by Bob Woodward
Trump said he understood all of that. But all of those problems were superseded by his rapport with Xi.
In the last four months of 2017, the United Nations Security Council had voted three times to impose stiffer economic sanctions on North Korea. On December 22, the vote was 15 to 0, including China. The sanctions were to cut the amount of petroleum that could be imported into North Korea by 89 percent. Trump was quite pleased.
“That’s because I developed such a great relationship with President Xi,” he said. “And because he respects me and I respect him. And isn’t it good that I’m friendly when all you guys say that we should be adversarial with them. Because if I didn’t have that great relationship with President Xi, they never would have done that.” It was the chemistry, the trust. “So that I can get them to do things that they wouldn’t otherwise do.”
On matters in which Trump had developed decades of opinions, arguments were pointless. One of the most experienced West Wingers in 2017 and 2018 said, “There’s some things where he’s already reached the conclusion and it doesn’t matter what you say. It doesn’t matter what arguments you offer. He’s not listening.”
* * *
At one point Trump said he had decided to impose tariffs.
“Great,” Cohn said. “The stock market will be down 1,000 or 2,000 points tomorrow, but you’ll be happy. Right, sir?”
“No, no, meeting’s over! Let’s not do anything.”
“Your biggest fear is being Herbert Hoover,” Cohn said.
It was Groundhog Day on trade again. Same arguments, same points, same certainty—on both sides. The next week or next month, they would have the same discussion.
Trump repeatedly said he was going to get out of the trade deals and impose tariffs. Several times he said, “Let’s do it,” and asked for an order to sign.
“We’ve got to distract him from KORUS,” Porter said to Cohn. “We’ve got to distract him from NAFTA.” Cohn agreed.
At least twice, Porter had the order drafted as the president had directed. And at least twice Cohn or Porter took it from his desk. Other times, they just delayed.
Trump seemed not to remember his own decision because he did not ask about it. He had no list—in his mind or anywhere else—of tasks to complete.
* * *
On July 12, 2017, 15 former chairs of the Council of Economic Advisers, the high-powered, formal advisory group of academic economists, had sent a letter to Trump urging him not to “initiate the process of imposing steel tariffs” because it would harm relations with key allies and “actually damage the U.S. economy.”
The letter’s signers included an all-star cast of Republicans and Democrats—former Federal Reserve chairmen Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke, Laura Tyson, the top economic adviser in the Clinton administration, and Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz.
Across the top, in a handwritten note to Trump, Wilber Ross scrawled his disagreement: “Dear Mr. President, It is importantly the advice of the people on this list that resulted in our [trade] deficits. We cannot afford their policies. Best Regards, Wilbur.”
* * *
The final 10 days of July 2017 left scars. On Thursday, July 27, Trump had hired Anthony Scaramucci, a brash investment banker and another Goldman Sachs alumnus, as communications director over Priebus’s strong objections.
Scaramucci had done a victory lap of interviews and said publicly that Priebus would be asked to resign soon. “Reince is a fucking paranoid schizophrenic, paranoiac,” he said.
Early the morning of Friday, July 28, Trump’s promise to repeal and replace Obamacare had failed in Congress. Trump blamed Priebus. He was supposed to know the Hill and have close relationships with the Republican leaders. No matter how Priebus tried to explain, Trump would not buy it. “You didn’t get it done.”
That day, Trump flew to Long Island to give a speech. Priebus accompanied him. They had a talk in the private cabin at the front of Air Force One.
Priebus had submitted his resignation the night before. He was fed up and knew he had lost his usefulness to Trump.
Trump wondered who would be a good replacement and said he had talked to John Kelly, the secretary of homeland security and retired Marine four-star general. What do you think of Kelly? Trump asked.
General Kelly would be great, Priebus said.
Trump agreed and said he thought Kelly would be just right, but he said he had not offered Kelly the job.
Priebus was concerned about the optics of his departure. We can do it this weekend, he said, or we can do a press release. Or do it Monday. Whatever you want to do. “I’m ready to do it how you want to do it.”
“Maybe we’ll do it this weekend,” Trump said. What are you going to do?
Priebus hoped to rejoin his old law firm.
Trump gave him a big hug. “We’ll figure it out,” he said. “You’re the man.”
Air Force One landed. Priebus walked off down the ramp. Rain dotted his black SUV, where Stephen Miller and Dan Scavino were waiting for him. He felt as good about the situation as possible.
He got an alert for a presidential tweet. He looked down at the latest from @realdonaldtrump: “I am pleased to inform you that I have just named General/Secretary John F Kelly as White House Chief of Staff. He is a Great American . . .”
“Unbelievable!” thought Priebus. “Is this serious?”
He had just talked to Trump about waiting.
No one had expected Trump’s tweet. When Miller and Scavino saw it, they hopped out of Priebus’s SUV to get into another car, leaving the former chief of staff alone.
As he shut the car door, Priebus wondered if maybe Trump had drafted a tweet and sent it accidentally. No, that had not happened. The conversation in the cabin was just one more lie.
That night General Kelly came to see Priebus. They had been in the foxhole together, but Kelly had privately criticized the disorder and chaos of the White House to Trump. Kelly had told the president he believed he could straighten the place out.
“Reince,” Kelly said, “I’d never do this to you. I’d never been offered this job until the tweet came out. I would have told you.”
It made no sense, Priebus realized, unless you understood the way Trump made decisions. “The president has zero psychological ability to recognize empathy or pity in any way.”
Caught by surprise, Kelly had gone dark for several hours. He’d had to call his wife and explain that he had no choice but to accept after being offered one of the most important jobs in the world via tweet.
Kelly said in a statement that day, “I have been fortunate to have served my country for more than 45 years—first as a Marine and then as the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. I am honored to be asked to serve as the Chief of Staff to the president of the United States.”
* * *
In some respects Priebus never got over the way his departure was handled. If you have no empathy or pity for anything or anybody, then that episode doesn’t seem that abnormal, Priebus concluded. Which is why Trump could call him two days later: Reince, my man, what’s going on? How you doing? Trump didn’t think they had a problem, so he didn’t view it as awkward.
As a general rule, in relations with Trump, the closer you were, the further away you got. You started with 100 points. You couldn’t get more. Kelly had started with 100 points in his jar, and they’d gone down. Being close to Trump, especially in the chief of staff role, meant going down in points. It meant you paid.
The most important part of Trump’s world was the ring right outside of the bull’s-eye: the people that Trump thought perhaps he should have hired, or who had worked for him and he’d gotten rid of and now thought, Maybe I shouldn’t have. It was the people who were either there or should have been there, or associates or acquaintances that owed nothing to him and were around him but didn’t come in for anything. It was that outside circle that had the most power, not the people on the inside. It wasn’t Kelly or Priebus or Bannon.
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br /> * * *
Months after his departure from the White House, Priebus made a final assessment: He believed he had been surrounded in the West Wing by high-ranking natural killers with no requirement to produce regular work products—a plan, a speech, the outline of a strategy, a budget, a daily and weekly schedule. They were roving interlopers, a band of chaos creators.
There was Ivanka, a charming huntress dipping in and out of meetings or the latest presidential business. Jared had the same rights. Theirs was a portfolio without experience.
Kellyanne Conway had, or took, license to weigh in on television or interviews almost at will, often without coordinating with the communications and press secretary offices that Priebus was supposed to control.
Then there was Bannon, who had snagged a key West Wing office near the Oval and lined his walls with whiteboards listing Trump’s campaign promises. He was a strategist in an operation that had none. He came forward to enter discussions with his fire when the nationalist-populist agenda might be at risk, or seemingly at random or when he needed something to do.
Trump had failed the President Lincoln test. He had not put a team of political rivals or competitors at the table, Priebus concluded. “He puts natural predators at the table,” Priebus said later. “Not just rivals—predators.”
These were people who had no experience in government, an astonishingly common distinguishing characteristic. They had spent their lives dabbling in political opinions and in policy debates or were too young.
In some ways, these four—Ivanka, Jared, Conway and Bannon—had the same modus operandi. “They walk into the West Wing. You’re not putting your weapon down,” Priebus said. “I’m not either.” Their discussions were not designed to persuade but, like their president, to win—to slay, crush and demean.
“If you have natural predators at the table,” Priebus said, “things don’t move.” So the White House was not leading on key issues like health care and tax reform. Foreign policy was not coherent and often contradictory.
“Why?” asked Priebus. “Because when you put a snake and a rat and a falcon and a rabbit and a shark and a seal in a zoo without walls, things start getting nasty and bloody. That’s what happens.”
CHAPTER
29
On a weekend in mid-August, in the seventh month of Donald Trump’s presidency, hundreds of white supremacists came into violent conflict with protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, vividly underscoring, once again, the racial divide in America.
Moving across the campus of the University of Virginia in a haunting nighttime torch walk on a steamy August 11 evening, echoing Germany of the 1930s, around 250 white nationalists chanted “Jews will not replace us” and the Nazi slogan “Blood and Soil.”
The next day, following brawls between white nationalists protesting the removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee and counterprotesters, one of the white nationalists drove his car into a crowd of protesters, killing a woman and injuring 19 others. Images of snarling, tiki-torch-bearing white men in polos and khakis and video of the vehicle brutally scattering pedestrians became a major television and news spectacle.
On Saturday, August 12, Trump was watching Fox News from his golf course in Bedminster. At 1 p.m. on Fox, a Virginia State Police spokeswoman described the melee: “In the crowds, on all sides, they were throwing bottles. They were throwing soda cans with cement in them. They were throwing paint balls. They were fighting. Breaking out and attacking one another. Launching chemicals into the crowd as well as smoke bombs.”
At 1:19 p.m. Trump tweeted a call for calm. “We ALL must be united & condemn all that hate stands for. There is no place for this kind of violence in America. Lets come together as one!”
Later in the afternoon at a routine veterans bill signing, Trump had a script that was all condemnation that ended in the word “violence.” Trump said, “We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence.” But he departed from his text and added, “On many sides. On many sides. It’s been going on for a long time in our country. Not Donald Trump. Not Barack Obama. This has been going on for a long, long time.” He then picked up the text: “It has no place in America.”
Trump touched a nerve with the phrase “many sides” suggesting an equivalence between the neo-Nazis and those who opposed white supremacy. Biting criticism of the president spanned the political spectrum, including many Republican Party leaders.
“Very important for the nation to hear @potus describe events in #Charlottesville for what they are, a terror attack by #whitesupremacists,” tweeted Senator Marco Rubio.
“Mr. President—we must call evil by its name,” tweeted Cory Gardner, Republican senator from Colorado. “These were white supremacists and this was domestic terrorism.”
“My brother didn’t give his life fighting Hitler for Nazi ideas to go unchallenged here at home,” tweeted Senator Orrin Hatch, normally a reliable Trump ally.
In a statement, Senator John McCain called Charlottesville “a confrontation between our better angels and our worst demons. White supremacists and neo-Nazis are, by definition, opposed to American patriotism and the ideals that define us.”
House Speaker Paul Ryan tweeted, “White supremacy is a scourge. This hate and its terrorism must be confronted and defeated.” Mitt Romney tweeted, “Racial prejudice, then hate, then repugnant speech, then a repulsive rally, then murder; not supremacy, barbarism.”
Republican senator Lindsey Graham appeared on Fox News Sunday and said that the president needs “to correct the record here. These groups seem to believe they have a friend in Donald Trump in the White House,” and “I would urge the president to dissuade these groups that he’s their friend.”
Vice President Pence added, “We have no tolerance for hate and violence from white supremacists, neo Nazis or the KKK. These dangerous fringe groups have no place in American public life and in the American debate, and we condemn them in the strongest terms.”
News coverage zeroed in on Trump’s clear reluctance to condemn the white supremacists. Some noted he had squandered an opportunity to snuff out suspicions that he harbored sympathy for the white supremacists.
* * *
Kelly had set up a senior staff meeting by secure teleconference for 8 a.m. on Monday, August 14. He was in Bedminster but most of the senior staff was at the White House in Washington. Something was wrong with the audio on the secure teleconference equipment and the start of the call was delayed.
“Fuck it!” Kelly said after about 30 seconds. “We’re not going to do this.” He stormed out, causing considerable chatter among the staff about his hot temper and hair trigger.
The next day there was another glitch.
“Screw this,” Kelly said. “Fuck it. Take the people off the conference line. We’re just going to have the meeting with the people who are here.”
* * *
Rob Porter was in Bedminster with Trump and joined a coordinated effort to clean up the mess with a new speech on Charlottesville. A draft had been written by White House speechwriters and Porter had the draft for Trump to give at the White House the next day, Monday, August 14. The intent was to show the president as a constructive, calming force.
Porter handed the draft to Trump on the flight back to Washington on Air Force One. The two worked through it. The president did not like the tone. He didn’t want to sound like he was capitulating to political correctness.
Porter and Sarah Huckabee Sanders, now the press secretary, had agreed that they needed to present a united front to get the president to give another speech.
“I think it’s really important,” Sanders told the president, “that you are able to speak directly to the American people, not through the media filter, so that you’re not misunderstood on this. And so that people at CNN and MSNBC, whoever it is, aren’t able to suggest that you say and mean something different than what you do. You need to be very clear about this. And the best
way to do that is for you, without the media filter . . . to be very precise about it, very direct. And then that way you’re able to do that without the media twisting it.”
Trump defended what he had said. “It’s not as if one side has any sort of [monopoly] on hatred or on bigotry. It’s not as if any one group is at fault or anything like that. With the media, you’re never going to get a fair shake. Anything that you say or do is going to be criticized.”
“You need to fix this,” Porter argued. “You don’t want to be perceived the way in which you’re being perceived now. You need to bring the country together.” That was the moral obligation.
“There’s no upside to not directly condemn neo-Nazis and those that are motivated by racial animus. There is a huge rift in the country.” Porter played heavily to the president’s ego and desire to be at the center. He said that the president could be a kind of healer in chief, consoler in chief.
“The country is counting on you rhetorically to help salve the wounds and point a direction forward,” Porter said. The president could inspire and uplift. He could make this about him, the redeemer.
Trump did not push back but he didn’t say yes.
* * *
Back at the White House, the West Wing was undergoing renovation. Trump and Porter went up to the residence. Porter pulled up the speech draft on his laptop. No printer was readily available. So the president and Porter worked from the laptop. Trump, who doesn’t touch type or use a keyboard, sat behind his desk. Porter, next to him, scrolled through the draft and they cut and pasted.
Trump said at one point, “I don’t know about this.”
The draft was an attack on racism, and referred to the necessity of love and healing.
“I don’t know if this feels right,” the president said. It looked weak. He didn’t want to apologize. “This doesn’t feel right to me.”
