359 Quotes by Bob Woodward

Trump’s memory needed a trigger – something on his desk or something he read in the newspaper or saw on television. Or Peter Navarro sneaking into the Oval Office again. Without something or someone activating him, it might be hours or days or even weeks before he would think, Wait, we’re going to withdraw from that, why didn’t we do that? Without a trigger, it conceivably might never happen.

He did not want to be derailed by forethought.

Mr. President, you’ve got to buy some democrats,” Graham said. The good news is they come cheap.

Trump seemed not to remember his own decision because he did not ask about it. He had no list – in his mind or anywhere else – of tasks to complete.

He was at MIT for 42 years or something. He was a great – so I understand that stuff. You know, genetically.

Trump rejected the better judgment of almost all of his staff. He had done that before. His perverse independence and irrationality ebbed and flowed.

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.

I deal with first-hand sources. And give the people, even John Sununu, the opportunity to respond to what I’ve been told by first-hand sources.

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.