Rage

by Bob Woodward

  “Will I get credit for it?” he asked. “Probably not. But I’ll take credit.”

  “Presidents have power,” I said. “Extraordinary power. And people are leaning on you.”

  “They do have extraordinary power,” Trump said. “But in my case, they never accepted it. And they never accepted this president, because they’re a bunch of dishonest people. And they spied on my campaign and we caught them. They spied before and after I won. And we caught them. And we caught them cold. Let’s see what happens.”

  I talked about how in my business we try to understand people.

  “You don’t understand me,” he said. “You don’t understand me. But that’s okay. You’ll understand me after the election. But you don’t understand me now. I don’t think you get it. And that’s okay.”

  He wanted to make sure I had the list of his accomplishments.

  But on the issues before you, I said, “You know what number one is? The virus. Number two’s the virus. Number three is the virus.”

  Then he displayed his ambivalence about his role again. “No, no,” he said first and then added, “I agree with that.” Then he added, “But that was thrown upon me when we were riding high. The election was over. I was going to win easily. And all of a sudden we got hit with the China virus. And now I’m working my ass off.” And he abruptly said, “So long, Bob. Good luck.”

  * * *

  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 acknowledgment 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.

  EPILOGUE

  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.

  Trump said the intelligence people needed to go back to school. The generals were stupid. The media was fake news.

  Trump had spent so many years undermining people who challenged him. Not only his opponents but those who worked for him and for the American public.

  And here was the problem: By undermining so many others not only had he shaken confidence in them but he had shaken confidence in himself. This was particularly apparent when the country most needed to feel the government knew what it was doing in an unprecedented health crisis.

  Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, maybe had it more right than he knew when he said understanding Trump meant understanding Alice in Wonderland.

  Trump talked a lot. Almost incessantly. So much that he weakened the microphone of the presidency and the bully pulpit, and too many people no longer trusted what he said. Half or more of the country seemed to be in a perpetual rage about him, and he seemed to enjoy it.

  I think of Robert Redfield knowing that the virus fight would not be merely six months or a year, it would be two to three years. Of Trump repeatedly saying the virus would disappear or blow away. And of the enormous wearing down of public health officials to not stray too far from the president’s message.

  I close out this book with a belief that almost anything can happen in the Trump presidency—anything. Lots could get better or worse or much worse. It is unlikely lots could get much better. For the moment, in the middle of the summer, the virus, the economy, and the internal political divisions define Trump. The intensity of those divisions is at its height.

  The concentration of power in the presidency has been growing for decades and the power of the president might be at an all-time high under Trump. Trump uses it especially in dominating the media.

  Trump has talked very tough, often in a way that unsettles even his supporters. But he has not imposed martial law or suspended the Constitution, despite predictions of his opponents. He and his attorney general, William Barr, have several times challenged the traditional rule of law. Unnecessarily, in my view. Using the justice system to reward friends and pay back enemies is petty and Nixonian. Constitutional government might seem wobbly at times, and that could change overnight. Still, democracy has held.

  But leadership has failed. What did Trump want to accomplish? What were his goals? Too often he seemed not to know himself. Decision by tweet, often without warning to those charged with executing his policies, was one of the biggest sticks of dynamite behind the door.

  His relationship and letters with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un outlined in detail here were not by the foreign policy establishment playbook. But as Trump says repeatedly we had no war. That was an achievement. Diplomacy should always be worth a try. It may have been worth it. Where it goes next is one of the imponderables of the Trump era. Is Trump’s and Kim’s mutual pledge of fealty—the “fantasy film”—sustainable as Kim is more threatening? “We’ll see,” as Trump says all the time.

  The shadowy presence of Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is another imponderable. Highly competent but often shockingly misguided in his assessments, Kushner’s role is jarring. Was there no one else to act as chief of staff? Trump’s friends are mostly others with money or social standing. Or those who liked to talk on the phone at night. Was there no real friend who shared Trump’s interest in governing who could help and be called to service?

  Senator Lindsey Graham, Trump’s First Friend in the Senate, has often been portrayed as embarrassingly and shamelessly subservient to the president, but actually at times provided wise counsel, urging Trump to take a strategic view.

  On January 28, 2020, when Trump’s national security adviser and his deputy warned Trump that the virus would be—not might be, but would be—the biggest national security threat to his presidency, the leadership clock had to be reset. It was a detailed forecast, supported by evidence and experience that unfortunately turned out to
be correct. Presidents are the executive branch. There was a duty to warn. To listen, to plan, and to take care.

  For a long time Trump hedged, as did others, and said the virus is worrisome but not yet, not now. There were good reasons to ride both horses, but there should have been more consistent and courageous outspokenness. Leading is almost always risky.

  The virus, the “plague,” as Trump calls it, put the United States and the world in economic turmoil that may not be just a recession, but a depression. It is a genuine financial crisis, putting tens of millions out of work. Trump’s solution is to try to re-create what he believes is the economic miracle he created in the pre-virus time. Democrats, Republicans and Trump did agree to spending at least $2.2 trillion on recovery, which will create its own future problems with growing deficits. The human cost has been almost unimaginable, with more than 130,000 Americans killed by the virus by July and no real end in sight.

  The deep-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. I have tried to guide the reader as best I can. 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.

  Trump is a living paradox, capable of being friendly and appealing. He can also be savage and his treatment of people is often almost unbelievable.

  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 to a nightmare.

  * * *

  My wife, Elsa Walsh, who had worked for years as a reporter for The Washington Post and then as a staff writer for The New Yorker, and I spent endless hours sifting through the story of the Trump presidency, talking intensely for the last year. What was the remedy, the course that could have been taken? we asked. Was there a way to do better?

  Elsa suggested looking at a previous president who wanted to speak directly to the American people, unfiltered through the media, not just during troubling times but during a major crisis. The model was Franklin D. Roosevelt. Over his 12 years as president, FDR gave 30 fireside chats. His aides and the public often clamored for more. FDR said no. It was important to limit his talks to the major events and to make them exceptional. He also said they were hard work, often requiring him to prepare personally for days.

  The evening radio addresses concerned the toughest issues facing the country. In a calm and reassuring voice, he explained what the problem was, what the government was doing about it, and what was expected of the people.

  Often the message was grim. Two days after Japan’s December 7, 1941, surprise bombing attack on Pearl Harbor, FDR spoke to the nation. “We must share together the bad news and the good news, the defeats and the victories—the changing fortunes of war. So far, the news has been all bad. We have suffered a serious setback.” He added, “It will not only be a long war, it will be a hard war.” It was a question of survival. “We are now fighting to maintain our right to live among our world neighbors in freedom and common decency.”

  FDR invited the American people in. “We are all in it—all the way. Every single man, woman and child is a partner in the most tremendous undertaking of our American history.” Japan had inflicted serious damage and the casualty lists would be long. Seven-day weeks in every war industry would be required.

  “On the road ahead there lies hard work—grueling work—day and night, every hour and every minute.” And sacrifice, which was a “privilege.”

  Japan was allied with the fascist powers of Germany and Italy. FDR called for a systematic “grand strategy.”

  A few months later in another fireside chat he asked Americans to pull out a world map to follow along with him as he described why the country needed to fight beyond American’s borders. “Your government has unmistakable confidence in your ability to hear the worst, without flinching or losing heart.”

  For nearly 50 years, I have written about nine presidents from Nixon to Trump—20 percent of the 45 U.S. presidents. 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.

  On January 1, 2020, New Year’s Day, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began producing a series of detailed daily reports about the spread of an epidemic through Wuhan, China, and beyond. “The current situation relates to an epidemic of pneumonia of unknown etiology [cause] centralizing on a local seafood market, Hua Nan Seafood Market in Wuhan, China,” the first report states. “There has been no obvious transmission among people to date.”

  The CDC Situational Report for January 13 alerted officials that “Thailand reported a confirmed case of nCoV in a traveler from Wuhan City to Thailand. This is the first infection with novel coronavirus 2019 detected outside China.”

  President Donald J. Trump, in a February 7, 2020, interview with the author, reflected on the presidency. “Look, when you’re running a country it’s full of surprises,” Trump said. “There’s dynamite behind every door.”

  Robert O’Brien, pictured right, is Trump’s fourth national security adviser. Matthew Pottinger, pictured left, is a former Wall Street Journal reporter and Marine, and is O’Brien’s deputy. During a Top Secret President’s Daily Brief on January 28, 2020, on the coronavirus, O’Brien told Trump: “This will be the biggest national security threat you face in your presidency.” Pottinger said, “I agree with that conclusion,” and urged Trump to cut off travel from China to the United States.

  Retired General James Mattis, Trump’s first defense secretary, clashed with the president over staying the course in the war against ISIS and resigned in December 2018. “When I was basically directed to do something that I thought went beyond stupid to felony stupid,” Mattis said, “strategically jeopardizing our place in the world and everything else, that’s when I quit.”

  In late 2017, Mattis several times slipped quietly, unnoticed, into the National Cathedral in Washington to pray. Mattis sat quietly in the chapel’s candle-lit War Memorial alcove, pictured. “What do you do if you’ve got to do it?” Mattis asked himself, contemplating the prospect of nuclear conflict with North Korea. “You’re going to incinerate a couple million people.”

  Rex Tillerson, the former CEO of ExxonMobil, told Trump in 2016 he would accept his nomination as secretary of state, but “I want you to promise me that we are never going to have a public dispute. If you’re unhappy with me, call me and ream my ass out. It’s all behind closed doors.” Trump fired Tillerson by tweet and later publicly called him “dumb as a rock and totally ill prepared and ill equipped to be Secretary of State.”

  President Trump asked Dan Coats, who had served 16 years as a Republican senator from Indiana, to be his first director of national intelligence. “Mr. President,” Coats said, “there will be times when I will be walkin
g in here to brief you on intelligence, and you’re not going to be happy with what I have to say.” That turned out to be the case numerous times.

  Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in April 2018 while he was still CIA director. The South Koreans told us that you have intent to denuclearize, Pompeo said to Kim. Is that true? I’m a father, Kim replied. I don’t want my kids to carry nuclear weapons on their backs the rest of their lives.

  Republican senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina became a First Friend to Trump and advised him in endless phone conversations and golf outings. “If you try to be the law-and-order president alone,” Graham told Trump in June 2020, “you’re going to lose.”

  Special Counsel Robert Mueller completed his 22-month investigation into Russia–Trump 2016 campaign coordination in spring 2019. A summary in his long-anticipated report was unclear and confusing, seeming to reach two contradictory conclusions: “While this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”

  Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein oversaw the Mueller investigation with an iron hand. Rosenstein felt on the Mueller investigation he had made Trump bulletproof for the 2020 election. The president was not guilty of obstruction of justice in Rosenstein’s view. “I knew there was no basis to indict the president,” Rosenstein told an associate after the investigation.

  Attorney General William Barr assumed office in February 2019. “You’re not going to believe this,” Barr said before releasing a four-page letter summarizing his conclusions about the Mueller report. “After two f—ing years he says, ‘Well, I don’t know, you decide.’ ” Barr did in his March 24, 2019, letter about Mueller’s findings.