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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 211342c | While he wanted a job with the Trump administration, the Mooch specifically wanted one of the jobs that would give him a tax break on the sale of his business. A federal program provides for deferred payment of capital gains in the event of a sale of property to meet ethical requirements. Scaramucci needed a job that would get him a "certificate of divestiture," which is what an envious Scaramucci knew Gary Cohn had received for the sale of.. | Michael Wolff | ||
| 3dadf9d | The president fundamentally wants to be liked" was Katie Walsh's analysis. "He just fundamentally needs to be liked so badly that it's always ... everything is a struggle for him." This translated into a constant need to win something--anything. Equally important, it was essential that he look like a winner. Of course, trying to win without consideration, plan, or clear goals had, in the course of the administration's first nine months, res.. | Michael Wolff | ||
| b202a50 | Melania sometimes spoke Slovenian with Barron, particularly when her parents were around--and they were frequently around--infuriating Trump and causing him to bolt from any room they were in. | Michael Wolff | ||
| b5b12bb | The fundamental premise of nearly everybody who joined the Trump White House was, This can work. We can help make this work. Now, only three-quarters of the way through just the first year of Trump's term, there was literally not one member of the senior staff who could any longer be confident of that premise. Arguably--and on many days indubitably--most members of the senior staff believed that the sole upside of being part of the Trump Wh.. | Michael Wolff | ||
| 58f9295 | Trump could bring Trumpism down... | trump trumpism white-house | Michael Wolff | |
| d41aac9 | But the point really was that Trump had wanted to confront and humiliate the FBI director. Cruelty was a Trump attribute. | Michael Wolff | ||
| a84cada | Hyper-by-the-book Rod Rosenstein--heretofore the quintessential apolitical player--immediately became, in Washington eyes, a hopeless Trump tool. But Rosenstein's revenge was deft, swift, overwhelming, and (of course) by the book. | Michael Wolff | ||
| 71d8bc0 | Of the many Trump gashes in modern major-power governing, you could certainly drive a Trojan horse through his lack of foreign policy particulars and relationships. | politics trump white-house | Michael Wolff | |
| ca64a49 | Why? You've already done enough for him. You're the best piece of tail he'll ever have," sending Hicks running from the room." | Michael Wolff | ||
| 2300bbb | Hicks, sponsored by Ivanka and ever loyal to her, was in fact thought of as Trump's real daughter, while Ivanka was thought of as his real wife. | Michael Wolff | ||
| 9d94728 | this was not a problem to address, this was a person to focus on: | Michael Wolff | ||
| db2fec2 | Most especially, he was miserable because of Donald Trump, whose cruelties, always great even when they were casual, were unbearable when he truly turned against you. | Michael Wolff | ||
| fa4a260 | yet discover the charm and wisdom of Donald Trump. Where past presidents might have spent portions of their day talking about the needs, desires, and points of leverage among various members of Congress, the president and Hicks spent a great deal of time talking about a fixed cast of media personalities, trying to second-guess the real agendas and weak spots among cable anchors and producers and Times and Post reporters. | Michael Wolff | ||
| 3ec56f4 | they were unable to hire a law firm with a top-notch white-collar government practice. By the time Bannon and Priebus were back in Washington, three blue-chip firms had said no. All of them were afraid they would face a rebellion among the younger staff if they represented Trump, afraid Trump would publicly humiliate them if the going got tough, and afraid Trump would stiff them for the bill. In the end, nine top firms turned them down. | Michael Wolff | ||
| e247e12 | All news was to some extent fake--he understood that very well, because he himself had faked it so many times in his career. This was why he had so naturally cottoned to the "fake news" label. "I've made stuff up forever, and they always print it," he bragged." | Michael Wolff | ||
| 4e9779b | As always, Trump's regard or scorn was infectious. If you were in favor, then whatever and whomever he associated with you was also in favor. If you weren't, then everything associated with you was poisonous. | Michael Wolff | ||
| 0afeec6 | he had no interest in personnel problems, since they put the emphasis on other people. | Michael Wolff | ||
| 4c94cc4 | The New York real estate deals were dirty, the Atlantic City ventures were dirty, the Trump airline was dirty, Mar-a-Lago, the golf courses, and the hotels all dirty. No reasonable candidate could have survived a recounting of even one of these deals. But somehow a genial amount of corruption had been figured into the Trump candidacy- that, after all, was the platform he was running on. I'll do for you what a tough businessman does for hims.. | trump | Michael Wolff | |
| d550e38 | the president was likely a fool and certainly a liar. | Michael Wolff | ||
| d31393a | was shady, shoot-from-the-hip, heedless or even unaware of the rules, deceptive, and in it for himself. | Michael Wolff | ||
| fbc0311 | evoked | Michael Wolff | ||
| 14989cf | In the world of Trump, anything that he deemed of value either accrued to him or had been robbed from him. | Michael Wolff | ||
| 04d1f9d | Donald Trump produced on a daily basis an astonishing, can't-stop-following-it narrative. | Michael Wolff | ||
| ac93cc4 | But Trump was a simple machine. Whitestone understood his singular interests--sports and girls--and learned they could be used as reliable distractions. | Michael Wolff | ||
| 87d7421 | 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. | Michael Wolff | ||
| 76e7945 | 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. | Michael Wolff | ||
| e5286fe | 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.. | Michael Wolff | ||
| c0ddf36 | 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, | Michael Wolff | ||
| ae103d2 | Trump, one guest noted, always more salesman than politician, seemed to have the capacity to focus only on the good news. | Michael Wolff | ||
| b83f6a8 | 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, | Michael Wolff | ||
| 9747b77 | He's supposed to be a fixer," said Trump about Cohen, "but he breaks a lot of stuff." All of Trump's people" | Michael Wolff | ||
| 6eaa0b2 | All mustaches annoyed Trump, | Michael Wolff | ||
| e964120 | No national emergency, no solution, no offer, no progress. Trump was, for the entire nation to see, trapped. | Michael Wolff | ||
| 0e4a31d | 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. | Michael Wolff | ||
| cc852f6 | 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.. | Michael Wolff | ||
| c483b87 | 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?" | Michael Wolff | ||
| a67a719 | Pelosi, Bannon felt, saw the greater truth: the Trump administration would undo itself. | Michael Wolff | ||
| 968a769 | 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. | Michael Wolff | ||
| 0404d56 | 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. | Michael Wolff | ||
| f6b4eb1 | 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." | Michael Wolff | ||
| c98a0b8 | 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?" | Michael Wolff | ||
| 16d9ca3 | 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? | Michael Wolff | ||
| 0d10ba9 | Not only is Trump not like other presidents, he is not like anyone most of us have ever known. | Michael Wolff | ||
| 76a542e | 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. | Michael Wolff |