Quotes from Bob Woodward

Graham made a dramatic proposal to Kelly and McMaster. "China needs to kill him and replace him with a North Korean general they control," Graham said. China had at least enough control so the North would not attack. "I think the Chinese are clearly the key here and they need to take him out. Not us, them.

interfere in the U.S. election

Don't let anybody tell you how great they are. It's all bullshit.

When he walked into the Oval Office, Trump was sitting behind the Resolute Desk. He jumped up, moved swiftly toward Graham, and gave him a big hug. "We've got to be friends," Trump said. "You're going to be my friend.

amounting to a collapse of the Afghan state in months to years.

The CIA never figured out conclusively who wrote and crafted Kim's letters to Trump. They were masterpieces. The analysts marveled at the skill someone brought to finding the exact mixture of flattery while appealing to Trump's sense of grandiosity and being center stage in history.

Another strategy was to delay, procrastinate, cite legal restrictions. Lawyer Porter said, "But slow-walking things or not taking things up to him, or telling him—rightly, not just as an excuse—but this needs to be vetted, or we need to do more process on this, or we don't have legal counsel clearance—that happened 10 times more frequently than taking papers from his desk. It felt like we were walking along the edge of the cliff perpetually.

an adversary was the most dangerous when they were frightened and believed they might be attacked.

I hung up, feeling distressed. Trump never did seem willing to fully mobilize the federal government and continually seemed to push problems off on the states. There was no real management theory of the case or how to organize a massive enterprise to deal with one of the most complex emergencies the United States had ever faced. Beyond being a reporter, I was worried for the country.

The president left. Among the principals there was exasperation with these questions. Why are we having to do this constantly? When is he going to learn? They couldn't believe they were having these conversations and had to justify their reasoning. Mattis was particularly exasperated and alarmed, telling close associates that the president acted like—and had the understanding of—"a fifth or sixth grader.

Lindsey Graham was furious with both Biden and Trump, given the final decision to withdraw all U.S. forces from Afghanistan. He believed both did not recognize the full consequences.

The chairman is not in the chain of command.

Radical Islam cannot be accommodated. It cannot be appeased.

Great ideas that are conceived and not sold are like babies that are stillborn. We need some deliveries within the next few months, even if they have to be cesarian. I will approve any programs you have to bring about those deliveries," and he added with a touch of humor, "provided of course you recognize my total opposition to any abortions." Signed, THE PRESIDENT.

Trump said. The United States should be getting oil. The generals aren't sufficiently focused on getting or making money. They don't understand what our objectives should be and they have the United States engaged in all the wrong ways.

Cohn offered one more argument against steel tariffs. We're not a steel-producing nation. We're a good-producing nation. If we increase the price of steel, out goods become overprices and we can't compete

realized," Bannon said later, "I'm the director, he's the actor.

You lost a close election," Graham

He was a great—so I understand that stuff. You know, genetically.

in to his office, no good luck, Alex

Well," Trump asked, "how does this end?" "It never ends," Graham said. "It's good versus evil. Good versus evil never ends. It's just like the Nazis. It's now radical Islam. It will be something else one day.

But China has gone too far in the South China Sea with the island building." For years, the Chinese had been building military bases on the islands. They had vastly expanded their footprint by dumping sand and muck dredged from the ocean on top of the rock and reef formations, building man-made islands in order to set up more bases with an alarming array of military installations in the highly valuable international trade passage that threatened the U.S. Navy's Pacific domination.

Graham said, I can get an affidavit tomorrow saying the world is flat.

It was difficult to understand how China had aggressive travel restrictions within China, and yet did not move to any travel restrictions" for people who wanted to leave China and go abroad, Redfield said. "If there could have been one major, global action that could've really saved hundreds of thousands of lives, it's if they had just shut down their out-of-China travel at the same time they shut down their intra-China travel.