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 obstru...
And that evening, the president traveled to West Virginia to deliver a speech before the Boy Scouts of America. Once more, his speech was totally at odds with time, place, and good sense. It prompted...
Among Trump’s first moves as president was to have a series of inspirational photographs in the West Wing replaced with images of big crowd scenes at his inaugural ceremony.
Trying to win without consideration, plan, or clear goals had, in the course of the administration’s first nine months, resulted in almost nothing but losses.
Better understand the rules: they worked for Donald Trump, not for the president of the United States.
The president did not truly listen to anybody. The more you talked, the less he listened.
The kids—Jared and Ivanka—exhibited an increasingly panicked sense that the FBI and DOJ were moving beyond Russian election interference and into family finances. Ivanka is terrified, said a satisfied...
The inside joke became—echoing Karl Rove as Bush’s brain and later Steve Bannon as Trump’s brain—that now it was Sean Hannity who had become Trump’s resident genius. Trump had ended up with someone ev...
The Best and the Brightest
Shortly after eight o’clock that evening, when the unexpected trend—Trump might actually win—seemed confirmed, Don Jr. told a friend that his father, or DJT, as he called him, looked as if he had seen...
On February 14, William P. Barr was sworn in as attorney general.
I was in Russia years ago with the Ms. Universe contest—did very very well—I tell everyone be careful, because you don’t want to see yourself on television—cameras all over the place. And again, not j...
I now understand what it is like to be in the court of the Tudors, reflected Bannon.
He’s a guy who really hated school, said Bannon. And he’s not going to start liking it now.
He is, and is pleased to let everybody know it, a winner-take-all businessman—the worst nightmare of sentimental, lefty intellectuals, which is exactly what so many of the Bancrofts have become.
He had no ability to plan and organize and pay attention and switch focus; he had never been able to tailor his behavior to what the goals at hand reasonably required.
Expertise was the last refuge of liberals, ever defeated by the big picture.
Even though Trump liked to portray his business as an empire, it was actually a discrete holding company and boutique enterprise,
And it was not only calls from friends worried about him, but staffers calling people to call him and say Simmer down. Who do you have in there? said Joe Scarborough in a frantic call. Who’s the perso...
Masher.