Bob Woodward

When his performance as president is taken in its entirety, I can only reach one conclusion: Trump is the wrong man for the job.

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.

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.

"His attention span is like a minus number," Fauci said privately.

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.

"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.

Next up on Scavino's laptop was a clip of Trump's February 2019 State of the Union speech before Congress 11 months prior. Instead of his words, hyped-up elevator music played as the camera panned over extended shots of senators and members of Congress watching from their seats. One of the first shots was of Bernie Sanders, who looked bored.
Trump had a different interpretation. "They hate me," the president said. "You're seeing hate!"
A shot of Elizabeth Warren was next. She was paying attention but had a bland, unemotional look on her face.
"Hate!" Trump said.
A shot of an expressionless Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Trump pointed at her.
"Hate! See the hate!" he said.
The camera lingered a particularly long time on Kamala Harris, who had a straight, even polite look on her face as the dubbed-in music played in the background.
"Hate!" Trump said. "See the hate! See the hate!"

"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 raised former President Obama and said that many people thought he was smart.
"I don't know. I don't think Obama's smart," Trump said. "See? I think he's highly overrated. And I don't think he's a great speaker. I had an uncle who was a professor at MIT for 40 years, one of the most respected in the history of the school. For 40 years. My father's brother. And my father was smarter than he was. It's good stock. You know they talk about the elite. Really, the elite. Ah, they have nice houses. No. I have much better than them. I have better everything than them, including education."

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.

But he had a central, running argument with Trump concerning allies. Mattis saw that the Europeans in NATO, the Middle east, South Korea and Japan were essential. The relationships needed to be nurtured and protected.
"All the victories," he said, "were becoming just submerged by this mercurial, capricious tweeting form of decision making."
What, Mattis wondered, made Trump think anyone could make it alone in this world? What reading of history, what intellectual thought could give a person any confidence in that? A country always needed allies, he was sure. A person always needed allies. And this was the tragedy of Trump's leadership and the bottom line: "It was inexplicable to think otherwise. It was indefensible. It was jingoism. It was a misguided form of nationalism. It was not patriotism."
Trump's impact on the country would be lasting. "This degradation of the American experiment is real. This is tangible. Truth is no longer governing the White House statements. Nobody believes - even the people who believe in him somehow believe in him without believing what he says."

How is your wife? Trump asked. Jill McCabe, a pediatric physician, had run unsuccessfully for the state Senate in Virginia in 2015 as a Democrat. [...]
Jill was fine, McCabe said.
How did she handle losing? the president asked. Is it tough to lose?
It's tough to lose anything, McCabe answered. She had rededicated herself to taking care of kids in the emergency room.
That must've been really tough, Trump said in what sounded like a sneer. To be a loser.

'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.

Son raisonnement intime, la majorité des Américains l’auraient six ans plus tard. Trump ne se présentera jamais. Il ne déposera jamais sa candidature. Il ne l’annoncera pas. Pas question pour lui de faire une déclaration de patrimoine. Non, il ne fera rien de tout ça. Il ne peut pas gagner.

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.

Malgré les rumeurs presque quotidiennes décrivant les conflits destructeurs qui faisaient rage à la Maison Blanche, le grand public n’avait pas la moindre idée du degré de chaos qui y régnait. Trump était constamment d’humeur instable, erratique, rarement capable de se concentrer.

Vous vous souvenez m'avoir donné des informations?
Non...

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?

Bon, j'ai compris, je vais retirer ce courrier de son bureau.

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".