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d550e38
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the president was likely a fool and certainly a liar.
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Michael Wolff |
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d31393a
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was shady, shoot-from-the-hip, heedless or even unaware of the rules, deceptive, and in it for himself.
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Michael Wolff |
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fbc0311
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evoked
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Michael Wolff |
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14989cf
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In the world of Trump, anything that he deemed of value either accrued to him or had been robbed from him.
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Michael Wolff |
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04d1f9d
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Donald Trump produced on a daily basis an astonishing, can't-stop-following-it narrative.
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Michael Wolff |
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ac93cc4
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But Trump was a simple machine. Whitestone understood his singular interests--sports and girls--and learned they could be used as reliable distractions.
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Michael Wolff |
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87d7421
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He can't walk down steps ... can't walk down hills. [He's got] mental blocks ... [He] can't handle numbers ... they have no meaning to him.
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Michael Wolff |
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76e7945
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It was a badly kept secret in foreign policy circles that Mohammed bin Salman--MBS--had a cocaine problem and could disappear for days or longer on benders, or on long and frightening (at least for other passengers) trips on his yacht. He also spent hours every day planted in front of a screen playing video games. Like Trump, he was often described as a petulant child.
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Michael Wolff |
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e5286fe
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A twelve-year-old in a man's body, all he does is takedowns of people based on their physical appearance--short, fat, bald, whatever it is. There weren't producers who could say, Don't say that ... We would just send him through the doors and hit Record ... It's like being in the backseat of a car being driven by a really drunk driver ... holy shit. He was as incoherent then ... no more, no less ... as he is now, repeating thoughts and weir..
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Michael Wolff |
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c0ddf36
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crowded out most other voices on the subject of whatever new crisis was engulfing the Trump administration. These quotes functioned as something like a stage whisper that Trump could pretend he didn't hear. Trump, in fact, was always desperately seeking Bannon's advice,
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Michael Wolff |
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ae103d2
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Trump, one guest noted, always more salesman than politician, seemed to have the capacity to focus only on the good news.
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Michael Wolff |
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b83f6a8
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For the media, Cohen was a reliable leaker about Trump and the campaign. Among senior campaign aides, he was later regarded as a central voice in NBC correspondent Katy Tur's book about the campaign,
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Michael Wolff |
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9747b77
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He's supposed to be a fixer," said Trump about Cohen, "but he breaks a lot of stuff." All of Trump's people"
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Michael Wolff |
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6eaa0b2
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All mustaches annoyed Trump,
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Michael Wolff |
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e964120
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No national emergency, no solution, no offer, no progress. Trump was, for the entire nation to see, trapped.
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Michael Wolff |
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0e4a31d
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many around Trump were surprised to record an unexpected character note: he wasn't paranoid. He was self-pitying and melodramatic, but not on guard. Negativity and betrayal always startled him.
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Michael Wolff |
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cc852f6
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In a way, Robert Mueller had come to accept the dialectical premise of Donald Trump--that Trump is Trump. It was circular reasoning to hold the president's essential character against him. Put another way, confronted by Donald Trump, Bob Mueller threw up his hands. Surprisingly, he found himself in agreement with the greater White House: Donald Trump was the president, and, for better or for worse, what you saw was what you got--and what th..
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Michael Wolff |
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c483b87
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And then he delivered a scornful critique of Robert Mueller: "What an asshole." And there, perhaps, Trump had something of a point. If this was the result--a pass on conspiracy and equivocation on obstruction--how could you not have hastened it along, or, worse, how could you have fostered the exact opposite impression?"
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Michael Wolff |
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a67a719
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Pelosi, Bannon felt, saw the greater truth: the Trump administration would undo itself.
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Michael Wolff |
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968a769
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Kushner's analysis was the same as nearly everyone's who spent a significant amount of time around the president. He was childlike--a hyperactive child at that. There was no clear reason for why something caught his interest, nor was there any way to predict his reaction or modulate his response to it. He had no ability to distinguish the important from the less important. There seemed to be no such thing as objective reality.
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Michael Wolff |
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0404d56
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The issue was not that he might act precipitously and recklessly because he didn't understand the consequences of doing so. The issue was that he could not comprehend the actual choices that needed to be made in order to act; indeed, he could not even stay in the room long enough to decide on a course of action. For Trump, the fog of war would waylay him before the first command could be given.
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Michael Wolff |
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f6b4eb1
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A contemptuous Hannity, with grandiose ambitions of his own, insisted that this scenario was ludicrous. He would top the ticket, with Bannon, "if he's lucky," taking the second spot."
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Michael Wolff |
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c98a0b8
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estimated Hannity's net worth at $300 million to $400 million. From his earliest days as a big earner at the network, Hannity had invested in rental properties across the country. "He may own every shitty piece of real estate in America," said Ailes, fondly. Bannon, never one to miss the obvious joke, wondered, "How many illegals live in Hannity's rentals?"
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Michael Wolff |
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16d9ca3
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The two prosecutors also delved into the president's personal life. How often did he cheat on his wife? With whom? How were trysts arranged? What were the president's sexual interests?
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Michael Wolff |
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0d10ba9
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Not only is Trump not like other presidents, he is not like anyone most of us have ever known.
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Michael Wolff |
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76a542e
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Upon publication of Woodward's new book, it was immediately evident that one of his key sources was H. R. McMaster, the three-star general who had joined the Trump administration in February 2017 as national security advisor, replacing Michael Flynn.
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Michael Wolff |
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cb5d094
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Communication of this message required a coordinated effort. Each person's willingness to talk to Woodward was cross-checked against the willingness of several others to talk to him. This was part of Woodward's standard method of establishing a critical mass of inside sources: he created a kind of in-group, and this also suggested that if you failed to participate, you would not only lose your opportunity to be part of the in-group but lose..
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Michael Wolff |
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1d33c5d
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Being a Trump staffer had become an existential predicament: even if you wanted to get out, and almost all of them did, there was nowhere to go.
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Michael Wolff |
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faa2920
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I can't say, 'I want to put a Protestant on the Court for better representation.' No, you can't say that. But I should be able to. You should be able to have the main religion in this country represented on the Supreme Court.
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Michael Wolff |
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2783c27
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Still, Sean Hannity had 5.8 million viewers on the night of the Blasey Ford-Kavanaugh hearing. "That's a lot of fucking hobbits," said Bannon."
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Michael Wolff |
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942ab36
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In 1996, his second wife, Marla Maples, was caught one night with a Trump bodyguard on the beach near Mar-a-Lago under the lifeguard stand. This, Bannon was aware, had been a primal blow for Trump.
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Michael Wolff |
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587212e
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In front of the grand jury, prosecutors from the special counsel's office drilled down into the details of Trump's sexual behavior--where, how often, with whom, and of what nature. This was, speculated one witness who described Trump's "nefarious activities" in testimony, as much a way to bias the grand jury against Trump the lowlife as it was to help chart the relationships"
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Michael Wolff |
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c8a8525
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Bill Burck, for instance, represented Don McGahn, Steve Bannon, and Reince Priebus. As a consequence, all three men could communicate under the seal of their lawyer's privilege.
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Michael Wolff |
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6705f46
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There were too many members of the House. He couldn't remember their names. He launched into dramatic eye-rolling when told where they were from. "Flyovers," he said. "Men's shop salesmen."
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Michael Wolff |
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4bf9e73
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McConnell's contempt for Trump was boundless. He was not just the stupidest president McConnell had ever dealt with, he was the stupidest person McConnell had ever met in politics--and that was saying something. He and his wife, Elaine Chao, the secretary of transportation, regularly mocked and mimicked Trump, a set piece they would perform for friends.
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Michael Wolff |
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c78faea
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Nunberg was also a go-to, often astute, and always available source for almost every reporter covering Trump. Certainly Nunberg could be counted on to provide a confirmation of every negative story about Trump. When Trump criticized the media, he was in many instances criticizing Sam Nunberg.
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Michael Wolff |
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0015136
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On February 14, William P. Barr was sworn in as attorney general.
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Michael Wolff |
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ac473ae
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I think of Maggie Haberman"--the New York Times reporter covering Trump--"the way I think of my grandmother," said Nunberg. "I always go running to her."
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Michael Wolff |
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19c249e
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Whatever you could say by the spring of 2018 about the Trump White House, Jared had, for the most part, successfully navigated it--the only person, other than his wife, to have done so. And in the back channels of a world that he was counting on to play an essential role in securing his wealth, he had had a singular impact.
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Michael Wolff |
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cd7e4ed
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Most members of Mueller's staff were already planning their exits. The once collegial mood among the nineteen attorneys who had worked on the investigation had turned, at best, sullen. Two years of investigation and internal debate had reduced the special counsel's broad mandate to a prudent, carefully defined pair of issues.
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Michael Wolff |
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b0badce
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Weissmann had promised to see the investigation through to the end. But now, bitterly disappointed, he would tell friends, by how narrowly Mueller had come to focus the scope of the investigation, he wanted to stay not a moment longer.
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Michael Wolff |
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5c05bf0
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Pecker was often mocked by Trump as "Little Pecker," and his mustache was the target of derisive and obscene remarks. (Curiously, Pecker bore a resemblance to Trump's father, who also wore a mustache.)" --
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Michael Wolff |
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60880cb
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Crazy was a potent enemy against the establishment, but how to predict what a crazy man will do?
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Michael Wolff |
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d6367f4
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The fact that he had stayed out of jail showed, impressively for many, how easily the system could be played. Seen from this point of view, he really might be a genius.
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Michael Wolff |