Bob Woodward

Plus tard, quand Twitter annonça que le nombre de signes accepté dans un tweet passait de 140 à 280, Trump expliqua à Porter que la modification faisait sens à son point de vue. Il pourrait développer ses pensées et leur donner un minimum de profondeur.
"C'est bien, dit-il, mais c'est quand même dommage, parce que j'étais le Ernest Hemingway du 140 signes. "

La réalité, c'est qu'en 2017, le destin des États-Unis était suspendu aux mots et aux actes d'un leader imprévisible à l'humeur instable et prisonnier de ses émotions.

La plupart des médias ne croyaient pas à l'existence de ces "électeurs cachés de Trump". Mais la base de données de Pribus et Walsh offrait au Comité national républicain et à la campagne un aperçu très complet du profil de chaque électeur potentiel : la marque de bière qu'ils consommaient, la marque et la couleur de leur voiture, l'âge de leurs enfants et l'école qu'ils fréquentaient, la marque de cigarettes qu'ils fumaient, s'ils avaient contracté un crédit immobilier, etc. Renouvelaient-ils leur permis de chasse tous les ans? Que lisaient-ils, un magazine sur les armes à feu ou une publication plutôt marquée à gauche comme The New Republick?

Le 6 octobre, Casey apprit par un message urgent qu'on venait de tirer sur le président Sadate alors qu'il assistait à un défilé militaire.
.../...
Aider à maintenir Sadate au pouvoir avait représenté une tâche gigantesque pour l'administration et la CIA, qui avaient fourni à son gouvernement une assistance clandestine en matière de sécurité et de renseignement.
Depuis les accords de Camp David en 1978 et le traité de paix avec Israël en 1979, Sadate était en position d'isolement au Proche-Orient.
.../...
le mode de vie de son épouse Jehan, et surtout les idées qu'elle professait sur l'émancipation de la femme étaient autant de provocations pour beaucoup de musulmans.
.../...
Il se révéla que les assassins faisaient partie d'un groupe d'opposition interne à l’Égypte. La CIA avait consacré tant d'efforts à infiltrer le gouvernement égyptien et à mettre en garde Sadate contre les menaces extérieures qu'elle avait négligé de se préoccuper de l'opposition intérieure.
Cette situation rappelait de manière si inquiétante la débâcle iranienne que Casey en piqua une crise de fureur. Il voulait que la CIA dispose de canaux d'informations indépendants plus nombreux et plus étendus en Égypte.
.../...
"Et envoyez-moi des gars voir ce qui se passe dans les rues, qu'on sache au moins si quelqu'un à l'intention de descendre Moubarak," ordonna Casey.

Porter ne se contentait pas de coordonner l'agenda exécutif et de gérer les documents destinés au président.
Comme il l'expliqua à un collègue, "un tiers de mon boulot consistait à essayer de contrer certaines de ses idées les plus dangereuses et à lui donner des raisons de croire qu'elles n'étaient peut-être pas si bonnes que ça".

'Was it a good day or a bad day?' she [Marsha Coats] would ask carefully, but with intense curiosity.
'It was a good meeting today,' he [Dan Coats] said sometimes. The president listened, asked good questions. Trump was smart and could be engaging and even charming.
[...]
Bud the bad days were more frequent. Coats began to think Trump was impervious to facts. Trump had his own facts: Nearly everyone was an idiot, and almost every country was ripping off the United States. The steady stream of ranting was debilitating. The tension never abated, and Coats would not bend facts to suit the president's preconceptions or desires.

Trump had had three meetings with Kim [Jung-Un] at that point. [...] An aide brought in pictures that show Trump and Kim. All of these shots were photos that had already been released and widely circulated at the time of the event.
"This is me and him," Trump said. "That's the line, right? Then I walked over the line. Pretty cool. You know? Pretty cool. Right? That's the line between North Korea and South Korea. That's the line. That's North and South Korea. That's the line. That line is a big deal. Nobody has ever stepped across that line. Ever." Many others had crossed the border into North Korea, but Trump was the first sitting U.S. president to do so.

"What's the Trump-Pence strategy to win over, in the next 11 months, the persuadable voter?" I asked.
"I don't know, " Trump said. "You know what? I'll tell you what the Trump-Pence strategy is: To do a good job. That's all it is. It's very simple. It's not a-- I don't have a strategy. I do a good job."
[...]
"Okay. In a sentence, what's the job of the president? What is your job as you see it?
"I have many jobs."
I offered my standard definition. "I think it's figuring out what the next stage of good is for a majority of people in the country--"
"That's good," Trump said.
"--and then saying," I continued, "this is where we're going, and this is the plan to get there."
"Correct," Trump said. "But sometimes that road changes. You know, a lot of people are inflexible. Sometimes a road has to change, you know? You have a wall in front and you have to go around it instead of trying to go through it--it's much easier. But really the job of a president is to keep our country safe, to keep it prosperous. Okay? Prosperous is a big thing. But sometimes you have so much prosperity that people want to use that in a bad way, and you have to be careful with it."
As I listened, I was struck by the vague, directionless nature of Trump's comments. He had been president for just under three years, but couldn't seem to articulate a strategy or plan for the country. I was surprised he would go into 2020, the year he hoped to win reelection, without more clarity to his message.

"I get along very well with Erdogan, even though you're not supposed to because everyone says 'What a horrible guy,'" Trump said. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is a repressive leader with a terrible record on human rights. "But for me it works out good. It's funny, the relationships I have, the tougher and meaner they are, the better I get along with them. You know? Explain that to me someday, okay?"
That might not be difficult, I thought, but I didn't say anything.

A fourth text Kushner advised was necessary to understand Trump was Scott Adams's book 'Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter'. Adams [...] explains in 'Win Bigly' that Trump's misstatements of fact are not regrettable errors or ethical lapses, but part of a technique called "intentional wrongness persuasion." Adam argues Trump "can invent any reality" for most voters on most issues, and "all you will remember is that he provided his reasons, he didn't apologize, and his opponents called him a liar like they always do."
Kushner said that Scott Adams's approach could be applied to Trump's recent February 4 State of the Union speech when he had claimed, "Our economy is the best it has ever been." The economy was indeed in excellent shape then, but not the best in history, Kushner acknowledged.
"Controversy elevates message," Kushner said. This was his core understanding of communication strategy in the age of the internet and Trump. A controversy over the economy, Kushner argued--and how good it is--only helps Trump because it reminds voters that the economy is good. A hair-splitting, fact-checking debate in the media about whether the numbers were technically better decades ago or in the 1950s is irrelevant, he said.