Bob Woodward's New Book "Fear" Features Explosive Trump Quotes From Secretary of Defense General Mattis and W.H. Chief of Staff General Kelly
WASHINGTON, DC. - U.S. President Donald Trump (C), White House chief of staff John Kelly (R) and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis attend a briefing with senior military leaders in the Cabinet Room of the White House. (Getty Images).
Legendary reporter Bob Woodward writes notoriously long books about presidents, filled with juicy dirt obtained from White House staffers who keep their anonymity but enthusiastically sell out their co-workers. The tradition goes all the way back to Nixon (Woodward made his name covering the Watergate scandal) and covers every single president since.
Now it's President Trump's turn and " Fear " is due in stores on September 11. Copies have leaked to the press and the media is enthusiastically pulling out the most outrageous quotes. The title comes from the president himself, taken from an interview Woodward had with Trump in 2016: "Real power is, I don’t even want to use the word, 'Fear.'"
Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly are the two generals who have stayed in power during the course of the Trump presidency. Woodward has collected some shockingly severe quotes that he attributes to the two men in the new book.
Mattis: "Fifth- or Sixth-Grader"
Woodward writes about a National Security Council meeting on January 19th, where the staff tried to explain to President Trump why the United States need to have a physical military presence on the Korean peninsula “Mattis was particularly exasperated and alarmed, telling close associates that the president acted like — and had the understanding of — ‘a fifth- or sixth-grader.’ ”
Kelly: An Idiot in Crazytown
White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly allegedly called the present "unhinged." Woodward writes that, in a small meeting, Kelly really unloaded on his boss: "He’s an idiot. It’s pointless to try to convince him of anything. He’s gone off the rails. We’re in Crazytown. I don’t even know why any of us are here. This is the worst job I’ve ever had.” (Note: Kelly still denies that he ever called President Trump an "idiot" but doesn't come out and refute the rest of the quote.)
Mattis: Captured Heroes
At a dinner with SecDef Jim Mattis and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph Dunford, the president explained that he found Sen. John McCain to be a coward because he'd accepted early release from a North Vietnamese P.O.W. camp. (Since McCain's Navy admiral father was Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific Command, it would be a propaganda coup for the North Vietnamese if the future Senator left his fellow captives behind).
Trump thought his was awful. Mattis spoke up,"No, Mr. President, I think you’ve got it reversed."
Mattis: Measured Response
President Bashar al-Assad launched a chemical attack on Syrian civilians in April 2017 and President Trump wanted to assassinate the leader in response, "Let’s f**king kill him! Let’s go in. Let’s kill the f**king lot of them." After telling his boss he'd get right on it, Mattis told a senior aide, "We’re not going to do any of that. We’re going to be much more measured."
Woodward's revelations won't matter all that much. The Trump base is stuck in retrograde and the republicans are stuck with themselves.
Money laundering with Russian connections however, is another story. So for the moment, Woodward's book is a much needed deflection for 'the sliding president.' And also provides another target for the president to attack and belittle. Trump is lucky though, Kellyanne Conway is still roaming the halls and Ben Carson is safely ensconced somewhere else trying to figure how the lights work.
I don't think anything can move the "Trump Base". Heck, he could even shoot someone on 5th Avenue and they'd still support him (pretty clever of me to make up that saying, eh? . And Democrats already are opposed to Trump.
But those facts might have an effect on some of the "independents" and previously "undecideds", plus some of the more intelligent Republicans. (Maybe not that info all by itself-- but its part of the cumulative impact of recent news..)
Bob Woodward is a national treasure.
This summary has some juicy stuff:
Trumps own staff urged him to NOT agree to meet with Mueller because trump is incapable of telling the truth.
That's fucking sad. Even sadder? There are trump supporters that literally think he has never told even ONE lie.
This part was revealing.....apparently Trump's only regret in life is that he once condemned neo-Nazis:
Does anyone still imagine that the WH is anything other than a madhouse?
We elected a nutcase, and now we are surprised to find that he runs the country like a nutcase would...
Gosh.
Here's a good article series about the political divide:
The numbers don't add up well for the GOP, not in the short or the long term.
Excellent link - it deserves a seed.
I'm afraid that the numbers don't matter any more. The Republicans hold the judiciary, and will continue to hold it for decades... and most importantly, the judges are not democrats (lower-case "d").
Trump has shredded one democratic norm after another, while the Republican Party has looked on. The shredding will continue, with the judges leading the movement. Democracy is finished in America, and is only pretending to continue to exist...
Some sage advice for Donald Trump about picking a fight with Bob Woodward, from Donald Trump
Legendary journalist Bob Woodward’s forthcoming book about the Trump White House portrays President Donald Trump as a petulant hothead . Trump’s response is to go on the attack against Woodward, as he did in an interview with the Daily Caller Monday:
In doing so, Trump is (unsurprisingly) ignoring the counsel of everyone from reporter Jonathan Swan of Axios to former George W. Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer , who have warned that it won’t be as easy to blow off Bob Woodward as it was to blow off unflattering portrayals in books from Michael Wolff and Omarosa Manigault.
But perhaps the president might listen to a man he once named as his No. 1 adviser : Donald J. Trump.
For the record, the “attack” Trump referenced in his 2013 tweet didn’t come from Obama himself. The “attack” was a shouting match between Woodward and Gene Sperling, who at the time headed Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, after Woodward wrote a piece blaming Obama for a failure to compromise on the federal budget. (In the absence of a deal between Obama and congressional Republicans, automatic and painful budget cuts went into effect via the sequester.)
Sperling then emailed Woodward and predicted he “will regret staking out that claim” — a quote that conservative commentators portrayed as a threat (even though Sperling said it in the context of apologizing to Woodward for raising his voice).
Is Trump’s recent statement more of an “attack” on Woodward than when Trump personally told Woodward by phone (months before the book came out) that his book was inaccurate because it didn’t portray him as the best president ever, then accused Woodward of having had “a lot of credibility problems”? That’s a matter for 2018 Donald Trump and 2013 Donald Trump to hash out.
As much fun as the find-the-old-Trump-tweet game is, though, Trump probably will get away with attacking Bob Woodward. He’s gotten away with attacking pretty much every other publication and journalist who’s gotten enough insight and access into the Trump White House to reveal what an absolute shambles the day-to-day management of it is, and how impetuous and capricious the president can be.
As appealing as it might be to believe that Woodward’s Watergate record will give him more credibility with voters than everything else we know about how Trump makes decisions, the publication of Woodward’s book — in the absence of action from Republicans in Congress (or, theoretically, within the Cabinet) — won’t automatically make Donald Trump any less of a president of the United States.
I really see no revelations here that most of us were not already aware of (that is if you have been paying attention).
A plus here is Mr. Woodward's credibility, while previous authors claims may have come into question, the only question here should be: When will that spineless group in the Legislative branch actually stand up and do something about it?
Never, of course.
They agree.