Rage by Bob Woodard

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Re: Rage by Bob Woodard

Post by vnatale » Tue Sep 15, 2020 8:54 pm

Pottinger, who had begun making his own calls to sources from his days as a Wall Street Journal reporter on SARS, told Redfield he was gathering evidence not only of human-to-human spread but also asymptomatic spread, meaning a person without symptoms could be a carrier and infect others. Was it possible that a former journalist would get to the bottom of the new virus faster than the doctors? Redfield wondered. They would have to wait and see.

On January 17, Redfield activated the entire CDC and assigned thousands of his staff to work on the new virus. Screening of travelers from Wuhan began at airports in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles. He feared the greatest health crisis since 1918 might be upon them.

Pottinger also calculated the death rate for Hubei province, whose capital was Wuhan, could be six times normal. He based his estimate not on information from the intel community or reported death rates out of China, but from Chinese social media and phone conversations with people on the ground. He determined this could translate into thousands more deaths in Wuhan in one month.
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Re: Rage by Bob Woodard

Post by vnatale » Tue Sep 15, 2020 8:57 pm

I asked Trump about his decision making in foreign policy. He told me he was working with the Turkish leader on the war in Syria.

“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.

“But maybe it’s not a bad thing,” he continued. “The easy ones are the ones I maybe don’t like as much or don’t get along with as much.”
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Re: Rage by Bob Woodard

Post by vnatale » Tue Sep 15, 2020 9:00 pm

Trump told me about a dinner he’d hosted. Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon who purchased The Washington Post in 2013, had attended. He said he’d pulled Bezos aside, or possibly called him the next day, and said, “Jeff, you don’t have to treat me good. But just treat me fairly. When I do something great, say it’s great. When I do something good, say it’s good. And when I do something bad, knock the hell out of me.”

Oh, I never get involved, Bezos had said, according to Trump. He played no role in The Washington Post’s news coverage of Trump or anything else.

“What do you mean you don’t get involved?” Trump said. You’re losing millions a year on the newspaper. “Of course you get involved.”

The Post was not losing money and has apparently been a profitable business under Bezos’s ownership.

Bezos had insisted he never got involved.

I had known Bezos for more than 20 years and worked at the Post for 49 years. I told Trump that I believed that was true. There was an iron curtain between the newsroom and ownership.

“Hard to believe,” Trump said. “If I really knew it was true, I’d treat him much differently. Because I haven’t been very nice to him, you know.” The Washington Post’s strong independence from Bezos seemed to genuinely strain credulity for Trump. “It’s just hard for me. Maybe it’s a different personality. But it’s hard for me to believe.”




“Well, I hope so, but it’s going to be the case,” Trump said. He wondered aloud which paper was “more dishonest,” The Washington Post or The New York Times. “Hard to believe that Jeff Bezos is not controlling what’s happening.” It was clear that if Trump had owned a newspaper, he would be actively involved.
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Re: Rage by Bob Woodard

Post by vnatale » Tue Sep 15, 2020 9:02 pm

The virus now appeared to be spreading like crazy. On January 24, Chinese scientists finally published a report in The Lancet, perhaps the world’s most respected medical journal, stating “evidence so far indicates human transmission” of the coronavirus.

Alex Azar, the secretary of Health and Human Services, called his counterpart, Ma Xiaowei, the Chinese health minister the morning of January 27. Pottinger was on the call. Nearly a month had passed since the first reports from China.

Can we send our guys in? Azar asked. Let us do it. We’ve got experts. We can provide support. We can help. Let’s share samples. World Health Organization rules required that samples be shared. Just you say it, they’re ready to go. Their bags are packed.

Thank you very much, said Ma. It’s great to hear from you. We’ll look at it.

No answer followed. Azar was angry, but avoided any open disagreement and tweeted that he “conveyed our appreciation for China’s efforts.”
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Re: Rage by Bob Woodard

Post by vnatale » Tue Sep 15, 2020 9:06 pm

Azar, Redfield and Fauci were recommending strong travel restrictions on China.

Mick Mulvaney, a 52-year-old conservative former congressman with a gentle style who had been acting White House chief of staff for a year, said he thought they might consider some unintended consequences.

What’s going to happen to the stock market? Mulvaney asked. What’s going to happen with the tenuous trade relationship? The overall relationship with China? Would the Chinese retaliate? There would be things that might happen that we are not anticipating.

The consensus from the three health officials was that if there was an outbreak in the United States, the consequences of not restricting travel from China might be worse.

“Are you guys comfortable with this?” Trump asked.

They were.

Do you feel confident that this is the way to go?

Yes.

“Tony, are you sure, now?” he asked of Fauci.

“Yes, Mr. President,” Fauci said. “I think this is the only way we’ve got to go right now.”

Almost speaking in one voice the three reiterated that we have to prevent American citizens returning from China from causing infections here. So the Americans would have to be quarantined for 14 days so if they are infected they would pass the incubation period.

“Okay,” Trump said. “That’s fine.” He looked at O’Brien and Pottinger, who were in the back in the Oval Office away from the desk. “Are you guys okay with this?”

O’Brien said he was.

“Absolutely,” said Pottinger, the hawk. “This is the only way to go.”

Trump gave his final approval, and Azar, Redfield and Fauci went out to announce the Chinese travel restrictions in the White House press room.

Redfield spoke first. “This is a serious health situation in China, but I want to emphasize that the risk to the American public currently is low.” He repeated himself for emphasis. “We have confirmed six cases of this novel virus in the United States. The most recent case had no travel history to China.”

China was reporting 9,700 cases and more than 200 deaths.

Fauci twice said there were lots of unknowns. “We still have a low risk to the American public.”

Finally, Azar spoke. “Today President Trump took decisive action to minimize the risk of the spread of novel coronavirus in the United States,” he announced. “I have today declared
Fauci knew from a report from Germany that asymptomatic spread “is absolutely the case.” The German report, printed as a letter to the editor on the New England Journal of Medicine’s website on January 30, stated, “The fact that asymptomatic persons are potential sources of 2019-NCoV infection may warrant a reassessment of transmission dynamics of the current outbreak.” The language was technical and understated, but the message about the dangers posed by asymptomatic spread was clear.

Azar, Redfield and Fauci were recommending strong travel restrictions on China.

Mick Mulvaney, a 52-year-old conservative former congressman with a gentle style who had been acting White House chief of staff for a year, said he thought they might consider some unintended consequences.

What’s going to happen to the stock market? Mulvaney asked. What’s going to happen with the tenuous trade relationship? The overall relationship with China? Would the Chinese retaliate? There would be things that might happen that we are not anticipating.

The consensus from the three health officials was that if there was an outbreak in the United States, the consequences of not restricting travel from China might be worse.

“Are you guys comfortable with this?” Trump asked.

They were.

Do you feel confident that this is the way to go?

Yes.

“Tony, are you sure, now?” he asked of Fauci.

“Yes, Mr. President,” Fauci said. “I think this is the only way we’ve got to go right now.”

Almost speaking in one voice the three reiterated that we have to prevent American citizens returning from China from causing infections here. So the Americans would have to be quarantined for 14 days so if they are infected they would pass the incubation period.

“Okay,” Trump said. “That’s fine.” He looked at O’Brien and Pottinger, who were in the back in the Oval Office away from the desk. “Are you guys okay with this?”

O’Brien said he was.

“Absolutely,” said Pottinger, the hawk. “This is the only way to go.”

Trump gave his final approval, and Azar, Redfield and Fauci went out to announce the Chinese travel restrictions in the White House press room.

Redfield spoke first. “This is a serious health situation in China, but I want to emphasize that the risk to the American public currently is low.” He repeated himself for emphasis. “We have confirmed six cases of this novel virus in the United States. The most recent case had no travel history to China.”

China was reporting 9,700 cases and more than 200 deaths.

Fauci twice said there were lots of unknowns. “We still have a low risk to the American public.”

Finally, Azar spoke. “Today President Trump took decisive action to minimize the risk of the spread of novel coronavirus in the United States,” he announced. “I have today declared that the coronavirus presents a public health emergency in the United States.” He said that U.S. citizens returning from China would undergo 14 days of mandatory quarantine, and that Trump had signed a presidential proclamation “temporarily suspending the entry into the United States of foreign nationals who pose a risk of transmitting the 2019 novel coronavirus”—namely foreign nationals who had traveled in China within the last 14 days. Azar called the measure “prudent, targeted and temporary” and stressed once more that “the risk of infection for Americans remains low.”

“Administration Elevates Response to Coronavirus, Quarantines, Travel Restrictions” ran the headline of the lead story in The Washington Post the next day, pushing impeachment aside. In The New York Times the news appeared below the fold, headlined, “Declaring Health Emergency, U.S. Restricts Travel from China.”

Despite the conclusive evidence that at least five people wanted the restrictions—Fauci, Azar, Redfield, O’Brien and Pottinger—in an interview March 19, President Trump told me he deserved exclusive credit for the travel restrictions from China. “I had 21 people in my office, in the Oval Office, and of the 21 there was one person that said we have to close it down. That was me. Nobody wanted to because it was too early.”

On May 6, he told me, “And let me tell you, I had a room of 20 to 21 people and everyone in that room except me did not want to have that ban.”

At least seven times, including a press briefing, a televised town hall, interviews on Fox News and ABC and in meetings with industry executives and Republican lawmakers, he has repeated versions of this story.

Even when he made what appears to have been a tough and sound decision on the advice of his top national security and medical experts, he wanted—and took—all the credit for himself.
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Re: Rage by Bob Woodard

Post by vnatale » Tue Sep 15, 2020 9:08 pm

In total, 10 Republican senators who voted to acquit said in statements or interviews Trump’s actions were wrong, improper or inappropriate. “Let me be clear, Lamar speaks for lots and lots of us,” Senator Ben Sasse, Republican of Nebraska, said. “I believe that delaying the aid was inappropriate and wrong.”

The president had won the votes of these Republicans, but not their approval.

Former DNI and senator Dan Coats, out of the administration for five months, watched Trump’s impeachment with few illusions. He felt he understood the Senate far better than the intelligence world or the White House. He was sure every senator up there, including the Republicans, knew what had transpired. Trump obviously had pushed for an investigation of the Bidens and had delayed or stymied the aid to Ukraine. Was this sufficient to remove Trump from office? It was possible to argue either way. But to remove a president with a such a strong base in their party was pretty much unthinkable. A shrinking minority of Republicans genuinely supported Trump. The others had made a political survival decision.

With all the “formers” attached to his name, Coats did not want to be the person to speak out and say, “Hey, you guys got to stand up.” So he remained silent.
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Re: Rage by Bob Woodard

Post by vnatale » Tue Sep 15, 2020 9:11 pm

That weekend, on February 9, Fauci, Redfield and other members of the Coronavirus Task Force took their seats at a table in a large conference room in Washington. Over 25 state governors, in town for a National Governors Association meeting and scheduled to attend a black-tie dinner with Trump later that night, had asked for a briefing on the coronavirus. Sitting at three long tables in a U-shaped layout, the governors wanted guidance and seemed to be looking for the inside story.

The coronavirus outbreak is going to get much, much worse before it gets better, Redfield warned.

We have not even seen the beginning of the worst, Redfield said, letting his words sink in. There is no reason to believe that what’s happening in China is not going to happen here, he said. There were nearly 40,000 cases in China then, with more than 800 deaths, barely five weeks after announcing the first cases.

I agree completely, Fauci told the governors. This is very serious business. You need to be prepared for problems in your cities and your states. Fauci could see the alarm on the governors’ faces.

“I think we scared the shit out of them,” Fauci said after the meeting.

The official press release from the Department of Health and Human Services describing the meeting read: “The panel reiterated that while this is a serious public health matter, the risk to the American public remains low at this time, and that the federal government will continue working in close coordination with state and local governments to keep it that way.”

The next day, President Trump said publicly three times—once at the White House, once on TV and once at a New Hampshire rally—that the virus would go away on its own. “When it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away,” he said at the packed rally. “I think it’s going to work out good. We only have 11 cases and they’re all getting better.”
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Re: Rage by Bob Woodard

Post by vnatale » Tue Sep 15, 2020 9:11 pm

Fauci attended a public conference in Aspen, Colorado, on February 11. The moderator, Helen Branswell of STAT News, a well-respected science news outlet, said, “You’ve been quite vocal about wanting more information out of China. What would you like to get your hands on?”

“We really need to know the scope of this,” Fauci said. “The degree of asymptomatic transmission” would be the crucial piece of information. “That has a real impact on how you make certain policy decisions.” If people who didn’t show symptoms were giving others the disease, it would be much harder to contain.

Fauci repeated several times that the virus was low-risk. Clearly skeptical, Branswell said, “Explain to me why the risk is low. Because to me, when I look at this virus, it’s spreading very efficiently.”

“It’s the message,” Fauci said frankly. Americans didn’t need to be frightened. “Right now we have 13 people.” But again he hedged: “Is there a risk that this is going to turn into a global pandemic? Absolutely, yes.”

Branswell asked about the danger of possibly downplaying the risk the virus posed to the U.S.

Fauci said, “The risk is really relatively low.” He posed a hypothetical: How would it be, he asked, if he got up and said, “ ‘I’m telling you we’ve really, really got a big risk of getting completely wiped out,’ and then nothing happens?” Then, he said, “your credibility is gone.”

Fauci knew he was walking the finest of lines. The U.S. would never shut down with so few cases. If he proposed extreme remedies too soon, not only would he lose his credibility, but no one would listen or take action.

He didn’t say it, but he thought, “Take a look at what’s happening in China.” The outbreak was severe.

During this period, from February 11 to 14, Trump repeatedly said the U.S. had only about 12 cases.

At an event a week later at the Council on Foreign Relations, Fauci was again the voice of reassurance. “To our knowledge, there aren’t individuals in society in the United States that are infected” who aren’t travel-related, he said. “We don’t think so.” But he added, “We don’t know 100 percent, because they could have kind of come in under the radar screen.”

Asked by another panel member to reiterate that the public should not be buying respirator masks needed by health care workers, Fauci laughed. “I don’t want to denigrate people who walk around wearing masks” but masks, he said, should be worn by sick people. “Put a mask on them, not yourself.” He later added, to laughter from the audience, “I don’t want to be pejorative against cruise ships, but if there’s one thing you don’t want to do right now, it’s to take a cruise in Asia.”
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Re: Rage by Bob Woodard

Post by vnatale » Tue Sep 15, 2020 9:13 pm

Anyone who has watched Trump’s press conferences knows how he avoids issues, splits hairs and won’t deal with hard questions. This is only amplified in a one-on-one setting—that maddening, convoluted dodging that drove Mattis, Tillerson, Coats and others crazy
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Re: Rage by Bob Woodard

Post by vnatale » Tue Sep 15, 2020 9:16 pm

In late February, China finally allowed World Health Organization scientists to enter the country to investigate. Redfield had wanted to send his team of investigators but only one CDC official was allowed in the group. Fauci’s deputy director, Dr. Clifford Lane, was the only other American allowed to join the delegation to China from February 16 to February 24. The report released by the group indicated that asymptomatic infection was “relatively rare and does not appear to be a major driver of transmission” and praised China for “perhaps the most ambitious, agile and aggressive disease containment effort in history.”

Lane, who had never before been to China and had no experience with Chinese handlers, reported personally to Fauci that there was a lot of disease there and it was spreading rapidly. But he said the Chinese seemed to be doing everything they could to contain the virus. Everything was locked down. No one was allowed out of their apartment except for food. Sick and healthy people alike were locked in their homes. If they decided to go out for something other than food, their neighbors would report them to the police, who would then come and question them. It was absolute, with almost no concern for human rights.

Lane also said he’d been impressed with the high-tech capabilities of the hospitals in Beijing. But neither American on the delegation had been allowed into Wuhan, the epicenter of the disease.

The WHO report contained a stark warning: “Much of the global community is not yet ready, in mindset and materially, to implement the measures that have been employed to contain Covid-19 in China. These are the only measures that are currently proven to interrupt or minimize” the spread of the coronavirus. Those measures included surveillance, public engagement, cancellation of mass gatherings, traffic controls, rapid diagnosis, immediate case isolation, and “rigorous tracking and quarantine of close contacts.”
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Re: Rage by Bob Woodard

Post by vnatale » Tue Sep 15, 2020 9:18 pm

Fauci, who was fast becoming the most recognizable face of U.S. government’s coronavirus response, appeared on the Today show on February 29.

NBC reporter Peter Alexander asked the question on many people’s minds: “So, Dr. Fauci, it’s Saturday morning in America. People are waking up right now with real concerns about this. They want to go to malls and movies, maybe the gym as well. Should we be changing our habits and, if so, how?”

“No,” Fauci said. “Right now, at this moment, there’s no need to change anything that you’re doing on a day-by-day basis. Right now the risk is still low, but this could change.”

He was later glad he had added “but this could change.” Yet as a practical matter, America’s Doctor had given the green light to proceed with the weekend routine.
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Re: Rage by Bob Woodard

Post by vnatale » Tue Sep 15, 2020 9:18 pm

That same day, health officials announced the first U.S. death from Covid-19 had occurred overnight in Washington State. At the Coronavirus Task Force briefing at the White House that afternoon, Redfield said of the deceased, “The investigation at this time shows no evidence of link to travel or a known contact.”

Asked by a reporter whether Americans should change their routines or daily lives, Trump said, “Well, I hope they don’t change their routine. But maybe, Anthony,” he said to Fauci, “I’ll let you—I’ll let you answer that. Or Bob?” he asked Redfield. “Do you want to answer that? Please.”

“The American public needs to go on with their normal lives,” Redfield said. “The risk is low. We need to go on with our normal lives.”
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Re: Rage by Bob Woodard

Post by vnatale » Tue Sep 15, 2020 9:21 pm

When I first heard about Jared Kushner, he seemed to worship his father-in-law, acting as an ever-loyal cheerleader and true believer. He once told associates, “When I disagree with the president, I always say, okay, what am I missing? Because he’s proven time and time again to have good instincts.”

He expressed awe at Trump’s dominance of the media. “If the president didn’t tweet it, it didn’t happen. You send out a press release and it goes into the ether and nobody cares. He puts out a tweet and it’s on CNN one and a half minutes later.”

Initially I thought all of this meant Kushner would not be able to come close to sharing an honest character assessment of Trump.

Then on February 8, 2020, Kushner advised others on the four texts that he said someone in a quest to understand Trump needed to absorb.

First, Kushner advised, go back and read a 2018 opinion column by The Wall Street Journal’s Pulitzer Prize–winning columnist Peggy Noonan. Her column on Trump said: “He’s crazy… and it’s kind of working.”

Kushner made it clear that his endorsement of the column was not an aside or stray comment, but was central to understanding Trump.

The son-in-law had to know that Noonan’s column, dated March 8, 2018, and titled “Over Trump, We’re As Divided As Ever,” was not positive. Rather it was quite devastating. In it she called Trump a “circus act” and “a living insult.”

“What you feel is disquiet,” she wrote, “and you know what it’s about: the worrying nature of Mr. Trump himself… epic instability, mismanagement and confusion.”

A conservative speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan, Noonan wrote that with Trump, “We are not talking about being colorfully, craftily unpredictable, as political masters like FDR and Reagan sometimes were, but something more unfortunate, an unhinged or not-fully-hinged quality that feels like screwball tragedy.”

Warming to her theme, Noonan wrote, “Crazy doesn’t last. Crazy doesn’t go the distance. Crazy is an unstable element that, when let loose in an unstable environment, explodes. And so your disquiet. Sooner or later something bad will happen.… It all feels so dangerous.

“Expecting more from the president of the United States springs from respect for the country, its institutions and the White House itself. It springs from standards, the falling of which concerns natural conservatives. It isn’t snobbery. The people trying to wrap their heads around this presidency are patriots too. That’s one of the hellish things about this era.”

Kushner’s second recommendation for understanding Trump was, surprisingly, the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland. He paraphrased the cat: “If you don’t know where you’re going, any path will get you there.” The Cheshire Cat’s strategy was one of endurance and persistence, not direction.

Kushner was explicitly saying Alice in Wonderland was a guiding text for the Trump presidency. Did Kushner understand how negative this was? Was it possible the best roadmap for the administration was a novel about a young girl who falls through a rabbit hole, and Kushner was willing to acknowledge that Trump’s presidency was on shaky, directionless ground?

The third text Kushner recommended for understanding the Trump presidency was Chris Whipple’s book The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency. In the book, Whipple concluded that, after the president, the chiefs of staff held the fate of the country in their hands.

In a chapter on the Trump presidency added in March 2018, Whipple wrote that Trump “clearly had no idea how to govern” in his first year in office, yet was reluctant to follow the advice of his first two chiefs of staff, Reince Priebus and John Kelly. “What seems clear, as of this writing and almost a year into his presidency, is that Trump will be Trump, no matter his chief of staff,” Whipple concluded.

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, the creator of the Dilbert comic strip, 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.” Adams 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.

When combined, Kushner’s four texts painted President Trump as crazy, aimless, stubborn and manipulative. I could hardly believe anyone would recommend these as ways to understand their father-in-law, much less the president they believed in and served
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Re: Rage by Bob Woodard

Post by vnatale » Tue Sep 15, 2020 9:23 pm

Kushner had no official title during Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign but had made many operational decisions—especially on costs, which he knew Trump constantly monitored. Now Kushner played a major role in the 2020 reelection campaign, one he called “a perfect, well-oiled machine” in contrast to the “experimental” 2016 run.

For 2020, Kushner said in February to others, “I set up three polling operations.” They are independent of each other, he added. “The polling just shows time and time again, the president’s doing great. We have the ability for a big blowout in 2020.”

The House impeachment vote by Democrats, which Kushner called “so unfair,” had been a bonanza for Trump’s job approval ratings.

“We picked up eight points. We pounded the shit out of them,” Kushner said of the Democrats. Eight points could be debated, but it did seem clear that the impeachment had given Trump a boost. A Gallup poll released on February 4 showed Trump’s job approval rating had reached 49 percent, the highest of his presidency.

The real story of Trump’s presidency, in Kushner’s stated view, was the perception of Trump versus the reality. “You should see him in meetings. He interrogates people, keeps them off balance, but he will bend.

“The media is hysterical about Trump—so hysterical they can’t be a check on him,” Kushner argued. “Reporters are afraid to break the line on Trump’s dysfunction. And if they do, they will be ostracized.”

Earlier in February, the president had told me “there’s dynamite behind every door.” Trump, of course, had his worries, but Kushner dismissed to others the idea that trouble loomed. He would not even acknowledge this possibility. He had boundless confidence and was upbeat.

Trouble always loomed in the presidency. Wasn’t surprise everywhere? The unexpected lurked around any corner, any day, every day. Wasn’t it right and wise for any president to think defensively that there was dynamite behind every door?

For example, President George W. Bush’s Top Secret President’s Daily Brief on August 6, 2001, had included the memorable headline: “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US.” Not much or enough had been done. Thirty-six days later, Osama bin Laden’s terrorist group had struck in New York City and Washington, killing 3,000 people and changing the course of history.

But Kushner was an optimist. Trump, he said, “has walked through many doors with dynamite” and survived. “He has mastered the presidency like never before.”

He summarized, “The president has pushed the boundaries, yes. He’s not done the normal thing. But it was the right thing for people. Everything is on track for the big blowout.”
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Re: Rage by Bob Woodard

Post by vnatale » Tue Sep 15, 2020 9:24 pm

Kushner was by turns frustrated and bemused by other people’s confusion about Trump. “He’s unpredictable, which is a great strength. Nobody knows where that line is” that Trump won’t cross. According to Kushner, Trump himself does not know. “This is the difference between a businessperson and politician, in the sense that every day the facts change. And so the line changes too.”

This was often underscored by a cynical cost-benefit analysis. For instance, in December 2016, prior to taking office, Trump had questioned whether his administration would continue the “One China” policy that the U.S. has held since the Carter administration. Under the policy, the United States does not recognize the island of Taiwan as an independent nation and instead acknowledges only “One China” that includes Taiwan. Trump’s decision to cast doubt on the policy angered China, and in a February 9, 2017, phone call with Chinese president Xi Jinping, Trump said he would honor it. Two months later, he welcomed Xi to Mar-a-Lago for a summit.

Kushner cast the “One China” decision as one of cynical pragmatism. “President Trump would say that he was going to respect the One China policy,” Kushner said. “That wasn’t that big of a give, because you could always say you wouldn’t respect it a day later.”

Kushner had additional explanations for Trump’s fluctuations. “The hardest thing that people have in understanding him is they see him as fixed, where he’s actually, he’s not a solid, he’s fluid in the sense that—and that’s a strength.” Trump’s background in business had taught him “there’s no deal until you sign on the line. Right? You can make a deal and then you go through it. But until the paper is signed, it’s not a deal. And that’s how he is. And so he’ll always be flexible.”

Of course flexibility can be a strength, in business and politics. But Trump’s staff and cabinet rarely got a clear definition of direction or policy from the president until he decided or tweeted. Believing that “every day the facts change” is simply another version of Kellyanne Conway’s 2017 statement that there are “alternative facts.”

“He’s not afraid to step into a controversial situation,” Kushner said. “I think he’s shown over time he’s built up his courage to do it. Because he’s stepped into a lot of situations where people said if you do this the world’s going to end, and then the next morning the sun rises, the next evening the sun sets.”
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Re: Rage by Bob Woodard

Post by vnatale » Tue Sep 15, 2020 9:24 pm

By early 2020, Kushner thought Trump had assembled a better and more dedicated White House team than they’d had before.

“In the beginning,” Kushner told others, referring to the first years of the administration, “20 percent of the people we had thought Trump was saving the world, and 80 percent thought they were saving the world from Trump.

“Now, I think we have the inverse. I think 80 of the people working for him think that he’s saving the world, and 20 percent—maybe less now—think they’re saving the world from Trump.”

Let that analysis sink in: Twenty percent of the president’s staff think they are “saving the world” from the president.

Kushner suggested that Trump had developed a new appreciation for some of the people who had been with him since the beginning of his administration. As the economic tasks of 2020 grew and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin played a larger and larger role, Kushner told the president, “This is when you’ll really appreciate having the neurotic New York Jews around.”
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Re: Rage by Bob Woodard

Post by vnatale » Tue Sep 15, 2020 9:25 pm

Kushner said one of Trump’s greatest strengths was “he somehow manages to have his enemies self-destruct and make stupid mistakes. He’s just able to play the media like a fiddle, and the Democrats too. They run like dogs after a fire truck, chasing whatever he throws out there. And then he solves the problem and does the next—then they go on to the next thing.”

The question was, he said, “What is the media obsessed with at a different moment? Because they’ve been melting down about something every day for as long as I’ve been in this politics business, for a couple of years. And then what’s really happening? It’s like a buffet where they’ll always eat the worst thing you give them.”

In meetings, Kushner said, Trump was “an expert at cross-examination. He’s an expert at reading people’s tells. He won’t say, let me go with a nuanced position. He’ll, in a meeting, say, well, what if we do 100? They’ll say, oh, you can’t do that. And then, he’ll say, well, what if we do zero? It’s like, holy shit. It’s whiplash. So that’s his way of reading people, is to see how certain are they of their position: Do they hold their ground? Do they buckle? So that’s just his style.

“And by the way,” Kushner added, “that’s why the most dangerous people around the president are overconfident idiots.” It was apparently a reference to Mattis, Tillerson and former White House economic adviser Gary Cohn. All had left. “If you look at the evolution over time, we’ve gotten rid of a lot of the overconfident idiots. And now he’s got a lot more thoughtful people who kind of know their place and know what to do.”
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Re: Rage by Bob Woodard

Post by vnatale » Tue Sep 15, 2020 9:26 pm

According to Kushner, one of Trump’s greatest impacts was on the Republican Party. “Neither party is really a party. They’re collections of tribes,” he observed at one White House meeting. “The Republican Party was a collection of a bunch of tribes. Look at the Republican Party platform. It’s a document meant to piss people off, basically, because it’s done by activists.” Kushner’s theory was there was a “disproportionality between what issues people are vocal on and what the people, the voters, really care about.”

Trump had united the Republican Party behind himself. “I don’t think it’s even about the issues,” Kushner said. “I think it’s about the attitude.” He said Trump “did a full hostile takeover of the Republican Party.”
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Re: Rage by Bob Woodard

Post by vnatale » Tue Sep 15, 2020 9:28 pm

Kushner considered one of Trump’s greatest skills “figuring out how to trigger the other side by picking fights with them where he makes them take stupid positions.”

He recalled Trump’s July 27, 2019, tweets about the district represented by the late Black Democratic congressman Elijah Cummings, which included Baltimore. “Cumming District is a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess,” Trump had tweeted. “No human being would want to live there.”

Kushner saw this as baiting the Democrats. “When he did the tweet on Elijah Cummings, the president was saying, this is great, let them defend Baltimore,” Kushner told an associate. “The Democrats are getting so crazy, they’re basically defending Baltimore. When you get to the next election, he’s tied them to all these stupid positions because they’d rather attack him than actually be rational.”

Cummings’s former district is in the top half of congressional districts in median household income, home prices and education levels. It has the second-highest income of any majority-Black congressional district in the country.

Chris Wallace had Mick Mulvaney, then the acting White House chief of staff, on his Sunday show the next day. “This seems, Mick,” Wallace said, “to be the worst kind of racial stereotype—”

Mulvaney tried to interrupt.

“Let me finish,” Wallace said, “Racial stereotyping. Black congressman, majority-Black district—I mean, ‘No human being would want to live there’? Is he saying people that live in Baltimore are not human beings?”

“I think you’re spending way too much time reading between the lines,” Mulvaney said.

“I’m not reading between the lines,” Wallace replied. “I’m reading the lines.”
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Re: Rage by Bob Woodard

Post by vnatale » Tue Sep 15, 2020 9:32 pm

On the morning of Friday, February 28, eight months before election day 2020, Trump’s longtime campaign manager Brad Parscale was feeling confident. At times, he was exuberant. With a bushy, honey-red beard, a full 6-foot-8, he sat comfortably in his 14th-floor office at Trump campaign headquarters in Virginia. The backdrop was a sweeping, panoramic view of the Potomac River.

“I’m a master brander,” Parscale told several staff members and visitors that day. He said Trump set the themes of campaigning and governing, and Parscale’s operation converted those themes, along with Trump’s tweets, into a massive, unmatched media blitz of messaging and fundraising.

Put another way, Parscale said, “The president is the radio and the music. We’re the amplifier.” Once in a while, Parscale said, his job for Trump would make him what he called “the songwriter.” He would say, “Hey, here are a few things you should look at.”

The campaign was rolling on at a feverish pace. Using artificial intelligence, Pascale’s operation would test up to 100,000 message variables in a single day. For example, they tested whether a red or green press-to-donate button raised more money in fundraising. In ten seconds, the AI models could tell them how a particular ad performed compared to the last four million that had been run before it.

They had almost twenty $1 million fundraising days in a row lately. Trump’s State of the Union address, held on February 4, had been the biggest day of the year so far, with $5.3 million raised.

Parscale, now 44, was one of the 2016 campaign’s first hires and had stayed, working on media, as Trump hired and fired campaign managers.

“A blessing in disguise was his daughter’s marriage to Jared,” Parscale said. “I think Jared Kushner was the operator that he needed—the yin to his yang. A detail guy. Jared’s meticulous.”

Trump needed two important personality types, in Parscale’s estimation. “Somebody to be meticulous with the details to make sure the organization’s right.” That was Kushner. “Number two, someone to understand his brand and marketing and sell his vision. That’s me.” There was a clear division of labor.

“I run everything political outside the White House. Ronna McDaniel, the RNC chairwoman, runs everything for the party and then Jared runs everything inside the White House.”

Parscale knew the connection between Trump’s tweets and the ads. “Think of Trump’s head more like a starting point of every root narrative we have. In 2016 I made 5.9 million ads on Facebook. It was only about 35 root narratives. That’s what the media’s never gotten wrapped around their head.”

Parscale was so proud of the campaign he was managing that he said, “They’ll make movies about us someday.”

He said Trump’s impeachment in the House of Representatives and Senate acquittal led to a million new donors. The reward was “money and data.” The average donation to the Trump campaign in the fourth quarter of 2019 was $40.87. Kushner calls this a “data-palooza,” a term Parscale embraces.

Three years earlier Parscale had urged Trump to get organized. “Sir, get out there and get out there early. Being president is an advantage, but it’s how soon you do it that’s the advantage.” Trump filed FEC documents on inauguration day and quickly followed up with a February 2017 rally in Florida.

“I do a lot of things that people in politics think are counterintuitive but they’ve worked really well. Become campaign manager 1,400 days before it starts. I’m the longest campaign manager in history.”

The ability to contact voters, even low-propensity voters, had increased over the years. Previously the campaigns had to send someone to knock on a door or send mail, which was expensive. Parscale said now he could contact someone on their phone a hundred times for about 11 cents.

Which Democrats caused Trump the most trouble? “The more mainstream. The more they appeal to moderates. Look, this election is about moderates. That’s who determines elections.”

At this point he said he thought there would be three main issues in the campaign—the economy, immigration and health care.

Parscale conducted focus groups in 12 different cities in eight states all over the country with over 1,000 people about the presidential race.

One question was: Would you vote for someone you like but don’t agree with his policies, or would you vote for someone you don’t like but you like his policies?

“One hundred percent said, I’ll vote for the guy I don’t like, but like his policies. One thousand to zero.”

Whether true or not, it seemed to be his strong view. Here was the paradox, according to Parscale. Trump believed “presence is so important. He’d say it’s probably more important how I look when I give a speech than the speech I give.”

Parscale added a corollary: “You get a picture with the president of China. It’s more important than whatever you did there” in the meeting. The average voter would think, “Oh, the president’s in China. I feel safe. We’re not going to war with them.”

As Parscale described it, Trump had a power to persuade that is almost mystical.

“Now I’ve finally known him so long, I come back and I say, you did that. I know what you did to me.” Trump had made him see what he wanted him to see—such as toughness, but no war with China, Russia or North Korea. “He’s like, I was right though. And I was like, yeah, you were right.”

On election night, Trump told him, “Don’t stand next to me.” Trump was supposedly 6-foot-3, and Parscale was five inches taller. Appearance mattered. Appearance defined. There were few photos of the two together.

After the 2020 election, Parscale said, “My guess is there will be a huge rush of people wanting to befriend me. A lot of people think he’s going to win. And in theory I have the key to the biggest data trove that’s ever existed.”

He added, “They’d have to offer me a lot of money though. I’m not doing this for free.”

A visitor asked Parscale where the hole in reelection might be. “The coronavirus,” he said emphatically. The main headline in The New York Times that day was “Coronavirus Fears Drive Stocks Down for 6th Day.”

Sixty-four cases had been confirmed in the United States. The day before, Trump had said during remarks in the Cabinet Room, “It’s going to disappear. One day—it’s like a miracle—it will disappear.”

To Parscale, the worry was jobs, not the influence the virus had on the stock market. “We never gained any votes from the stock market,” he said. “If the stock market affects jobs, then we lose. Votes are for jobs and personal incomes.”

Parscale stuck to his main worry. “The coronavirus. The thing you never see. The president kind of said this before: It’s a long hallway and every day I open new doors. And one day I’m going to open a door and there’s going to be a piece of dynamite behind it.”
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Re: Rage by Bob Woodard

Post by vnatale » Tue Sep 15, 2020 9:33 pm

Two days after giving a green light to a weekend movie and a workout at the gym, Fauci appeared on MSNBC on March 2 sounding subdued and wearing a white coat.

“We’re dealing with an evolving situation,” he said. The disease had “now reached outbreak proportions and likely pandemic proportions, if you look at multiple definitions of what a pandemic is. The fact is, this is multiple sustained transmissions of a highly infectious agent in multiple regions of the globe.”
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Re: Rage by Bob Woodard

Post by vnatale » Tue Sep 15, 2020 9:34 pm

On March 9, with the stock market reeling, Trump tweeted, “Last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that!”
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Re: Rage by Bob Woodard

Post by vnatale » Tue Sep 15, 2020 9:47 pm

The New York Times headline the morning of Tuesday, March 10: “Markets Spiral as Globe Shudders Over Virus.” The markets had plunged the day before. The Times wrote it was “their sharpest drop in more than a decade.”

In remarks to reporters following a meeting with Republican senators, Trump said, “We’re doing a great job with it. And it will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away.” Virus cases in the United States were up by more than 200 from the day before.
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Re: Rage by Bob Woodard

Post by vnatale » Tue Sep 15, 2020 9:51 pm

“This is the most aggressive and comprehensive effort to confront a foreign virus in modern history,” Trump said at 9:00 that evening. “From the beginning of time, nations and people have faced unforeseen challenges, including large-scale and very dangerous health threats,” Trump read. “This is the way it always was and always will be. It only matters how you respond.”

The president announced he was halting travelers from most European countries for the next 30 days.

“Last week, I signed into law an $8.3 billion funding bill,” he said. Several hundred times that would soon be required.

“The vast majority of Americans: The risk is very, very low,” Trump said. “Wash your hands, clean often-used surfaces, cover your face and mouth if you sneeze or cough, and most of all, if you are sick or not feeling well, stay home.” He made no mention of social distancing—staying six feet apart from others—and urged only those who were sick or not feeling well to stay at home.

“This is not a financial crisis, this is just a temporary moment of time,” he said reaching to calm the markets. “The virus will not have a chance against us.… Our future remains brighter than anyone can imagine.”

The speech received poor reviews. Trump seemed depleted on air, not in command of the material. He displayed none of the verve of the spontaneous, engaged true believer of his political rallies.

Peggy Noonan wrote the next day in The Wall Street Journal, “The president gave a major Oval Office address Wednesday night aimed at quelling fears; it was generally labeled ‘unsettling.’ ”

That day, March 11, marked the beginning of a new consciousness in the country. There were over 1,000 cases and 37 deaths in the country. Colleges across the U.S. announced they were suspending classes. The actor Tom Hanks said that he and his wife, Rita Wilson, had tested positive for Covid-19 and would quarantine.

More dominoes fell. The next day, the NCAA announced it was canceling basketball tournaments and suspending all remaining games for the season. Trump acknowledged he would likely have to cancel his upcoming rallies. Broadway theaters closed.

Testifying before Congress, Fauci said that testing for the virus was “failing. I mean, let’s admit it.” The distribution of faulty test kits had prevented officials and scientists from getting a clear picture of the number of infections in the crucial early days of the virus’s spread across the U.S. By the beginning of March, fewer than 500 tests had been conducted.

The Dow Jones fell 10 percent on March 12, prompting The New York Times banner headline: “WORST ROUT FOR WALL STREET SINCE 1987 CRASH.” A giant chart on the front page of The Wall Street Journal showed the surging growth in the Dow from the early days of Obama’s eight-year presidency and the first three years of Trump’s. Then it fell off the cliff, down 20 percent since 2009.
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Re: Rage by Bob Woodard

Post by Cortopassi » Tue Sep 15, 2020 9:51 pm

I wonder, Vinny, if you are breaking any copyright laws here! ::)
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