Epstein Secrets

into action to tell the president that American soldiers would not be paid the next day if he didn't sign the bill. This was a repeat performance: Mattis had issued a similar warning during a threatened shutdown in January. "Never. . . never . . . never... again:. Trump shouted, pounding the desk af

on people carrying Bannon's message as well as the president's. What's more, his enemies in the White House were moving out, includ- ing Hope Hicks, H. R. McMaster, the former national security advisor, and the ever shrinking circle of allies supporting the president's son-in- law and daughter. Bannon was ofte

s through their confirmation hearings,” he said of the business-and-military 1950s-type cabinet choices. “Tillerson is two days, Session is two days, Mattis is two days... .” Bannon veered from “Mad Dog” Mattis—the retired four-star general whom Trump had nominated as secretary of defense—to a long riff

sidestep the people in your organization and to dominate them. It was just one irony of his courtship of admired military figures like James Mattis, H. R. McMaster, and John Kelly: they found themselves working in an administration that was in every way inimical to basic command principles. 7 OK Ok Almost from

fruit salad they wore, the better. The president was very pleased with the compliments he got for appointing generals who commanded the respect that Mattis and Kelly and McMaster were accorded (pay no attention to Michael Flynn). What the president did not like was /istening to generals, who, for the mos

invariably incurred Trump’s annoyance.) Kushner enlisted Scarborough and Brzezinski in something of a regular morning television Bannon slag-a-thon. H. R. McMaster, the three-star general who had replaced Michael Flynn as National Security Advisor, had secured the president’s pledge that he could veto members of

approaching the boiling point. Trump had already authorized the Pentagon to deploy the troop resources it believed were needed, but Defense Secretary Mattis refused to act without a specific authorization from the president. Trump would finally have to make the call—unless he could find a way to put it of

was “not taking a pencil to anything.” Nearby, in a small conference room watching the movie Fargo, were Dina Powell, Gary Cohn, Stephen Miller, and H. R. McMaster, all of whom would later insist that they were, however physically close to the unfolding crisis, removed from it. And, indeed, anyone “in the room”