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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| e030c53 | Jared Kushner in quite a short period of time--rather less than a year--had crossed over from the standard Democratic view in which he was raised, to an acolyte of Trumpism, bewildering many friends and, as well, his own brother, whose insurance company, Oscar, funded with Kushner-family money, was destined to be shattered by a repeal of Obamacare. | Michael Wolff | ||
| 2df9af6 | Lewandowski and Hope Hicks, the PR aide put on the campaign by Ivanka Trump, had an affair that ended in a public fight on the street-- | Michael Wolff | ||
| b58d6d5 | In 2014, when he first seriously began to consider running for president, Melania was one of the few who thought it was possible he could win. It was a punch line for his daughter, Ivanka, who had carefully distanced herself from the campaign. With a never-too-hidden distaste for her stepmother, Ivanka would say to friends: All you have to know about Melania is that she thinks if he runs he'll certainly win. | Michael Wolff | ||
| d92cac7 | transmogrification | Michael Wolff | ||
| 288b23d | In business meetings, observers would be nonplussed that Charlie and Jared Kushner invariably greeted each other with a kiss and that the adult Jared called his father Daddy. | Michael Wolff | ||
| 75f777c | David Halberstam's The Best and the Brightest. | Michael Wolff | ||
| 2bfa745 | The Tea Party movement, with Trump as its remarkable face and voice, had come to power--something like total power. It owned the Republican Party. Publicly breaking Paul Ryan was the obvious and necessary step. | Michael Wolff | ||
| bf81d95 | Trump liked to say that one of the things that made life worth living was getting your friends' wives into bed. In pursuing a friend's wife, he would try to persuade the wife that her husband was perhaps not what she thought. Then he'd have his secretary ask the friend into his office; once the friend arrived, Trump would engage in what was, for him, more or less constant sexual banter. Do you still like having sex with your wife? How often.. | Michael Wolff | ||
| 67dac31 | based on conversations that took place over a period of eighteen months with the president, | Michael Wolff | ||
| 7522dac | The first couple of times when I went to the White House, someone had to say, This is Mick Mulvaney, he's the budget director," said Mulvaney. And in Mulvaney's telling Trump was too scattershot to ever be of much help, tending to interrupt planning with random questions that seem to have come from someone's recent lobbying or by some burst of free association." | Michael Wolff | ||
| 0d663c3 | But another likely leak source about his angst in the White House was Trump himself. In his calls throughout the day and at night from his bed, he frequently spoke to people who had no reason to keep his confidences. | Michael Wolff | ||
| 9eea737 | As for the looming defeat itself, she shrugged it off: it was Reince Priebus's fault, not hers. | Michael Wolff | ||
| 61c2f7c | Not only did Trump disregard the potential conflicts of his business deals and real estate holdings, he audaciously refused to release his tax returns. Why should he if he wasn't going to win? What's more, Trump refused to spend any time considering, however hypothetically, transition matters, saying it was "bad luck"--but really meaning it was a waste of time. Nor would he even remotely contemplate the issue of his holdings and conflicts. .. | Michael Wolff | ||
| 204041d | he had never been able to tailor his behavior to what the goals at hand reasonably required. | Michael Wolff | ||
| 225f080 | He knew where this Russia stuff was coming from, and if these Obama people thought they were going to get away with it they had another think coming. He would expose them all! | Michael Wolff | ||
| 0aca889 | The Best and the Brightest. (One of the | Michael Wolff | ||
| 8763ea6 | Trump was impetuous and yet did not like to make decisions, at least not ones that seemed to corner him into having to analyze a problem. | Michael Wolff | ||
| 57abcf2 | Men who demand the most loyalty tend to be the least loyal pricks, | Michael Wolff | ||
| bb546f1 | But from the start it also was apparent that the Trump administration could just as easily turn into a country club Republican or a Wall Street Democrat regime. Or just a constant effort to keep Donald Trump happy. | Michael Wolff | ||
| c71daa4 | Trump, the unserious candidate, had, however incomprehensibly, become a more or less serious one. And somehow, because of his prior unseriousness, and his what-you-see-is-what-you-get nature, the braggart businessman, with his bankruptcies, casinos, and beauty pageants, had avoided serious vetting. | Michael Wolff | ||
| 81b9c3c | the organizational premise of the Trump White House: the family would always prevail. | Michael Wolff | ||
| dc65ca0 | Trump quite profoundly seemed unable to distinguish between his political advantage and his personal needs--he thought emotionally, not strategically. | Michael Wolff | ||
| 83b6540 | I just fired the head of the FBI. He was crazy, a real nut job. I faced great pressure because of Russia. That's taken off. | Michael Wolff | ||
| 5925e03 | kibosh | Michael Wolff | ||
| 3cb7377 | But if Halberstam defined the presidential mien, Trump defied it--and defiled it. Not a single attribute would place him credibly in the revered circle of American presidential character and power. | Michael Wolff | ||
| 0e411e2 | Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the Egyptian strongman, ably stroked the president and said, "You are a unique personality that is capable of doing the impossible." (To Sisi, Trump replied, "Love your shoes. Boy, those shoes. Man....")" | Michael Wolff | ||
| d47843d | Few innovations have been as unclear in what they would become and what they could offer and yet been greeted with as much certainty and enthusiasm as digital media. | Michael Wolff | ||
| 49acfba | Steve wants to force a million people out of the country and repeal the nation's health law and lay on a bunch of tariffs that will completely decimate how we trade, | Michael Wolff | ||
| 9a23433 | The White House, realized former naval officer Steve Bannon after a few weeks, was really a military base, a government-issue office with a mansion's facade and a few ceremonial rooms sitting on top of a secure installation under military command. | Michael Wolff | ||
| 176e0af | You might attach many superlatives to Vice--it may be the hottest, savviest, coolest, richest, Brooklyn-est new media company on the block (Vice, according to Smith, is now the biggest employer in Williamsburg, the epicenter of Brooklyn-ness), but one peerless thing it does not necessarily have is a super-size audience. Vice makes a torrent of YouTube videos but most, according to YouTube stats, have only a limited viewership. The New York .. | Michael Wolff | ||
| 92e2257 | Trump, trying to move in on his friend's date, urged a stop in Atlantic City. He would provide a tour of his casino. His friend assured the model that there was nothing to recommend Atlantic City. It was a place overrun by white trash. "What is this 'white trash'?" asked the model. "They're people just like me," said Trump, "only they're poor." | Michael Wolff | ||
| ab98a9e | few in the thin ranks of Trump's inner circle, with their overnight responsibility for assembling a government, had almost any relevant experience. Nobody had a political background. Nobody had a policy background. Nobody had a legislative background. | Michael Wolff | ||
| 4d81029 | So frustrating that they just want to get the deal done--get their fee and get out. If the client won't acknowledge the rituals in a highly ritualized situation...if people don't listen, if they can't listen no matter how you explain...well, fuck it. | Michael Wolff | ||
| dbecf28 | If I told Trump that, he might have the job. | Michael Wolff | ||
| 0af4b77 | From the Bannon side, Pence garnered only contempt. "Pence is like the husband in Ozzie and Harriet, a nonevent," said one Bannonite. Although many saw him as a vice president who might well assume the presidency someday, he was also perceived as the weakest vice president in decades and, in organizational terms, an empty suit who was useless in the daily effort to help restrain the president and stabilize the West Wing." | Michael Wolff | ||
| 930a6bd | During that first month, Walsh's disbelief and even fear about what was happening in the White House moved her to think about quitting. Every day after that became its own countdown toward the moment she knew she wouldn't be able to take it anymore--which would finally come at the end of March. To Walsh, the proud political pro, the chaos, the rivalries, and the president's own lack of focus and lack of concern were simply incomprehensible... | Michael Wolff | ||
| ae1bcdc | He wasn't going to win! Or losing was winning. | Michael Wolff | ||
| 041de18 | If you fuck with the intel community they will figure out a way to get back at you and you'll have two or three years of a Russian investigation, and every day something else will leak out. | Michael Wolff | ||
| e4c2d87 | That was almost his appeal: he was what he was. Twinkle in his eye, larceny in his soul. | Michael Wolff | ||
| cf4a66f | Trade it out so in the end everyone got something, and the better dealmaker got a little more. | Michael Wolff | ||
| eba3ab5 | Trump was, for Bannon, a modern-day William Jennings Bryan. | Michael Wolff | ||
| 1c5fd2e | It was, said Walsh, "like trying to figure out what a child wants." | Michael Wolff | ||
| 1ad6e84 | As it happened, Conway meant to say "alternative information," which at least would imply there might be additional data." | Michael Wolff | ||
| 14ad861 | Here was, arguably, the central issue of the Trump presidency, informing every aspect of Trumpian policy and leadership: he didn't process information in any conventional sense--or, in a way, he didn't process it at all. Trump didn't read. He didn't really even skim. If it was print, it might as well not exist. Some believed that for all practical purposes he was no more than semiliterate. (There was some argument about this, because he cou.. | Michael Wolff |