Bob Woodward Quotes

In a small group meeting in his office one day, 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.

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.

He talked about how tariffs risked roiling the markets and jeopardizing a lot of the stock market gains. He said the tariffs would be, in effect, a tax on American consumers. Tariffs would take away a lot of the good that Trump had done through tax and regulatory reform. You’re the globalist, Trump said. I don’t even care what you think anymore, Gary. Trump shooed him away. Cohn retreated to a couch.

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.

I believed it, we published it. Official questions had been raised, but we stood by the story and her. Internal questions had been raised, but none about her other work. The reports were about the story not sounding right, being based on anonymous sources, and primarily about purported lies [about] her personal life -- [told by men reporters], two she had dated and one who felt in close competition with her."

In another discussion with the president, Cohn unveiled a Commerce Department study showing the U.S. absolutely needed to trade with China. “If you’re the Chinese and you want to really just destroy us, just stop sending us antibiotics. You know we don’t really produce antibiotics in the United States?” The study also showed that nine major antibiotics were not produced in the United States, including penicillin. China sold 96.6 percent of all antibiotics used here. “We don’t produce penicillin.” Trump looked at Cohn strangely. “Sir, so when mothers’ babies are dying of strep throat, what are you going to say to them?” Cohn asked Trump if he would tell them, “Trade deficits matter”? “We’ll buy it from another country,” Trump proposed. “So now the Chinese are going to sell it [antibiotics] to the Germans, and the Germans are going to mark it up and sell it to us. So our trade deficit will go down with the Chinese, up with the Germans.” U.S. consumers would be paying a markup. “Is that good for our economy?” Navarro said they would buy it through some country other than Germany. Same problem, Cohn said. “You’re just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

Kelly seemed to be just trying to keep the ship from sinking. At a senior staff meeting in early 2018, he announced with pride, “I now know that I will not be the shortest-serving chief of staff. I’ve now surpassed Reince.” Priebus had served 189 days, the shortest tenure of any White House chief of staff in history.

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.

Paris was one of the justifications the Obama administration used as part of the regulatory record to justify the cost and benefits of the Clean Power Plan.” That was an Obama-era 460-page rule to lower carbon dioxide emitted by power plants that the EPA estimated would save 4,500 lives a year. Pruitt was already moving to end the policy.

All good work is done in defiance of management.

Trump arrived and sat down. Hot dogs and hamburgers were laid out. The fantasy diet of an 11-year-old kid, Bannon thought, as Trump wolfed down two hot dogs.

Maybe that would be less crucial under Obama, Podesta thought, because Obama's approach was so intellectual. He compared Obama to Spock from Star Trek. The president-elect wanted to put his own ideas to work. He was unsentimental and capable of being ruthless. Podesta was not sure that Obama felt anything, especially in his gut. He intellectualized and then charted the path forward, essentially picking up the emotions of others and translating them into ideas. He had thus created a different kind of politics, seizing the moment of 2008 and driving it to a political victory.

The president was speaking as if the U.S. military was a mercenary force for hire. If a country wouldn’t pay us to be there, then we didn’t want to be there. As if there were no American interests in forging and keeping a peaceful world order, as if the American organizing principle was money.

Tillerson said, and the floodgates gushed open. “The president can’t make a decision. He doesn’t know how to make a decision.

Seven hours later, Trump gave a long statement at his first Coronavirus Task Force press conference in three months. He spoke alone at the White House. No Pence, Fauci or Birx. He also shifted tone. Everything was not rosy with the outlook for the virus. "It will probably, unfortunately, get worse before it gets better," Trump said injecting an unusual dose of realism. "Something I don't like saying about things, but that's the way it is." Previously Trump had been reluctant to wear a mask. "Get a mask," he said. "Whether you like the mask or not, they have an impact. They'll have an effect and we need everything we can get." His comments were a tacit acknowledgement that his previous approach had not worked, and that, in fact, the virus was much worse. The day was a microcosm of Trump's presidency, veering from "We have it under control" to "worse before it gets better," all in the span of a few hours. It was just the most recent example- and the last before this book went to press- that Trump's presidency was riddled with ambivalence, set on an uncertain course, swinging from combativeness to conciliation, and whipsawing from one statement or action to the opposite.