Maybe Bob Woodward will be the first journalist to bring down two presidents. God knows times have changed. Nixon would have been long gone with only one twentieth or less of what we have all endured in the era of Trump. Here’s Maggie Haberman’s piece on excerpts from Woodward’s new book, “Rage.” Trump’s issues with the military are paramount. New York Times:
In the 2017 meeting, Mr. Woodward quoted Mr. Trump as telling Mr. Navarro that “my fucking generals are a bunch of pussies. They care more about their alliances than they do about trade deals.” […]
“Maybe at some point we’re going to have to stand up and speak out,” Mr. Mattis told Mr. Coats during a conversation in May 2019, according to the book, which goes on sale next week. “There may be a time when we have to take collective action.”
When Mr. Mattis quit after Mr. Trump wanted to withdraw troops fighting the Islamic State in the Middle East, according to Mr. Woodward the general reflected, “When I was basically directed to do something that I thought went beyond stupid to felony stupid, strategically jeopardizing our place in the world and everything else, that’s when I quit.”
And you’ll love this next bit. The last time I read prose like this, it was as a teeny bopper in Tiger Beat.
Mr. Trump provided Mr. Woodward with the details of letters between himself and the North Korean dictator, Kim Jong-un, in which the two men are fawning toward one another. Mr. Kim wrote in one letter that their relationship was like a “fantasy film.”
Describing their chemistry to Mr. Woodward, Mr. Trump said: “You meet a woman. In one second, you know whether or not it’s going to happen. It doesn’t take you 10 minutes and it doesn’t take you six weeks. It’s like, whoa. OK. You know? It takes somewhat less than a second.”
I feel like Beetlejuice, my head is doing 180s. The leader of the free world is telling a veteran journalist about his rapport with a tyrant who murders members of his own family for kicks and the naivete/unreality quotient in describing what is called a “man crush” or “bromance” is something that would horrify Dear Abby — unless it was coming from a twelve year old. But this is what is at the head of our government.
Read the whole piece. Trump thinks that the black people were doing just swell before coronavirus and Kushner called his father-in-law “the Cheshire cat.” You seriously can’t make this shit up.
Trump continues his task of making ‘The Onion’ irrelevant.
Another book I don’t need to read. I will see all I need to see of it on MSNBC or blogs.
Oh, I’m definitely reading this book!
None of this is surprising…..what is surprising, to me at least, is that 60 million “Americans” think he is doing a great job and want 4 more years of…..THIS.
*shakes head in disgust*
Eff ’em…they ain’t the majority and following the Mango Mussolini’s lead means a lot of them will not be here Election Day. We just gotta show up in bigger numbers.
All the brilliant scenes, like Sturgis and his rallies, 4th of July extravaganza should make this a war of attrition. The Darwin effect in action.
Bareshark, sad to think tRump’s actions and inactions are killing his own trusting voters. It’s a hell of a way lose an election! ?
I really wish I could feel as sad as you do, Meg. As it stands, I now have an excellent chance of outliving lifelong tormentors. Hard to get broken up about that.
not that many now.
Maybe Timothy Leary shouldn’t have stopped owlesy & friends from dumping a 50gallon drum of Lsd into the water supply for San Francisco. At this rate maybe some regular old hallucinogens may add some pretty patterns to this collective nightmare. Like a bad Sabbath act cuz Ozzy is too phucked up to walk.
That explains why he’s had sex with so many women besides his three wives. He can’t tell love from infatuation.
I think it has something to do with no one ever taking the time to explain to him what NO means.
*nods*
It’s such a piggish comment. How does he manage to be so gross in so few words? Because in this one statement he’s devalued women to nothing more than looks, and he’s also entitled himself to be the arbiter of whether “it happens.”
“I know a predator when I see one,” future VP Kamala Harris.
“It takes less than a second”. Isn’t that what Stormy said?
A number of things, I’m sure … Trump sees a body that trips his trigger and immediately becomes the drooling stalker/grabber … she knows his lofty claims as the, “BEST”, most powerful businessman “EVER”, and a very high view is only the one she has had like most people, NOT welcome into criminal Trump behind the scenes actions, so is on a faulty image of tRump’s REAL persona and is just another mark to Trump …
His own pleasures and sadistic needs means she will be forgotten as soon as he finishes playing out his fantasy formed in his mind, while scanning her body as the meat he considers her to be … he cannot love or care about anybody else, except his own daughter, so the young woman is on dangerous ground anyways near the bastard …
In the famous words of our buddy Mr. Schiff from CA … IT’S NOT OK, what Trump does, his International stupidity, his huge lies about the Trump Virus, his horrible treatment of children and their parents at the border, the fact that he worries more about his, “IMAGE”, and, “NUMBERS”, than about 200,000 and still counting, Moms and Pops, Grandmas and Grandpas, children over a whole range of ages …
THIS has to stop NOW, an intervention of charges with evidence and our outrage to keep him busy until election day, so he will be unable to serve as a, “PRETEND POTUS”, and do so much more damage and suspensions of actions under Congressional oversight/investigations …
Barr needs to be charged with obvious favors for Trump, doing work AS HIS personal lawyer, NOT OURS …
pj, he let’s the little head think for the big head!
Woodward’s tapes explain a lot. We now might understand why he was saying that New York is in play for him. I wondered, but I did not want to explicitly put such a thought out in the universe. I still don’t. It also explains his word salads. what do you say when you are trying to keep the public in the dark? And having Americans talking about bleach for weeks was a whole lot more useful to him that Americans talking about he knew and when he knew it.
That sounds suspiciously like you’re saying that he knew he was doing…HE DIDN’T. A smarter person would never have admitted ANY of this to ANYONE EVER. But ESPECIALLY not to one of the guys who brought down Nixon. Look no further than the blame tossing among his aides for letting this happen if you want proof.
DJT’s limited intelligence is defined by his outlandish specifications for his 4th extravaganza, his desire at any drop of the hat for columns of marching troops, tanks and missile carriers like his idols Putin and hard to believe the perfect murderer/butcher in North Korea, his fawning around these freaks is, at once nauseating, and extremely dangerous, his excited relationship with Russian agents in the Oval office, could not wait to tell them top secret info about another countries intelligence agents … I’m pretty sure his stupid has cost the lives of Seal members, who were sent into ambush attacks … only the highest level of war room members would know the details of the raid and could just pick up the phone and call Putin …
How was it, we rained all those beautiful missile’s down on Syria and all Putin’s gas cylinders/jet delivery systems were moved out of range?
Why has that question gone unanswered?
Someone HAS found a way to pull his stupid down after these incidents, but keeping the braggart quiet must be a draconian effort, you are right, BARESHARK he’s too stupid to see ahead of the next 30 seconds.
I bet money tRump doesn’t even realize who Bob Woodward is and what he did to bring down Nixon. A friend of mine is a cold case detective and he has told me he sometimes needs to pretend he is friends with some suspected serial rapists or murderers before he can get them to spill stuff. It almost sounds like that’s what Woodward did with tRump.
Jonathan Lemire says that Trump resented Woodward’s first book about his administration, so he wanted to make sure he could shape the second book with his direct input to be a more flattering portrayal.
Hindsight changes perspective. Back on February 7, he was not admitting much. We all knew it was deadlier than the seasonal flu. I was having arguments about it at the time in the Federalist where Trump supporters called me a fearmonger. Trump may have been encouraged in his approach by the linear graph of cases and deaths which were nearly horizontal for the next couple months after his comments.
I am not saying he knows what he is doing. I am saying that he likes to try to take advantage of situations and use them to his own purposes. As you have repeatedly pointed out, he usually fails. But he and his minions have been successful often enough that many Americans consider the stakes in this election to be no less than the soul of America. The Lincoln Project’s most oft used closing line is “Trump or America?”
Hard to define what Trump has done as success on any level, his included. In the end, no one has or will benefit.
I am not saying anyone will benefit. For example, Trump has been extraordinarily successful at contributing to the divisiveness in america which benefits no one.
Sure he would. Because he is a narcissist, he believes that everything he does and says is perfect and he was just so thrilled to sit down with Woodward in person and tell him in person everything he has done so those nasty rumormongers wouldn’t talk to Woodward behind his back.
HE THINKS HE IS RIGHT. ALWAYS. He does not see this as “admitting” anything.
Someone needs to explain why Trump did these interviews. It seems like a replay of Nixon’s tapes, which were politically suicidal. Did Woodward cast a spell over him, or is it vanity, or stupidity, or all three?
As Ursula has said, if you wrote a script about all this, producers would laugh in your face and say, “Preposterous!”
Yes why did Trump let Woodward tape him. He thinks his Russian friend will come through again. His KGB buddy and that smarmy moronic Tea Bagger DSI are working overtime to completely destroy democracy.
EGO. That’s the answer to your question. Pure, 200 Proof ego. Trump knew Woodward’s reputation for getting people including Presidents to talk, and reveal unflattering and even politically damaging stuff. However Trump’ ego was such that he was convinced HE could charm Woodward and succeed where everyone else had failed.
Flattery is Trump’s kryptonite and if Woodward isn’t as open about how he does it with subjects he writes about he possesses a particular talent for engaging with people he interviews that causes the subjects/victims to think Woodward truly understands them and whatever case they are trying to make. It’s no secret that Trump is susceptible to flattery, and Woodward’s ability to form a rapport with Trump was a subtle form of flattery that Trump couldn’t resist. So Trump opened up. Listening to some of those audio clips it’s apparent. Once he got Trump talking, despite surely wanting to throw up sometimes Woodward kept making comments that caused Trump to think Woodward often agreed with him – and it was off to the races.
For the record, I think Woodward has plenty of blood on his own hands for sitting on this for so long. By May it was evident how out of control the pandemic had become in this country. How other countries were handling it vs how we were and how other countries were starting to get the problem down to a manageable level and even in some cases already start gaining control. Trump was doing EVERYTHING wrong and as we no know Woodward knew for months at that point that Trump knew damn well what he should have been doing and not only was refusing to do it but would continue. Memorial Day weekend happened and particularly in Trump states a bad situation EXPLODED. And Woodward remained silent, even with July 4 looming on the calendar! That holiday led to yet another round of super spreader activity including that ghastly spectacle from Mt. Rushmore, and Trump’s insistence on an RNC that would allow tens of thousands of supporters several days packed in an enclosed space. And STILL Woodward remained silent. Even with Labor Day weekend looming on the calendar.
The asshole wanted to maximize the impact of his fucking book by timing it to the traditional final push of the Presidential campaign so only AFTER it was too late to give the public the warning they should have gotten months earlier did he start shopping his tapes. To hype his fucking BOOK. Trump lied again and again. In his own way, with his silence so did Woodward.
Yeah, I have a problem with that theory on Woodward, Denis. Like so many such theories in the era of Trump, it makes a lot of assumptions that get contradicted by the clinical evidence. Do you think for ONE second that Woodward speaking out would have stopped ONE COVID-19 casualty that Trump let happen? Trump would still be denying its lethal potential, his followers would still be spreading it and every super spreader event that has happened would STILL happen.
Here’s what I think Woodward’s calculation was: use that information when it would do the most good in taking down Trump, which was now. And as ugly and as cold that logic is, it was also likely the right call. Until Trump is gone, NONE of this gets better.
Woodward said that at the time, he wasn’t sure he could believe Trump, especially since his public statements at the same time were different. In the tape, when Trump said, “To be honest,…” Woodward said, “Yes, I want you to be.” He seemed unsure even then whether to believe Trump.
Maybe soon Woodward will provide more clarification.
Can’t embed this in blue, so just go to youtube and type it in. Listen for the seven minutes it takes Beau of the Fifth Column to explain why and how this is not nor could/should it be Woodward’s fault. See how you feel after you listen to a reasoned assessment.
Remember that Trump believes in lots of things that are just not true, Blue. Nothing he’s done since he’s got in has worked out yet.
He’s a narcissist, and it’s always all about him. Being interviewed by a famous reporter? it’s what he deserves, in his teeny brain.
Roger, see my comment above!
I think maybe the worst thing about the North Korea letters is how OBVIOUS that every word is a government op…their intel service clearly decided that all they had to do to change the course of foreign policy was to drop in a hackneyed reference to Trump being “a star.” Pathetic.
“God knows times have changed. Nixon would have been long gone with only one twentieth or less of what we have all endured in the era of Trump.”
Well, if we had a Congress controlled by the Democrats (as during the Nixon years) and if we had Republican members of Congress who weren’t afraid of being bad-mouthed by a “Republican” White House occupant (again, as during the Nixon years), Trump would’ve been gone by Jan 20, 2018.
Unfortunately, we couldn’t swing Congress to the Democrats in 2016; we had to wait till 2018 just to get the House but still couldn’t get the Senate. So, we’ve been forced to endure the past 3 years of “Nightmare on Pennsylvania Avenue” only with a far less charismatic and charming villain. (Trump could only WISH to have Freddy Krueger’s charm and appeal. I mean, when Krueger killed his victims, you could be assured of a witty comment. Hell, Krueger would’ve literally had you spilling your guts as he said “covfefe” rather than making you want to cover your ears to make sure your brain wasn’t spilling out.)
A malignant narcissist has the ability to destroy communities and countries. Whallah – here we are.
Voila!, indeed.
bradlady, and the malignant narcissist enjoys ever bit of chaos they create!
I pre-ordered Woodward’s book but just reading excerpts, I’m ready to frow up!
http://www.paytv3.com
I just ordered Peter Strzok’s new book, Compromised: Counterintelligence and the Threat of Donald J. Trump. Made the decision to put my money in this guy’s pocket–he endured a ton of shit, none of it deserved, lost his career and probably looks over his shoulder even when he is only headed into the grocery store. I like Woodward and his work, even put him on the air when I was producing local TV in Washington, DC. He’s a nice guy. A tad too arrogant but maybe I’d be arrogant too if I had pulled off so many spot-on books on politics. But I just figured there are only so many bucks to go around and Strzok deserved them maybe a bit more. Let everyone know after I read it whether I made a good choice. This whole counterintel deal fascinates me–this is where we are in danger all the damned time with the traitor in the WH–on intel issues.