Frank Schwartz knows Trump far more intimately than almost anyone writing about him-- and he detests him. It's always worthwhile hearing what he has to say about the orange-hued baboon. But while Schwartz was on CNN, Bob Woodward, of Fear fame, was doing his first TV interview since the book came out with CBS News' David Martin. It's impossible to imagine you're following the Trump saga without watching it. "You look at the operation of this White House," said Woodward, who has looked at the operation of many White Houses, "and you have to say, 'Let's hope to God we don't have a crisis.' People who work for him are worried ... that he will sign things or give orders that threaten the national security or the financial security of the country or the world."Martin asked Woodward how White House staffers, like Gary Cohn and Rob Porter were able to steal documents dangerous to the country off the chimp's desk and get away with it. "He doesn't remember," said Woodward, describing a senile old coot. "If it's not on his desk, if it's not immediately available for action, it goes away... In the eight others," he said, referring to the 9 White Houses he's written about, "I never heard of people on the staff in the White House engaging in that kind of extreme action"-- basically unelected officials intentionally thwarting the actions of the elected president (albeit for the sake of the country)... but still exactly the opposite of what White House aides are hired to do.The boastful asshole, hoping Mattis' military service would somehow rub off on him, bragged at one of his deranged rallies that "We are going to appoint 'Mad Dog' Mattis as our Secretary of Defense. "The president surrounded himself with generals-- active duty and retired-- all of whom had served in Afghanistan. But before he decided on a new Afghan strategy, he insisted on meeting with enlisted men who had served there as well... In a meeting the next day, he lashed out at the generals: "I don't care about you guys," he said to Mattis, Joint Chiefs Chairman General Joseph Dunford, and then-National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster. Woodward: "'The soldiers on the ground could run things much better than you,' he says to Mattis and Dunford, and there is a 25-minute dressing down of the generals and senior officials." Sir Bone-spurs (AKA, the king of genital warts and veneral disease) has persuaded himself he's the toughest guy in the room-- any room, every room. America may be; he's not anything more than a transparent coward and bully, a terrible-- and very dangerous-- combination.
When Economic Adviser Gary Cohn was upset over the president's reluctance to condemn white supremacists for the violence in Charlottesville he went into the Oval Office to resign. According to Woodward, "Trump said, 'You can't resign. I need you to do tax reform.' He said, 'If you leave, this is treason.' And Trump talked him out of resigning."Afterwards, Chief of Staff John Kelly, who had been in the room, pulled him aside: "Cohn wrote this down, 'quote from General Kelly: If that was me I would have taken that resignation letter and shoved it up his ass six different times.'"...Woodward quotes harsh criticism of the president from some of his closest advisers. Chief of Staff Kelly called his boss an "idiot." Secretary of Defense Mattis said the commander-in-chief acted like, and had the understanding of, "a fifth- or sixth-grader."Both men have denied saying such things. And the president continues to denounce the book at every turn. At a rally Friday night Mr. Trump said, "These guys that write books and they put phony quotes out all over them-- totally phony quotes. I mean, totally, like, fraudulent books. They're, like, fraudulent books!""He says the quotes are just not the way he speaks and the quotes are fabricated. What do you say to that?""He's wrong, and my reporting is meticulous and careful."In a second interview with CBS' Sunday Morning, Woodward said he had multiple sources for every claim in the book: "Multiple interviews with key witnesses. One person I interviewed nine times, and the transcripts of those conversations are 700 or 800 pages.""700-800 pages for one person?""Yes, sir.""How many people did you interview?""Over a hundred. I would say that maybe half of those are key people."The theme of Woodward's book-- that aides fear what the president might do if allowed to follow his impulses-- received an unusual confirmation last week, when the New York Times published this anonymous article written by a person described as "a senior official in the Trump administration." "I work for the president, but like-minded colleagues and I have vowed to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.""I have no idea who it is. It's very important, who it is. It's very important whether this is somebody who witnessed and participated. And quite frankly, if there was a person in the White House or the administration who wanted to tell me what's in that op-ed piece, I would say, 'Okay, name me who was there. What is the specific incident?' As you know, from having read my book, the dates and times and participants. I wouldn't have used it.""Too vague?""Well, too vague, and does not meet the standards of trying to describe specific incidents. Specific incidents are the building blocks of journalism, as you well know."Fear: Trump in the White House is Woodward's 19th book, and he says reporting it took him deeper inside a working White House than he's ever been before."This one was in the belly of the beast.""And what did you conclude about the beast?" "That people better wake up to what's going on."