Epstein Secrets

k as soon as they could raise other money. (Steve Mnuchin, then the campaign’s finance chairman, came to co

han likely.” In the end, the best Trump would do is loan the campaign $10 million, provided he got it back as soon as they could raise other money. (Steve Mnuchin, then the campaign’s finance chairman, came to collect the loan with the wire instructions ready to go, so Trump couldn’t conveniently forget to send

told Trump not long after the election. “You’ll want to be your own son of a bitch, but you don’t know Washington.” Ailes had a suggestion: “Speaker Boehner.” (John Boehner had been the Speaker of the House until he was forced out in a Tea Party putsch in 2011.) “Who’s that?” asked Trump. Everybody in T

lating news conference, all eyes were suddenly on Kelly—this was his baptism of Trump fire. Spicer, Priebus, Cohn, Powell, Bannon, Tillerson, Mattis, Mnuchin—virtually the entire senior staff and cabinet of the Trump presidency, past and present, had traveled through the stages of adventure, challenge, fru

dent if not serene in his unquestioned certitudes. There was now a fair amount of back-of-the-classroom giggling about who had called Trump what. For Steve Mnuchin and Reince Priebus, he was an “idiot.” For Gary Cohn, he was “dumb as shit.” For H. R. McMaster he was a “dope.” The list went on. Tillerson would m

os, Jeff, 35 Biosphere 2, 56 Blackstone Group, 35, 78, 87, 298 Blackwater, 265 Blair, Tony, 156-58, 228 Blankfein, Lloyd, 144 Bloomberg, Michael, 117 Boehner, John, 26, 161 Boeing, 88 Bolton, John, 4-5, 189 border wall, 77-78, 228, 280, 303 Bossie, David, 58, 144, 177, 234, 237, 301 Bowles, Erskine, 27 Boy

ently that Obama's distance from members of Congress has hurt his ability to pass legislation. "When you don't build those personal relationships," Manchin told CNN, "it's pretty easy for a person to say, `Well, let me think about it.' " Harry Truman once called the White House "the great white jail,"

cent of the popular vote. The President talked of the election breaking the "fever" in Washington. "We didn't expect the floodgates would open and Boehner would be Tip O'Neill to our Reagan," Dan Pfeiffer, a senior adviser to the President, said. But reelection, he thought, had "liberated" Obama. The