Quotes from Bob Woodward

He's 71. He's not going to admit he's wrong, ever.

Later, when Trump brought up the second speech to him, the staff secretary said, "I thought the second speech was the only good one of the three." "I don't want to talk to you," Trump responded. "Get away from me.

Trump had a way of appearing to strengthen his own hand by creating a situation, often risky, that did not previously exist.

Trump listens to you. He's always looking for adult supervision.

Trump had failed the President Lincoln test. He had not put a team of political rivals or competitors at the table, Priebus concluded. "He puts natural predators at the table," Priebus said later. "Not just rivals—predators.

Cohn realized again what he had said before to others about the president: "He's a professional liar.

In Bannon's evaluation, Trump was Archie Bunker, but a really focused Archie Bunker.

If you have natural predators at the table," Priebus said, "things don't move." So the White House was not leading on key issues like health care and tax reform. Foreign policy was not coherent and often contradictory. "Why?" asked Priebus. "Because when you put a snake and a rat and a falcon and a rabbit and a shark and a seal in a zoo without walls, things start getting nasty and bloody. That's what happens.

He talked about how tariffs risked roiling the markets and jeopardizing a lot of the stock market gains. He said the tariffs would be, in effect, a tax on American consumers. Tariffs would take away a lot of the good that Trump had done through tax and regulatory reform. You're the globalist, Trump said. I don't even care what you think anymore, Gary. Trump shooed him away. Cohn retreated to a couch.

Kelly said of the president, "He's an idiot. It's pointless to try to convince him of anything. He's gone off the rails. We're in crazytown.

If you want to do it now," Priebus continued, "Pence is prepared to step up, and Condi Rice will come in as his VP.

To have Trump answer them, of course, would be a catastrophe because Trump could erupt and say absolutely anything.

Instead the analysts debated whether Kim Jong Un was a brilliant, strategic genius manipulating other countries, including the U.S., or an inexperienced, impulsive fool.

Kelly said, "That was the greatest show of self-control I have ever seen. If that was me, I would have taken that resignation letter and shoved it up his ass six different times.

It's not what we did for the country," Cohn said. "It's what we saved him from doing.

Trump had no understanding of how government functioned. At times he would just start drafting orders himself or dictating. The basic tactic Porter had employed from the Priebus days until now was to stall and delay, mention the legal roadblocks and occasionally lift the drafts from the Resolute Desk.

I know I'm right," he said. "If you disagree with me, you're wrong.

During Trump's first six months in the White House, few understood how much media he consumed. It was scary. Trump didn't show up for work until 11:00 in the morning. Many times he watched six to eight hours of television in a day. Think what your brain would be like if you did that? Bannon asked. Bannon claimed he used to say to Trump, "Cut the fucking thing off.

Trump had gone bankrupt six times and seemed not to mind. Bankruptcy was just another business strategy. Walk away, threaten to blow up the deal. Real

Two thirds of the country thinks we're on the wrong track, and 75 percent of the country thinks we're in decline, he argued.

I bring rage out. I do bring rage out. I always have. I don't know if that's an asset or a liability, but whatever it is, I do." Presidential candidate Donald J. Trump in an interview with Bob Woodward and Robert Costa on March 31, 2016, at the Old Post Office Pavilion, Trump International Hotel, Washington, D.C.

You're running against the most joyless candidate in presidential history.

Russia had privately warned Mattis that if there was a war in the Baltics, Russia would not hesitate to use tactical nuclear weapons against NATO. Mattis, with agreement from Dunford, began saying that Russia was an existential threat to the United States.

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