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

ain off-again presidential candidate, in 2010; at a meeting in Trump Tower, Bannon had proposed to Trump that he spend half a million dollars backing Tea Party-style candidates as a way to further his presidential ambitions. Bannon left the meeting figuring that Trump would never cough up that kind of dough.

alism, and that is Wilbur Ross at Commerce, Steve Mnuchin at Treasury, [Robert] Lighthizer at Trade, Peter

ence, defense department, homeland security. The second line of work is what I refer to as economic nationalism, and that is Wilbur Ross at Commerce, Steve Mnuchin at Treasury, [Robert] Lighthizer at Trade, Peter Navarro, [and] Stephen Miller, who are rethinking how we are going to reconstruct our trade arrangem

right, meanwhile, was more and more challenged by younger conservatives. In the Obama years, the conservative movement was increasingly bewildered by Tea Party rejectionism and a new iconoclastic right-wing media, exemplified by Breitbart News, which was pointedly excluded from the CPAC conference. In 2011,

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

9 Suzy magazine, 15 Swan, Jonathan, 299 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_020135 Syria, 42, 183-84, 188-93, 219, 226, 265 Taliban, 267 tax reform, 87, 167, 224, 290 Tea Party, 5, 18, 26, 33, 58-59, 128, 161-63 Thiel, Peter, 21, 222, 309 Thrush, Glenn, 91, 277 Tillerson, Rex, 4, 21, 86, 211, 225, 229, 265, 267, 296, 304-6 T

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,"

-PRESIDENTIAL M&M'S The next morning, a Monday, I woke early and turned on CNN. Senator Lindsey Graham, who is facing a primary challenge from four Tea Party candidates in South Carolina, was saying with utter confidence that Iran had hoodwinked the Administration in Geneva. Next came a poll showing tha