt deeply wronged by Trump. The walls between them only grew higher and thicker. My 17 interviews with Trump presented a challenge. He denounced Fear, my first book on him, as untrue, a "scam" and a "joke," calling me a "Dem operative." Several of those closest to him told him that the book was true, and Lindsey Graham told him that I would not put words in his mouth and would report as accurately as possible. Trump decided, for reasons that are not clear to me, that he would cooperate. To his mind, he would become a reliable source. He is reliable at times, completely unreliable at others, and often mixed... But the interviews show he vacillated, prevaricated and at times dodged his role as leader of the country despite his "I alone can fix it" rhetoric. As America and the world know, Trump is an overpowering presence. He loves spectacle. In a time of crisis, the operational is much more important than the political or the personal. For tens of millions the optimistic American story has turned into a nightmare.

A president must be willing to share the worst with the people, the bad news with the good. All presidents have a large obligation to inform, warn, protect, to define goals and the true national interest. It should be a truth-telling response to the world, especially in crisis. Trump has, instead, enshrined personal impulse as a governing principle of his presidency.
“When his performance as president is taken in its entirety, I can only reach one conclusion: Trump is the wrong man for the job.”

- Bob Woodward, Rage, pp. 391-2 (emphasis added).

"Who is the arbiter of the Constitution?

"Now, the President may be right in how he reads the Constitution," Jaworski said. "But he may also be wrong. And if he is wrong, who is there to tell him so? And if there is no one, The President, of course, is free to pursue his course of erroneous interpretation. What then becomes of our constitutional form of government? ... That nation's constitutional form of government is in serious jeopardy if the President, any President, is to say that the Constitution means what he says it does and that there is no one, not even the Supremer Court, to tell him otherwise.