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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 fai… - Bob Woodward
" "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
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About Bob Woodward
Robert Upshur "Bob" Woodward (born March 26, 1943) is a journalist in the United States, known mostly for his work in helping uncover the Watergate scandal that led to President Richard Nixon's resignation, in a partnership with Carl Bernstein, while working as a reporter for The Washington Post. He has written twelve nonfiction books and has twice contributed reporting to efforts that collectively earned the Post and its National Reporting staff a Pulitzer Prize.
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Robert Upshur Woodward
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Robert Woodward
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NAFTA was another enduring Trump target. The president had said for months he wanted to leave NAFTA and renegotiate. “The only way to get a good deal is to blow up the old deal. When I blow it up, in that six months, they’ll come running back to the table.” His theory of negotiation was that to get to yes, you first had to say no. “Once you blow it up,” Cohn replied, “it may be over. That’s the most high-risk strategy. That either works or you go bankrupt.” Cohn realized that Trump had gone bankrupt six times and seemed not to mind. Bankruptcy was just another business strategy. Walk away, threaten to blow up the deal. Real power is fear.
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During an hour-long conversation mid-flight, he laid out his theory of the war. First, Jones said, the United States could not lose the war or be seen as losing the war.
'If we're not successful here,' Jones said, 'you'll have a staging base for global terrorism all over the world. People will say the terrorists won. And you'll see expressions of these kinds of things in Africa, South America, you name it. Any developing country is going to say, this is the way we beat [the United States], and we're going to have a bigger problem.' A setback or loss for the United States would be 'a tremendous boost for jihadist extremists, fundamentalists all over the world' and provide 'a global infusion of morale and energy, and these people don't need much.'
Jones went on, using the kind of rhetoric that Obama had shied away from, 'It's certainly a clash of civilizations. It's a clash of religions. It's a clash of almost concepts of how to live.' The conflict is that deep, he said. 'So I think if you don't succeed in Afghanistan, you will be fighting in more places.
'Second, if we don't succeed here, organizations like NATO, by association the European Union, and the United Nations might be relegated to the dustbin of history.'
Third, 'I say, be careful you don't over-Americanize the war. I know that we're going to do a large part of it,' but it was essential to get active, increased participation by the other 41 nations, get their buy-in and make them feel they have ownership in the outcome.
Fourth, he said that there had been way too much emphasis on the military, almost an overmilitarization of the war. The key to leaving a somewhat stable Afghanistan in a reasonable time frame was improving governance and the rule of law, in order to reduce corruption. There also needed to be economic development and more participation by the Afghan security forces.
It sounded like a good case, but I wondered if everyone on the American side had the same understanding of our goals.
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