Quotes About Trump

All presidencies are audience driven, but Trump's central audience was often himself. He kept giving himself reviews. Most were passionately positive.

Barr paused and delivered his summary line: "They just think you're a fucking asshole." Trump did not seem taken aback or insulted.

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.

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.

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.

Former General John Kelly had stood in the Trump Tower lobby as Trump took questions with a grim look on his face. Colbert said, "This guy is a four-star general. Iraq, no problem. Afghanistan, we can do it. Twenty-minute Trump press conference? A quagmire.

All presidencies are audience driven, but Trump's central audience was often himself.

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.

sucked the manufacturing lifeblood out of the U.S. just as Trump predicted

The Trumps then went outside, into the cold morning light, and boarded Marine One.

About $4 trillion, Trump said, even more—possibly $5 trillion. Cohn had a chart that showed it was $2.6 trillion.

Yeah," Trump told advisers, speaking about Giuliani, "he's crazy. He says crazy shit. I get it. But none of the sane lawyers can represent me because they've been pressured

It seemed to Coats that Trump was alone a lot in an empty house, particularly on weekends. And that, Coats believed, had to have an impact, increasing Trump's sense of isolation. Coats found that Trump was becoming more and more paranoid and lonely.

The system was designed to reduce the randomness of voter contact, to make sure the volunteers and field staff concentrated their efforts on those most likely to vote for Trump.

Inside the Republican cloakroom, one joke McConnell enjoyed telling was about Trump's former secretary of state Rex Tillerson, a cabinet member he had liked. In 2017, the State Department had strongly denied Tillerson called Trump a "moron.

at 6:03 a.m., Trump had tweeted: "Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump campaign—'quietly working to boost Clinton.' So where is the investigation A.G. [attorney general]" It was clearly Russian propaganda, McMaster said.

was indeed a coup attempt and nothing less than "treason," he said, and Trump might still be looking for what Milley called a "Reichstag moment.

Smith, 55, described sitting in the aisle seat in row 26 on the Alaska Airlines 5 p.m. flight out of Washington Reagan National Airport to Seattle on the day after the insurrection at the Capitol. He was surrounded by what looked like nearly 100 MAGA hat–wearing Trump supporters.

Two days after the January 6, 2021, violent assault on the United States Capitol by supporters of President Donald Trump, General Mark Milley, the nation's senior military officer and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, placed an urgent call on a top secret, back-channel line at 7:03 a.m. to his Chinese counterpart, General Li Zuocheng, chief of the Joint Staff of the People's Liberation Army.

Mattis once called Trump's tendency to wander off during briefings "Seattle freeway off-ramps to nowhere," where Fox News items were "more salient to him.

Meadows also worked in whispers, loving pull-asides and closed meetings. But he was not reserved. If anything, some Trump aides found him too emotional. He openly cried in the West Wing on several occasions when dealing with tricky personnel and political decisions.

the real battle was going to be over tariffs, where Trump had the most rigid views and where he could do the most damage to the U.S. and world economies.

Trump was always asking everyone their opinions of everyone else, seeking a report card. It was corrosive and could become self-fulfilling— undermining and eating at the reputations and status of anyone and everyone.

Brad Parscale regarding a Trump 2024 POTUS run: "I don't think he sees it as a comeback. He sees it as vengeance.