Fear: Trump in the White House(120)

“Mr. President, I cannot, as a lawyer, as an officer of the court, sit next to you and have you answer these questions when I full well know that you’re not really capable,” Dowd told Trump.





25 White House counsel Don McGahn wanted the president to assert executive privilege in the Mueller investigation and resist handing over documents. Trump’s lawyer John Dowd disagreed and cooperated with Mueller in order to speed up the investigation.

“We’d get a hell of a lot more with honey than we would with vinegar.”





26 Trump and first lady Melania Trump with Chinese president Xi Jinping and first lady Peng Liyuan. Trump believed China’s support for sanctions against North Korea was a result of his personal relationship with Xi. “Isn’t it good that I’m friendly when all you guys say that we should be adversarial with them,” he said, despite warnings that Xi was using him. “Because if I didn’t have that great relationship with President Xi, they never would have done that. So that I can get them to do things that they wouldn’t otherwise do.”





27 North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un, 34, was a more effective leader of North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missiles programs than his father, Kim Jong Il, according to U.S. intelligence. The younger Kim accepted that weapons and missile testing would inevitably lead to failures. He did not order officials and scientists shot after failures as his father had. Trump believed the building conflict between the U.S. and North Korea was a contest of wills.

“This is all about leader versus leader. Man versus man. Me versus Kim.”





Acknowledgments

This is my 19th book with Alice Mayhew, my editor at Simon & Schuster, over the last 46 years. Alice understood immediately, in the midst of the Trump presidency with all its controversies and investigations, the importance of finding out what Trump actually did as president in foreign and domestic policy. It was Alice’s full and brilliant engagement on the concept for the book, the pace, structure and tone.

Jonathan Karp, president and publisher of Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing, is at the top of his game. He devoted time and his keen intellect to this book. He helped edit and thought through the opportunities, responsibilities and dilemmas of publishing a book about President Trump in this convulsive era. I owe him much. He used to be the Boy Wonder; now he is the Middle Age Wonder but still has the Boy Wonder’s energy.

I thank Carolyn K. Reidy, the CEO at Simon & Schuster, who for decades has sponsored and promoted my work.

At Simon & Schuster I thank the following: Stuart Roberts, Alice Mayhew’s talented, energetic and thoughtful assistant, and Richard Rhorer, Cary Goldstein, Stephen Bedford, Irene Kheradi, Kristen Lemire, Lisa Erwin, Lisa Healy, Lewelin Polanco, Joshua Cohen, Laura Tatum, Katie Haigler, Toby Yuen, Kate Mertes and Elisa Rivlin.

My special thanks to Fred Chase, traveling counselor and extraordinary copy editor, who spent a week in Washington with Evelyn and myself. Fred loves words and ideas. In that week he went through the manuscript three times with meticulous care and wisdom. We call Fred the Fixer, which he does on nearly every page with his sharp red and green pencils.

I wish I had taken careful notes over the last two years of my regular conversations with Carl Bernstein, my Nixon-Watergate partner, as we discussed Trump. We did not always agree but I loved those talks and the deep insights he has about the presidency, Washington and the media. The friendship and affection for Carl is one of the half-dozen joys of my life.

The Washington Post has generously kept me on as an associate editor. I associate very little these days because I rarely go to the Washington Post in downtown Washington but work out of my office at home. And my editing might, at most, be a phone conversation with a reporter who has a query, often about the past. Associate editor is a wonderful title, however, and allows me to keep connected to my journalist roots. The Post has been my institutional home and family for 47 years. It is run exceptionally well these days, doing some of the best, most aggressive and necessary journalism of the Trump era. My thanks to Marty Baron, the executive editor, Cameron Barr, the managing editor, Jeff Leen, the investigations editor, Robert Costa, Tom Hamburger, Rosalind Helderman, David Fahrenthold, Karen Tumulty, Philip Rucker, Robert O’Harrow, Amy Goldstein, Scott Wilson, Steven Ginsberg, Peter Wallsten, Dan Balz, Lucy Shackelford and countless others at the Post.

I thank many old colleagues and friends there at the Post or once there: Don Graham, Sally Quinn, David Maraniss, Rick Atkinson, Christian Williams, Paul Richard, Patrick Tyler, Tom Wilkinson, Leonard Downie Jr., Marcus Brauchli, Steve Coll, Steve Luxenberg, Scott Armstrong, Al Kamen, Ben Weiser, Martha Sherrill, Bill Powers, Carlos Lozada, Fred Hiatt, John Feinstein and publisher Fred Ryan.

Many thanks to Michael Kranish and Marc Fisher, who assembled a group of reporters from the Post, including myself, to report on Trump before the election. The result was Michael and Marc’s book, Trump Revealed, one of the best sources on the president-to-be. It includes more than 20 hours of interviews with Trump.

All those still employed by or connected to the Post have reason to be thankful that Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder and CEO, is owner of the Post. He has spent time and a great deal of money to give the newspaper the extra reporting and editing resources to make in-depth examinations. The independent newspaper culture fostered, and rigorously supported, by Katharine Graham and Don Graham is alive and well.