Epstein Secrets

d everybody’s disbelieving looks, the president seemed HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019905 intent on surrounding himself in the White House with his family. The Trumps, all of them —except for his wife, who, mystifyingly, was staying in New York—were moving in, all of them set to assume responsibilities similar to t

me when it had borders. When America was great. Trump had become the platform for that message. By that January evening, Bannon had been immersed in Donald Trump’s world for almost five months. And though he had accumulated a sizable catalogue of Trump’s peculiarities, and cause enough for possible alarm about t

ked Trump’s impact and his shamelessness. “He just keeps going,” Ailes had marveled to a friend after the first debate with Hillary Clinton. “You hit Donald along the head, and he keeps going. He doesn’t even know he’s been hit.” But Ailes was convinced that Trump had no political beliefs or backbone. Th

rtly after eight o’clock that evening, when the unexpected trend—Trump might actually win—seemed confirmed, Don Jr. told a friend that his father, or DJT, as he called him, looked as if he had seen a ghost. Melania, to whom Donald Trump had made his solemn guarantee, was in tears—and not of joy. There

ncies and personnel responsible for enforcing it, President Trump—with Bannon’s low, intense voice behind him, offe

streamed on a laptop in the transition offices. “Mr. Trump said he’s never once listened to a whole Obama sp

lism, of people knowing too much who were defeated by all the complexities and conflicting interests before they began. Trump, knowing little, might, Trumpers tried to believe, give a kooky new hope to the system. Jared Kushner in quite a short period of time—trather less than a year—had crossed over from

, namely that these kinds of events—Trump sitting down with serious-minded people and looking for solutions to the nation’s problems—were the soul of Trump’s White House and the media was giving them scant coverage. Hosting business advisory councils was a Kushner strategy. It was an enlightened business

g as much policy as possible to Capitol Hill. In the early weeks of the administration, Priebus arranged for House Speaker Paul Ryan, however much a Trumpist béte noire for much of the campaign, to come into the White House with a group of ranking committee chairmen. In the meeting, the president blithely

the meeting with his full retinue—the circle that seemed always to move with him in lockstep, including Bannon, Priebus, Kushner, Stephen Miller, and National Economic Council chief Gary Cohn—but conducted it entirely himself. Each of the people at the table, taking a point of interest, spoke for five minutes, with Trump th

virtue. If every new event canceled out every other event, like some wacky news-cycle pyramid scheme, then you always survived another day. OOK Ok Donald Trump’s sons, Don Jr., thirty-nine, and Eric, thirty-three, existed in an enforced infantile relationship to their father, a role that embarrassed them, but

nothing. And yet, OMG!!! There almost was no other story in America—and in much of the world. That was the radical and transformational nature of the Trump presidency: it held everybody’s attention. Inside the White House, the daily brouhaha and world’s fascination was no cause for joy. It was, in the W

nning his company. Of course, quite a good amount of their professional time was spent on the whims, projects, promotions, and general way of life of DJT. One benefit of their father’s run for president was that it kept him away from the office. Still, the campaign’s administration was largely their r

the other hand, he wanted Jarvanka to go. And that became an effective ultimatum. 7 OK Ok At lunch on August 8, in the Clubhouse at Bedminster—amid Trumpish chandeliers, golf trophies, and tournament plaques—the president was flanked by Tom Price, the secretary of health and human services, and his wife,

rlie, 309 Rosen, Hillary, 78 Rosenstein, Rod, 212, 214, 216-21, 279 Ross, Wilbur, 78, 133, 229-30 Roth, Steven, 27, 141 Rove, Karl, 57, 238 Rumsfeld, Donald, 27 Russia, 24, 37-39, 92, 151-56, 160, 190-91, 236-46, 273, 303, 307-8 Bannon on, 6—7, 238-40, 278-83 Comey and, 168-70, 210-20, 242, 244-45 Don Jr.

is would be the lasting conundrum of dealing with President Trump: the “why” of his often baffling behavior. “The

grim. “Does he ever smile?” asked Trump, who had already begun to think that he had somehow been tricked into the hire. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_020101 Some Trumpers, particularly those with over-the-transom access to the president, believed that he had been tricked into some form of very-much-not-Trump submission

about whether the president’s situation was bad, but whether it was Twenty-Fifth-Amendment bad. OOK Ok To Bannon, if not to Trump, the linchpin of Trumpism was China. The story of the next generation, he believed, had been written, and it was about war with China. Commercial war, trade war, cultural war,

60-61, 73-74, 80-81, 93, 121, 147, 156-57, 178-79, 195-98, 223, 289, 298 Murdoch, Wendi, 19, 80, 156 Murphy, Mike, 56 Musk, Elon, 35, 78, 88, 238 National Economic Council, 89, 143-44 National Environment Policy Act (1970), 182 National Football League, 303-4 nationalists, 133-34, 138, 174, 276, 293, 301-2 National

"is warning that Congress would likely override President Trump if he vetoes a mammoth defense policy bill amid t

in her new book that she was the source who gave Mr. Trump's tax information to The New York Times in 2019,

olence In Wake Of Floyd Protests. • Crowley Says Trump's Mt. Rushmore Speech Was "Absolutely Necessary."

OTESTS • US Charges Seven Protesters In Portland, Oregon. • Black Americans Report Hate Crimes, Violence In Wake Of Floyd Protests. • Crowley Says Trump's Mt. Rushmore Speech Was "Absolutely Necessary." • Bernhardt Touts President's American Hero Task Force. • Wolf: Administration Prepared To Help G

ulling Name Changes Undermine His Campaign Message. Politico (7/7, Forgey, 4.29M) reports that Karl Rove on Tuesday "expressed new frustration with Donald Trump's erratic messaging, arguing a recent pair of incendiary tweets from the president represented yet another act of self-sabotage inflicted upon his re

y Trump maintains that Trump's "view of the world was shaped by his desire during childhood to avoid his father's disapproval," and "writes that as Donald matured, his father came to envy his son's 'confidence and brazenness,' and his seemingly insatiable desire to flout rules and conventions, traits t

ional sanctions could be on the way in return for China's role in spreading the coronavirus." National Security Adviser O'Brien and director of the National Economic Council, Larry Kudlow, told the U.S. Railroad Retirement Board in a letter that its investments in China were exposing retirees to "unnecessary economic ris

ent. Although the Presidential campaign seems to be dominated by absurd minutiae, such as Romney's and Obama's respective treatment of canines and Donald Trump's theories about the President's ancestry, at some point this year the debate will EFTA_R 1_02204174 EFTA02720645 focus on the looming fiscal cras

ama's respective treatment of canines and Donald Trump's theories about the President's ancestry, at so

evolution was powerfully reaffirmed. Soon after, Donald Regan, the new chief of staff, sent word to a sma

ama's respective treatment of canines and Donald Trump's theories about the President's ancestry, at some

or Clinton officials involved in the 1997 deal now work for Obama, including Jacob Lew, Obama's chief of staff, and Gene Sperling, the head of the National Economic Council. "You have a dynamic that is similar to the nineteen-nineties," one White House official said. "There are a number of areas where a Republican Con

ist Stephen K. Bannon and the appointment of retired general John Kelly as chief of staff. This new account begins in February 2018 at the outset of Trumps second year in office, with the situation now profoundly altered. The pres- ident’s capricious furies have been met by an increasingly organized and

PRISES 257 21. NOVEMBER 6 268 22. SHUTDOWN 282 23. THE WALL 295 EPILOGUE: THE REPORT 309 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 317 INDEX 319 Author’s Note Shortly after Donald Trump’s inauguration as the forty-fifth president of the United States, I was allowed into the West Wing as a sideline observer. My book Fire and Fury was th

sident that he could continue to provide him with valuable help. To no avail: on March 22, Dowd reluc- tantly resigned, sending another bitter former Trumper into the world. = THE DO-OVER he day John Dowd was fired, Steve Bannon was sitting at his dinin; room table trying to forestall another threat to

recently been named secretary of state, John Bolton would soon become the national security advisor, and Larry Kudlow had been appointed director of the National Economic Council. The president's chief political aides were Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie, both Bannon allies, if not acolytes; both operated outside the White