Bob Woodward Quotes

He watched a two-hour block of Fox News, and then most of the two-hour-long blocks of MSNBC and CNN that he had TiVo’d. He raged at the coverage as top aides came in and out — Priebus, Bannon, Kushner, McGahn, Cohn, Hicks and Porter. Why was Mueller picked? Trump asked. “He was just in here and I didn’t hire him for the FBI,” Trump raged. “Of course he’s got an axe to grind with me.” “Everybody’s trying to get me,” the president said. “It’s unfair. Now everybody’s saying I’m going to be impeached.” What are the powers of a special counsel? he asked. A special counsel had virtually unlimited power to investigate any possible crime, Porter said.

Having failed in efforts to control or curtail the president’s tweeting, Priebus searched for a way to have practical impact. Since the tweets were often triggered by the president’s obsessive TV watching, he looked for ways to shut off the television. But television was Trump’s default activity. Sunday nights were often the worst. Trump would come back to the White House from the weekend at one of his golf resorts just in time to catch political talk on his enemy networks, MSNBC and CNN.

Sometimes, the more you protect your force, the less secure you may be. Sometimes, the more force is used, the less effective it is.

After I finished reporting for this book on President Trump, I felt weariness. The country was in real turmoil. The virus was out of control. The economy was in crisis with more than 40 million out of work. A powerful reckoning on racism and inequality was upon us. There seemed to be no end in sight, and certainly no clear path to get there. I thought back to the conversation with Trump on February 7 when he mentioned the "dynamite behind every door," the unexpected explosion that could change everything. He was apparently thinking about some external event that would affect the Trump presidency. But now, I've come to the conclusion that the "dynamite behind the door" was in plain sight. It was Trump himself. The oversized personality. The failure to organize. The lack of discipline. The lack of trust in others he had picked, in experts. The undermining or the attempted undermining of so many American institutions. The failure to be a calming, healing voice. The unwillingness to acknowledge error. The failure to do his homework. To extend the olive branch. To listen carefully to others. To craft a plan. Mattis, Tillerson and Coats are all conservatives or apolitical people who wanted to help him and the country. Imperfect men who answered the call to public service. They were not the deep state. Yet each departed with cruel words from their leader. They concluded that Trump was an unstable threat to their country. Think about that for a moment: The top national security leaders thought the president of the United States was a danger to the country.

McMaster said that he believed Mattis and Tillerson had concluded that the president and the White House were crazy. As a result, they sought to implement and even formulate policy on their own without interference or involvement from McMaster, let alone the president.

Trump was systemically attacking the courts, the press, and Congress — a vintage move by an autocrat to dismantle institutions constricting his power.

Republican senator Bob Corker had told reporters “the president has not yet been able to demonstrate the stability nor some of the competence” needed to succeed in office.

It seems clear that many of the president’s senior advisers, especially those in the national security realm, are extremely concerned with his erratic nature, his relative ignorance, his inability to learn, as well as what they consider his dangerous views.

It would be absurd for me or any other editor to review the authenticity or accuracy of stories that are nominated for prizes.

Bannon, Kushner and Mnuchin, the former Goldman Sachs executive, presented Trump with a plan for him to give $25 million to the campaign. “No way,” Trump said. “Fuck that. I’m not doing it.” Where were the famous Republican high-donor guys? “Where the fuck’s the money? Where’s all this money from these guys? Jared, you’re supposed to be raising all this money. Not going to do it.

When Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un amped up the rhetoric, he was warned, “Twitter could get us into a war.

I think journalism gets measured by the quality of information it presents, not the drama or the pyretechnics associated with us

You couldn’t talk to him in adult logic. Teenage logic was necessary.

Nobody believes — even the people who believe in him somehow believe in him without believing what he says.

Biden’s next words would stick forever with Klain: “This guy just isn’t really an American president.