Fear: Trump in the White House

by Bob Woodward

Dowd had told this to the president. “I know that, goddamn it!” Trump had said.

  Dowd continued with Quarles. “Sometimes I’ve got to do this by phone and you’ve got to give me some direction. I’m not asking you to give away the store or reveal your hand. Just tell me are we going to get hit or not going to get hit. Or you have a request or you don’t. It’s not on your radar.”

  “I agree,” Quarles said.

  Dowd was careful not to stray, to ask about possible investigations of Jared’s finances. Trump was his client, and it was key to be client-focused.

  * * *

  In July, the Freedom Caucus, a bloc of 30 strong conservatives in the House, threatened not to vote for the budget unless President Trump instituted some prohibition on paying for gender reassignment surgeries and hormone treatments for transgender people serving in the military.

  Under Obama, transgender troops had no longer been banned from openly serving, although new recruits would not be allowed to join until July 1, 2017. On June 30, the day before the deadline, Mattis signed a memo delaying implementation by six months to review “the readiness and lethality of the force.”

  During the campaign, Trump had proclaimed himself a supporter of LGBT rights. Now he told Bannon, “What the fuck? They’re coming in here, they’re getting clipped”—a crude reference to gender reassignment surgery. Someone had told him that each surgery cost $250,000, an inflated number. “Not going to happen,” he said.

  Gender reassignment surgery can be expensive but also is infrequent. In a Pentagon-commissioned study, the RAND Corporation “found that only a few hundred of the estimated 6,600 transgender troops would seek medical treatment in any year. RAND found those costs would total no more than $8 million per year.”

  The interagency process had gone to work on the question. The general counsels of the departments and agencies had weighed in. The Deputies Committee had met, and there were several Principals Committee meetings. There was no agreement, but four options were developed.

  On the morning of July 26, Priebus, Bannon and several lawyers reached the president on the speakerphone in the residence. He was not expected in the Oval Office for at least an hour.

  Mr. President, Priebus said, we know you are going to come down soon but we wanted to give you a heads-up on a decision memo on transgender people in the military.

  The four options: One was to retain the Obama policy that allowed transgender people to serve openly, two was to issue a directive to Secretary Mattis giving him leeway, three was a presidential order to end the program but come up with a plan for those transgender people already in the military, and four was to ban all transgender people from military service. The likelihood of being sued increased as they got to number four, Priebus explained. “When you come down, we want to walk you through on paper,” Priebus said.

  “I’ll be down at 10,” the president said. “Why don’t you guys come and see me then? We’ll figure it out.”

  Priebus thought they had found an orderly process on at least one controversial matter.

  At 8:55 a.m., his phone signaled him that a presidential tweet had been sent. “After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow . . .”

  In two more tweets following at 9:04 and 9:08 a.m., Trump finished his announcement: “. . . Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military. Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail. Thank you.”

  “What’d you think of my tweet?” the president asked Priebus later.

  “I think it would’ve been better if we had a decision memo, looped Mattis in,” Priebus answered.

  Mattis was not happy with Trump’s decision to tweet the news and the effect it would have on serving and deployed transgender troops. On vacation in the Pacific Northwest, he was caught by surprise.

  The confusion played out in the press, with a Pentagon spokesman calling the Trump tweet “new guidance.”

  Trump spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders said, “The president’s national security team” was consulted and that Trump had made the decision the day before and “informed” Mattis immediately after. Several White House officials told the press that Mattis was consulted before the announcement and knew Trump was considering it.

  Bannon knew that the generals, though hard-line on defense, had become progressive on social issues. “The Marine Corps is a progressive institution,” Bannon said. “Dunford, Kelly and Mattis are the three biggest. They’re more progressive than Gary Cohn and Kushner.”

  The commandant of the Coast Guard said publicly, “I will not break the faith” with transgender members of his service.

  Dunford sent a letter to the service chiefs: “There will be no modifications to the current policy until the President’s direction has been received by the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary has issued implementation guidance.” In short, tweets were not orders. “In the meantime, we will continue to treat all of our personnel with respect . . . we will all remain focused on accomplishing our assigned missions.”

  Mattis aide Sally Donnelly called Bannon. “Hey, we’ve got a problem with the boss,” she said. “We can’t stand by this transgender decision. This is just not right. They are American citizens.”

  “These guys are coming over to get full surgery,” Bannon said. “We’re supposed to pay for that?”

  Mattis was going to try to reverse the decision, she said.

  “You’ve got to take one for the team,” Bannon told her. Mattis would have to get in line.

  The White House later issued formal guidance to the Pentagon. Mattis announced he would study the issue. In the meantime, transgender troops continued to serve. Lawsuits were filed, and four federal courts entered preliminary injunctions against the ban. On January 1, 2018, the Pentagon began accepting transgender recruits as required by the courts.

  CHAPTER

  25

  On June 2, Marc Kasowitz, Trump’s longtime attorney, walked into the Oval Office. Trump was signing papers that Porter had brought him, carefully presenting each for signature and offering a few comments.

  Wow, Kasowitz said. Your man Porter here is quite a hire. Harvard, Harvard Law School, Rhodes Scholar.

  Trump had been dealing with Porter since he’d taken office.

  “You’ve got a better résumé than Neil Gorsuch!” the president said. Gorsuch’s nomination and confirmation to the Supreme Court was probably Trump’s most notable accomplishment as president. He mentioned Gorsuch whenever he recounted his administration’s achievements. “Who do you work for?” Trump asked after Kasowitz had left.

  “I guess I work for . . .” Porter began.

  “Who do you report to?”

  “I guess I report to Reince, but I really work for you.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Trump said. He knew about the formal organization charts, and hated them. “Forget about Reince. He’s like a little rat. He just scurries around. You don’t even have to pay any attention to him. Just come talk to me. You don’t have to go through him.”

  That day changed the Trump-Porter relationship. His staff secretary was practically a Neil Gorsuch clone.

  Porter was shocked that Trump was so vicious about his chief of staff.

  * * *

  Priebus, Porter and others continued to try to persuade Trump to curtail his use of Twitter.

  “This is my megaphone,” Trump replied. “This is the way that I speak directly to the people without any filter. Cut through the noise. Cut through the fake news. That’s the only way I have to communicate. I have tens of millions of followers. This is bigger than cable news. I go out and give a speech and it’s covered by CNN and nobody’s watching, nobody cares. I tweet something and it’s my megaphone to the world.”

  “Going bananas” was the term Priebus used to describe Tr
ump early on the morning of Thursday, June 29. Trump had aimed a pair of pre-6:00 a.m. tweets at the MSNBC cable show Morning Joe, starring former Republican congressman Joe Scarborough and his partner, Mika Brzezinski.

  The two had been friendly and even supportive of Trump early in the presidential campaign, and Trump had called in to the show regularly during the primaries, but they were now regular detractors. Trump’s tweet said, “How come low I.Q. Crazy Mika along with Psycho Joe came to Mar-a-Lago 3 nights in a row around New Year’s Eve, and insisted on joining me. She was bleeding badly from a face-lift.”

  About 10:15 a.m. Trump was in the Oval Office reading the newspaper when Priebus walked in.

  “I know what you are going to say,” Trump said as Priebus crossed the threshold. “It’s not presidential. And guess what? I know it. But I had to do it anyway.”

  Priebus knew not to ask why.

  Hope Hicks, now the director of strategic communication, was horrified. She tried to take the lead on the tweets about Mika.

  “It’s not politically helpful,” Hicks told the president. “You can’t just be a loose cannon on Twitter. You’re getting killed by a lot of this stuff. You’re shooting yourself in the foot. You’re making big mistakes.”

  Following the Mika tweet, a measurable storm of protest came from key Republicans who were necessary votes on repealing and replacing Obamacare and other legislation. Senator Susan Collins of Maine said, “This just has to stop.” Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska: “Stop it!” Already on shaky ground with women, Trump’s personal attack encouraged comparisons to his past history.

  As an extreme measure, Hicks, Porter, Gary Cohn and White House social media director Dan Scavino proposed they set up a committee. They would draft some tweets that they believed Trump would like. If the president had an idea for a tweet, he could write it down or get one of them in and they would vet it. Was it factually accurate? Was it spelled correctly? Did it make sense? Did it serve his needs?

  “I guess you’re right,” Trump said several times. “We could do that.” But then he ignored most reviews or vetting and did what he wanted.

  When Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un amped up the rhetoric, he was warned, “Twitter could get us into a war.”

  “This is my megaphone,” Trump said again. “Let’s not call it Twitter. Let’s call it social media.” Though the White House had Facebook and Instagram accounts, Trump did not use them. He stuck to Twitter. “This is who I am. This is how I communicate. It’s the reason I got elected. It’s the reason that I’m successful.”

  The tweets were not incidental to his presidency. They were central. He ordered printouts of his recent tweets that had received a high number of likes, 200,000 or more. He studied them to find the common themes in the most successful. He seemed to want to become more strategic, find out whether success was tied to the subject, the language or simply the surprise that the president was weighing in. The most effective tweets were often the most shocking.

  Later, when Twitter announced the number of permissible characters in a single tweet was being doubled from 140 to 280, Trump told Porter he thought the change made sense on one level. Now he would be able to flesh out his thoughts and add more depth.

  “It’s a good thing,” Trump said, “but it’s a bit of a shame because I was the Ernest Hemingway of 140 characters.”

  * * *

  At the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, in early July Trump wanted to talk with Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull. In violation of security rules he invited Turnbull into his Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF). Only those with the highest U.S. security clearances for Top Secret Sensitive Compartmented Information were allowed in the SCIF. It was an absolute rule, intended to prevent someone planting listening devices. This facility, a large steel room, had to be torn down after the meeting.

  The relationship between the leaders had been difficult since the first week of the administration, when the two men spoke by phone. Trump wanted to get out of what he called a “stupid” deal that is “going to kill me” between the U.S. and Australia, made under President Obama. Under the agreement, certain refugees with questionable backgrounds waiting on an island off Australia would be allowed to enter the U.S. The transcript of their January 28, 2017, call had leaked. Trump had said, “It is an evil time. . . . Are they going to become the Boston bomber?”

  As he went to the meeting with Trump in Germany, Turnbull was aware of the debate within the White House about possible tariffs on steel imported into the United States.

  “If you do ever put steel tariffs on,” Turnbull said, “you’ve got to exempt Australian steel. We do this steel that’s specialty steel. We’re the only one that produces it in the world. You’ve got to let us out. You’ve got a $40 billion trade surplus with us. We’re military allies with you. We’re in every battle with you.”

  “Of course,” Trump said, “we’ll let you out. That makes total sense. You guys are great. We’ve got a big surplus with you guys”—the holy grail.

  Gary Cohn, who was in the meeting, was pleased. Turnbull had previously been a partner at Goldman Sachs and had worked for Cohn when he was Goldman president.

  * * *

  Coming back from the G20 summit, Trump was editing an upcoming speech with Porter. Scribbling his thoughts in neat, clean penmanship, the president wrote, “TRADE IS BAD.”

  Though he never said it in a speech, he had finally found the summarizing phrase and truest expression of his protectionism, isolationism and fervent American nationalism.

  * * *

  Nearly eight months later, on February 23, 2018, Turnbull arrived at the White House to see the president.

  In the prep session in the Oval Office for the meeting, Cohn reminded Trump of his pledge.

  “Mr. President,” Cohn said, “the first thing he’s going to bring up is the steel tariffs. And he’s going to remind you that you let him out.”

  “I don’t remember,” Trump said, sitting behind the Resolute Desk.

  “Well, sir,” Cohn said, “you had the conversation with him . . .”

  “I’m going to deny it,” Trump replied. “I never had that conversation with him.”

  “Okay, sir, just reminding you that it’s going to come up.”

  Cohn had witnessed this for over a year—denial when needed or useful or more convenient. “He’s a professional liar,” Cohn told an associate.

  At lunch Turnbull carefully stepped Trump through their time at the G20 the previous summer.

  Remember we were in Hamburg?

  Yes, Trump said.

  You took me back in your secure facility?

  “Oh, yeah, I remember that,” Trump replied. “My security guys were so pissed. They couldn’t believe I did it.”

  Remember what conversation we had?

  Trump nodded.

  We were talking about specialty steel that Australia exclusively produces.

  A version of yes from Trump.

  “We’ve got a $40 billion trade surplus?”

  Yes, Trump knew that for sure.

  And you agreed to let me out of any steel tariff?

  “Oh, yeah,” Trump answered, “I guess I remember that.”

  Cohn laughed.

  Australian steel was later exempted, as were other nations. As of June 2018, Australia retained its exemption.

  CHAPTER

  26

  McMaster had drinks with Dina Powell, a senior deputy from his staff, and Porter on July 15.

  “The team of two,” McMaster said—Tillerson and Mattis—were making his position difficult and less and less tenable.

  McMaster said that he believed Mattis and Tillerson had concluded that the president and the White House were crazy. As a result, they sought to implement and even formulate policy on their own without interference or involvement from McMaster, let alone the president.

  Just the previous week, McMaster said that Tillerson had been in Qatar and signed an im
portant Memorandum of Understanding with the Qatari foreign minister on counterterrorism and disabling the financing of terrorism.

  McMaster said he had been completely in the dark about this. The secretary of state had not consulted or even informed him in advance. He had learned from press reports! In a news conference in Qatar, Tillerson had said the agreement “represents weeks of intensive discussions” between the two governments so it had been in the works for a while.

  Porter said Tillerson had not gone through the policy process at the White House and had not involved the president either. Clearly Tillerson was going off on his own.

  “It is more loyal to the president,” McMaster said, “to try to persuade rather the circumvent.” He said he carried out direct orders when the president was clear, and felt duty bound to do so as an Army officer. Tillerson in particular did not.

  “He’s such a prick,” McMaster said. “He thinks he’s smarter than anyone. So he thinks he can do his own thing.”

  * * *

  In his long quest to bring order to the chaos, Priebus arranged for each of the key cabinet members to regularly check in. Tillerson came to his office at 5:15 p.m. on Tuesday, July 18.

  McMaster had not been invited but joined the meeting anyway. He took a seat at the conference table. The national security adviser’s silent presence was ominous and electric.

  Tell me, Priebus asked Tillerson, how are things going? Are you on track to achieve your primary objectives? How is the relationship between the State Department and the White House? Between you and the president?

  “You guys in the White House don’t have your act together,” Tillerson said, and the floodgates gushed open. “The president can’t make a decision. He doesn’t know how to make a decision. He won’t make a decision. He makes a decision and then changes his mind a couple of days later.”