by Bob Woodward
Jump in and make sure you are vocal, Trump said.
In a public statement on April 4, Trump attacked both Assad and Obama. “These heinous actions by the Bashar al-Assad regime are a consequence of the past administration’s weakness and irresolution. President Obama said in 2012 that he would establish a ‘red line’ against the use of chemical weapons and then did nothing.”
At the NSC meeting, the three options were presented: hot, medium and cold. The largest option was a 200-missile attack on all the major Syrian airfields; the medium option was 60 missiles; and the smallest was almost none, or none at all.
The potential target list was large. In 2013 when Obama had threatened a missile attack, he had approved a target list including a government compound housing the chemical weapons program. It didn’t make the current target list because Mattis and the Pentagon wanted to keep the attack as narrow as possible.
Mattis had scoped it down just to the one airfield in the 60-missile strike. A housing complex at the airfield was also taken off the target list because of the likelihood that family members would be there.
“If that’s the standard,” Bannon argued, “let me go get some pictures of sub-Saharan Africa. Okay? Let me get some of what’s happening down in Guatemala and Nicaragua. If this is the standard for a fucking missile strike, let’s go everywhere. Let’s do everything.” He thought he had the president on his side.
“This will be another pinprick,” Bannon continued. If they were going to strike, do something dramatic, he added sarcastically. “This is very Clinton-esque,” he said, deploying the biggest insult. “You’re going to drop a couple of cruise missiles onto a runway that will be fully back up and operational in a day or two.”
But then the middle option advocates worked the president. Bannon thought it was insidious. Their argument was that this was not designed to start a war. It was really a messaging operation, designed to avoid one.
On Friday, Trump flew to Mar-a-Lago and in the evening convened an NSC meeting in a SCIF. Fourteen people were there—Tillerson, Priebus, McMaster, Kushner, Bannon, Cohn and Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategy Dina Powell. Mattis was on the video screen. The middle option of 60 sea-launched missiles was on the table. The targets were Syrian aircraft on the ground, hardened aircraft shelters, storage facilities for petroleum and other material, ammunition supply bunkers, air defense systems and radar.
Trump had stepped back from his initial desire to kill Assad. He was unusually focused on the details. He had a series of questions about risk. What happens if a missile or missiles go off course? What happens if we hit a school? If we hit a hospital? Or a target we did not intend to hit? What was the possibility of killing civilians?
Mattis provided assurances. These were the best ships and men.
Trump asked to talk on a secure line with the captains of the two ships, the USS Porter and the USS Ross, both guided missile destroyers. He told the skippers: I’m going ahead with this strike tonight. Are your guys the best at programming the missiles?
Both captains gave assurances. Trump then went around the room and asked each for an opinion. What do you think? If anyone here has a second opinion, I want to hear it here, not later.
There was agreement, even strong support.
Intelligence showed convincingly that the Russians would be in just one compound at the airfield. The timing of the strike—4:40 a.m. in Syria—virtually ensured they would not be working around the aircraft. About 15 minutes before the Tomahawks would hit, a warning was sent to the Russians at the airfield. When the call was made, the Russian who picked up the phone at the airfield sounded intoxicated.
Trump gave the go-ahead for his first significant military action. Fifty-nine Tomahawks hit their targets; one fell into the Mediterranean after launch.
Trump went to dinner with Chinese president Xi Jinping, who was visiting Mar-a-Lago as part of a two-day summit to discuss trade and North Korea. As dessert was being served Trump said to Xi, “We’re in the process of bombing Syria because of its gas attack.”
“Say that again,” Xi said through the interpreter. Trump repeated it.
“How many missiles?” Xi asked.
Trump said 59.
“59?” Xi asked.
Trump confirmed 59.
“Okay,” Xi said, “I understand. Good, he deserved it.”
And that was the end of the dinner.
Afterward, Bannon called Harvey a “warmonger. You and H.R. are trying to start a war.”
* * *
About midnight, Trump called Senator Lindsey Graham.
“Did I wake you up?” Trump asked.
“Yeah,” Graham said.
“Sorry.”
“No, I’m glad to hear from you, Mr. President.”
“I bet you are the happiest guy in town.”
“Happy is not the right word. I’m proud of my president.” Graham could hear a pin drop. “You did something that should have been done a long time ago.”
“A hundred countries have called,” Trump said.
Graham thought, probably, maybe, 10.
“They’re all calling me, patting me on the back. You know what the Chinese president told me? When I told him during dessert, we just shot 59 Tomahawks at Assad? Good, he deserved it!”
A blow to the Bannon model! Graham thought.
“Obama,” Trump said, “he’s a weak dick. He would’ve never done that.”
“And his failure to do that has cost about 400,000 people their lives,” Graham said, pointing to the number who had died in the entire Syrian war.
Trump kept talking about the kids—burnt, peeling skin, horrifying deaths and injuries.
“Mr. President,” Graham said, “I can show you pictures like that from all over the Mideast.” He didn’t seem to know he was echoing Bannon about the worldwide human rights atrocities. “You did the right thing not because of how he killed these kids. He was just so brazen, telling everybody in the world, fuck you. And you said, no, fuck you!”
Graham knew Trump-speak, meeting a “fuck you” with a much bigger “fuck you.” “That’s what you are saying to him: Fuck you. Here’s what you’ve got to watch for. What are you going to do if they repair the damage to that very base and start flying sorties out of it again and drop a barrel bomb on kids? You need to get ready for that. Because that’s poking you in the eye.”
The problem was not so much just the chemical weapons, Graham said, it was the bombing of civilians. That shouldn’t be permitted with any weapon.
“If you don’t say that,” Graham pressed, “then all the things you’ve gained are going to be lost, because he’s just saying fuck you, okay, I’ll kill them another way. That’s what Assad will be saying to you. This is a test. One and done is not the right answer here. You let that fucker know that if he takes off from that air base and he bombs a bunch of kids with barrel bombs, you’ll shoot him down.”
* * *
Whenever a commander in chief starts shooting, even with only 59 Tomahawks, political and public opinion tend to actively rally around him. This was no exception. Trump was almost universally praised for a quick and decisive response.
The next morning, Senator John McCain appeared on Morning Joe. “The signal that was sent last night, as you said, was a very, very important one.”
Host Joe Scarborough said it was important not only to Russia and Assad, but to China and North Korea. “And our friends,” McCain added. “A lot of the Arab countries are willing to be partners with us as long as they think they can rely on us.”
Scarborough observed that Sunni Arabs had felt that under Obama the U.S. hadn’t “had their back. Does last night change that?”
“It begins to,” Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, who was among the panel discussing the strike, said. “They want to see more.”
McCain praised Trump’s national security team, and praised the president for listening to them: “That’s what’s most encouraging to me, is t
hat he respects Mattis. He respects McMaster.”
Some of the highest praise came from surprising foreign policy experts. Anne-Marie Slaughter, who had been director of the powerful Policy Planning staff in the State Department during Hillary Clinton’s first two years as secretary of state in the Obama years, tweeted, “Donald Trump has done the right thing on Syria. Finally!! After years of useless handwringing in the face of hideous atrocities.”
* * *
In the days and weeks afterward, Trump often told aides in the West Wing that he did not think the strike on the air base was sufficient. Shouldn’t the U.S. do more? He toyed with the idea of ordering a covert leadership strike on Assad.
He had been briefed or read some papers on what nerve gas did to the human body. “Do you realize what it’s like?” he asked at one point. He had a visual image which he described. The lungs fill up. Breathing stifles, and there is foaming at the mouth. Drooling, blindness, paralysis. Uncontrollable vomiting, urination and defecation. Excruciating pain all over, especially abdominal cramps. Seizures. The organs of the body become disconnected from the brain. After this, 10 minutes of torture, death. Children. Babies.
He wanted options. They were plentiful. The United States military had all the imaginable lethal capabilities. What could he do? He wanted to know.
Secretary Mattis was alarmed that Trump might order a second strike and worked to tamp down and discourage another military action in Syria.
After weeks Trump’s outrage subsided and he turned, but not quickly, to other matters.
* * *
McMaster complained to Jared about his lack of authority to move decisions forward. Like most secretaries of state and defense, Tillerson and Mattis did not want a strong national security adviser.
On one occasion after the Syrian strike, the president wanted some information about recent Russian and Iranian provocations in Syria. The U.S. had killed some Iranian-sponsored Hezbollah troops on the road east of Palmyra and shot down a threatening Iranian armed drone. Trump had some questions for McMaster. What happens if Americans get killed? What are we going to do? What are the options?
McMaster phoned both Tillerson and Mattis. No response. He summoned Harvey and lit into him. The F-words flew. This is your job, get your counterparts over there.
Nine hours passed, and still no response from either Tillerson or Mattis.
The Joint Staff from the Pentagon arrived at the White House to brief Harvey. The Defense Department had some strike options but nothing about what would happen if Americans got killed in the Syrian border town of Tanf where U.S. forces were operating. Or if a U.S. ship was hit by a mine.
It was incredible to both McMaster and Harvey. No answers were forthcoming. But Trump soon forgot his questions.
CHAPTER
19
I want an executive order withdrawing the United States from NAFTA”—the North American Free Trade Agreement—“and I want it on my desk by Friday,” President Trump ordered.
Gathered with him in the Oval Office on Tuesday, April 25, were Vice President Pence, Commerce Secretary Ross, Kushner, Porter and Navarro. The president wanted to be able to announce it on his 100th day in office.
When no one pushed back or offered any objections, Porter, who had been chairing the Tuesday-morning trade meetings, noted that it could not be an executive order but would have to be a 180-termination notice as required by the trade agreement.
“There’s a huge timing problem with this,” he told Trump and the others, “because no matter how quickly you end up renegotiating NAFTA under the Trade Promotion Authority rules, it’s going to take time.” A renegotiated agreement would have to be passed by Congress and that would take more than the 180 days.
Porter was the youngest and most junior person in the room. “We don’t want a gap,” he continued, “and a period where we don’t have any deal. We’ve got a timing problem. We can’t just start the 180-day clock willy-nilly.”
The others were silent and only seemed to be encouraging Trump. Porter was appalled that the president was even considering a preemptive withdrawal from NAFTA. The trade agreement had been the foundation of economic and national security in North America for more than two decades. The agreement lifted tariffs between the U.S., Canada and Mexico. Annual trade among the three was more than $1 trillion. U.S. trade each with Canada and Mexico was almost as great as U.S. trade with China, the largest trading partner.
“We need to have a process to make sure that we do this in proper order, that we’ve thought through these things.” Porter gestured toward Pence, Ross, Kushner and Navarro. “It’s great that these people are here, but Gary Cohn’s not here. Steve Mnuchin’s not here. I understand you want to move fast,” but we have to slow it down.
“I don’t care about any of this stuff,” Trump said. “I want it on my desk on Friday.”
* * *
Porter went to see McMaster to enlist his support. McMaster had not been very involved in the trade discussion but said he agreed that withdrawal from NAFTA would be a national security nightmare, and an unnecessary one. It would rattle the allies. I’m on board, he promised.
An emergency meeting was called with the relevant cabinet secretaries and senior advisers in the Roosevelt Room the next day. The fuse was lit. It looked like they had only a day or two before Trump would sign.
As Navarro pushed for withdrawal, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly and others said a perceived threat that the United States might terminate was good leverage, but actually doing it would be catastrophic. The United States would be shooting itself in the foot. The ripple effects would be huge. It would roil the financial markets and lead to instant retaliation. Trading partners around the world would wonder if they were next.
After the meeting broke up, on his way to the Oval Office to go over the documents that Trump wanted prepared, Porter stopped Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, who had just assumed office. Perdue was a former Republican governor of Georgia, the first from his party since Reconstruction.
“Sonny,” Porter said, “why don’t you come in?” Wilbur Ross joined them in the Oval Office.
“NAFTA has been a huge boon for American ag interests,” Perdue told Trump. “We export $39 billion a year to Mexico and Canada. We wouldn’t have markets for these products otherwise. The people who stand to lose the most if we withdraw from NAFTA are your base, the Trump supporters.”
Perdue showed Trump a map of the United States that indicated the states and counties where agriculture and manufacturing losses would be hit hardest. Many were places that had voted for Trump.
“It’s not just your base,” Perdue said. “It’s your base in states that are important presidential swing states. So you just can’t do this.”
“Yeah,” Trump said, “but they’re screwing us, and we’ve got to do something.”
The president finally decided they should amp up the public rhetoric and threat, but not actually send a 180-day notice.
Jared passed word to Porter. “The president’s agreed not to withdraw for now.”
Porter knew that everything with Trump was provisional, but he was surprised how close they had come to the edge. And it was not over.
Peter Navarro slipped into the Oval Office for an ad hoc, unscheduled meeting with the president.
“The only thing we’ve done is withdraw from TPP,” the president said, referring to the Trans-Pacific Partnership. “Why haven’t we done anything else on trade?”
“The staff secretary process is holding all this stuff up,” Navarro said.
“Madeleine,” Trump called to his assistant, Madeleine Westerhout. “Get Rob up here right now.”
Porter ran up the stairs to the Oval Office.
“What the fuck are you stalling for?” Trump said to Porter. “Why aren’t we getting this done? Do your job. It’s tap, tap, tap. You’re just tapping me along. I want to do this.”
The president was serious again. Porter drafted a 180-day notific
ation letter to be signed by Trump that the United States would withdraw from NAFTA.
Porter was more and more convinced that it could trigger an economic and foreign relations crisis with Canada and Mexico. He went to see Cohn.
“I can stop this,” Cohn said to Porter. “I’ll just take the paper off his desk before I leave.” And he later took it. “If he’s going to sign it, he’s going to need another piece of paper.”
“We’ll slow-walk that one too,” Porter promised.
Cohn knew, of course, that the president could easily order another copy, but if the paper was not sitting in front of him, he’d likely forget it. If it was out of sight, it was out of mind.
Porter agreed. Trump’s memory needed a trigger—something on his desk or something he read in the newspaper or saw on television. Or Peter Navarro sneaking into the Oval Office again. Without something or someone activating him, it might be hours or days or even weeks before he would think, Wait, we’re going to withdraw from that, why didn’t we do that? Without a trigger, it conceivably might never happen.
* * *
Sonny Perdue gave a presentation in the Situation Room on May 4 on the role of agriculture in trade. Sensitive intelligence showed that if the United States imposed new tariffs on China, the Chinese would retaliate with their own tariffs.
The Chinese knew exactly how to inflict economic and political pain. The United States was in kindergarten compared to China’s PhD. The Chinese knew which congressional districts produced what products, such as soybeans. They knew which swing districts were going to be important to maintain control of the House. They could target tariffs at products from those districts, or at a state level. The Chinese would target bourbon from McConnell’s Kentucky and dairy products from Paul Ryan’s Wisconsin.
