Quotes from Maggie Haberman

Elsewhere, Meadows turned intransigence into a matter of principle; upon refusing Biden's team access to a specialized computer system necessary to begin work planning the next president's budget, Meadows said, "You just can't expect us to endorse your spending plans.

He complained to me on one of our rides to school that there were too many Italian and Irish students at Fordham

In later years, bathrooms in the residence were stocked with Trump-branded toiletries; staff repeatedly stopped him when he tried to press cash into the hands of military aides serving as valets.

But then Trump would wait out the controversy and bounce back. It was a phenomenon completely antithetical to anything observed before in modern political history, entirely because voters either did not judge Trump as a politician or because they felt unusually bonded to him from his time as a celebrity businessman.

Clinton grew up working-class, and had spent a lifetime in public service and government generally accepting the frameworks of those systems. Trump, the son of a wealthy man, showed no interest in them. And he had no compunction about being seen as using the government as if it were an extension of himself.

Efforts to keep meetings productive usually required limiting attendance to a compact group. Anything above a handful of people inspired Trump to play to the room; a smaller number left a chance that work would get done.

Ultimately, thousands of children were separated from adults in the span of a month between May and June, typically one of the higher months for border crossings. Hundreds would remain separated from their parents for years, incurring incalculable psychological damage.

Earlier that day, former president George W. Bush, who had remained largely silent during Trump's presidency, condemned domestic "extremism" and the "malign forces" in the country. "So much of our politics has become a naked appeal to anger, fear and resentment," he said in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, near where one of four hijacked planes had crashed into a field on September 11. He never mentioned Trump directly.

Trump seemed to have learned a lesson from his travails: his personal brand mattered more than what was on his balance sheet, the projection of strength and success was more significant than any actual fact set underneath.

It was as clear a guiding ethos for his life as Trump seemed to have: hate should be a civic good.

Trump is to business what professional wrestling is to sports: part of it, certainly, but also a cartoonish parody of it.

White House Chief of Staff and Four-Star General John] Kelly shared with [Mick} Mulvaney {who was appointed when Kelly resigned] his view that Trump was the most flawed person he had ever met.

Kelly declined for years after he left to be openly critical of the commander in chief except for occasional remarks amid extreme circumstances. But several people who spoke with him said he described Trump as a "fascist," uninterested in history or geography, and uniquely unfit for the job of leading a constitutional democracy.

narcissistic drama-seeker who covered a fragile ego with a bullying impulse and, this time, took American democracy to the brink.

realized then and there that if you let people treat you how they want, you'll be made a fool," Trump told Blum. "I realized then and there something I would never forget: I don't want to be made anybody's sucker.

Giuliani was never paid for his work beyond some expenses, at Trump's insistence; the former mayor's associate and radio cohost, Maria Ryan, tried unsuccessfully to set up a large daily fee for Giuliani, who Trump said shouldn't be paid "a dime" unless there was success, and later sought a consulting fee for herself, as well as for Trump to grant the Presidential Medal of Freedom and, most significantly, a "general pardon" to Giuliani.

During the same period, Trump also sent four-figure donations to California attorney general Kamala Harris, a Democrat. Her office ultimately took no action against Trump University even as it went after other for-profit educational entities.)

News consumers were equally fascinated and horrified, like watching a car wreck where the victims repeatedly tried to hurt themselves more instead of accepting medical help.

Trump loyalists quickly began trying to tear down Hutchinson's credibility. Yet even as some contradicted specific elements in her testimony, she had painted a familiar portrait of Trump, one that dozens of people who worked for his company, political campaigns, and government tried masking over four decades: a narcissistic drama-seeker who covered a fragile ego with a bullying impulse and, this time, took American democracy to the brink.

few people took Trump's ambition to run for president as seriously as he took himself. When I later asked a longtime acquaintance why Trump had finally decided to run after so many prior feints, the person responded without hesitation, "He's gotten crazier.

When the tide sank, all boats were lowered. Trump had proven that the majority of Washington Republicans who had initially opposed him were exactly as craven as he had said they were, as he bent them to his will because they saw personal opportunity or necessity for survival, even after the Capitol riot.

In 1995, reporting $916 million in personal losses cleared the way for Trump to write off more than $50 million in

core tenet of the Trump political movement has been finding publicly acceptable targets to serve as receptacles for preexisting anger.

Their work, which historians later dubbed the Lavender Scare, prompted Eisenhower to sign a 1953 executive order essentially approving of the investigation and firing federal workers who were believed to be gay.