Quotes About President

For Carter, it was as if the ghosts of Watergate stalked the halls of the White House. As with most ghosts, he wasn't sure they existed, where they were or how to exorcise them.

President Trump is a good listener, Mattis said, as long as you don't hit one of his third rails—immigration and the press are the two big ones. If you hit one, he is liable to go off on a tangent and not come back for a long time. "Secretaries of Defense don't always get to choose the president they work for." Everyone laughed.

The major problem might be allegations of obstructing justice by urging Comey to drop the Flynn investigation, and then firing Comey. But Dowd believed that the president's Article II constitutional authority clearly encompassed firing an FBI director.

Members of his staff had joined to purposefully block some of what they believed were the president's most dangerous impulses. It was a nervous breakdown of the executive power of the most powerful country in the world.

The president has zero psychological ability to recognize empathy or pity in any way.

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.

On July 25, the president again berated McMaster. He had no interest in allies, Trump said. He didn't want any troops in South Korea even when reminded about the differential between the seven seconds to detect an ICBM launch from there as opposed to 15-minute detection from Alaska.

After McMaster left, Trump asked, "Who was that guy? He wrote a book didn't he? It said bad things about people. I thought you told me he was in the Army." "He is in the Army." "He's dressed like a beer salesman," the president said. Bannon, noted for his terrible wardrobe, agreed. He thought McMaster's suit looked like it cost only $ 200, or maybe only $ 100.

Mattis was particularly exasperated and alarmed, telling close associates that the president acted like—and had the understanding of—"a fifth or sixth grader.

The others were silent and only seemed to be encouraging Trump. Porter was appalled that the president was even considering a preemptive withdrawal from NAFTA.

when Twitter announced the number of permissible characters in a single tweet was being doubled from 140 to 280, Trump told Porter he thought the change made sense on one level. Now he would be able to flesh out his thoughts and add more depth. "It's a good thing," Trump said, "but it's a bit of a shame because I was the Ernest Hemingway of 140 characters.

Smith liked to think of Donald Trump as a hundred-year flood in American democracy. But he told colleagues there was nothing Congress could put into law to protect the country if a lunatic wound up in the White House. The war-making power was ceded to the president as commander in chief. The only power Congress had, in a practical sense, was to cut off the money. He believed the system for controlling the use of nuclear weapons was vulnerable.

K [Kissinger] called from New York all disturbed because he felt someone had been getting to the P [President] on Vietnam... Henry's concerned that the P's looking for a way to bug out and he thinks that would be a disaster now.

was apparent the president was aware of the criticism he was receiving about his handling of the coronavirus. After surviving the 22-month-long Mueller investigation and the third impeachment trial in United States history, the real dynamite behind the door was the virus. The lives and livelihoods of tens of millions of Americans hung in the balance with every decision he made in dealing with the coronavirus.

The president maintained his upbeat rhetoric in the early weeks of the virus had been deliberate. "I wanted to always play it down," Trump told me, as I reported earlier in this book. "I still like playing it down, because I don't want to create a panic.

An executive order signed in 1981 by President Reagan stated, "No person employed by or acting on behalf of the U.S. government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination.

The White House argument would be strong. Ziegler and St. Clair would pound away at the ghastly spectacle of a President on trial in a courtroom. There seemed to be some reasonableness to the position they would probably take. What would the President do if someone started a nuclear war - ask for a recess?

Expecting more from the president of the United States springs from respect for the country, its institutions and the White House itself. It springs from standards, the falling of which concerns natural conservatives. It isn't snobbery. The people trying to wrap their heads around this presidency are patriots too. That's one of the hellish things about this era.

But to remove a president with a such a strong base in their party was pretty much unthinkable.

gather all the points of view, the data, integrate them if possible and present the president with some options, get a decision and develop an implementation plan.

Carter, the outsider, didn't understand his own power and appeal, the centrality of the president to Washington, its own peculiar games and power rituals. He was not only removed from the capital city but alienated from it. Watergate had helped produce the most unlikely president: a loner.

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.

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.

Do you know why Tillerson was able to say he didn't call the president a 'moron'?" McConnell would dryly ask colleagues in his Kentucky drawl. "Because he called him a 'fucking moron.