Epstein Secrets

curious Trump subtext. Trump’s brutish father was an often vocal anti-Semite. In the split in New York real estate between the Jews and non-Jews, the Trumps were clearly on the lesser side. The Jews were white shoe, and Donald Trump, even more than his father, was perceived as a vulgarian—after all, he pu

resident. Pence started nearly every speech saying, “I bring greetings from our forty-fifth HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019977 president of the United States, Donald J. Trump ...”—a salutation directed more to the president than to the audience. Pence cast himself as blandly uninteresting, sometimes barely seeming to exis

had a meaningful discussion in his life about health insurance. “No one in the country, or on earth, has given less thought to health insurance than Donald,” said Roger Ailes. Pressed in a campaign interview about the importance of Obamacare repeal and reform, Trump was, to say the least, quite unsure of

en a new sort of centrism, as inimical to Bannonism as it was possible to conceive, could emerge. Bannon’s pronouncements about a fifty-year rule for Trumpism might then be supplanted by the rule of Jared, Ivanka, and Goldman Sachs. By the end of March, this was the side that was winning. Bannon’s efforts

House had now all but been united under the president’s family. His son-in-law and daughter hoped—they were even confident—that they could speak to DJT’s better self, or at least balance Republican needs with progressive rationality, compassion, and good works. Further, they could support this modera

together, and what this election shows, and what President Trump showed, and let’s not kid ourselves, I can talk a

tacts with Trump associates. The story went on: Mr. Trump has denied that his campaign had any contact with

OVERSIGHT_019977 president of the United States, Donald J. Trump ...”—a salutation directed more to the pres

l people without clearly monetizable reputations before their association with Trump—were, for better or worse, hitched to him. (Even among dedicated Trumpers there was always a certain amount of holding their breath and constant reexamination of their options.) But those within the larger circle of White H

lable Republican rectitude, Ryan was the official last, best hope of the Republican Party. (Bannon, typically, had turned this trope into an official Trumpist talking point: “Ryan was created in a petri dish at the Heritage Foundation.”’) If the Republican Party had been moved further right by the Tea Party

d. It was a turning point. Until now, Trump’s inner circle had been mostly game to defend him. But after the wiretap tweets, everybody, save perhaps Hope Hicks, moved into a state of queasy sheepishness, if not constant incredulity. Sean Spicer, for one, kept repeating his daily, if not hourly, mantra: “You

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

r Stone, was noisily ousted by Lewandowski, and then Trump exponentially increased the public dirty-clothes-washing by suing Nunberg. Lewandowski and Hope Hicks, the PR aide put on the campaign by Ivanka Trump, had an affair that ended in a public fight on the street—an incident cited by Nunberg in his respon

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,

gton, Sean Spicer and everybody else from the communications office was relegated to the back of the plane and excluded from the panicky discussions. Hope Hicks became the senior communications strategist, with the president, as always, her singular client. In the days following, that highest political state

: Greg Brown's Weekend Reading and Other Things.. 05/21/2017 DEAR FRIEND </a <=p> Consider This </=pan> Trying to come to terms with=President Trump's proposal to increase the US military budget by an additional $54 billion I ran across a 2015 article in ProPublica — We Blew $17 Billion in Afghan

d a circus light th=t you swung around on a string. As Bob Hope would have said and on this last day, Thanks for the memoriesvery-very4, best. <=> Donald Trump's disastrously bad week in Washington No Mr. President this isn't White Noise nor is it =oing Away 16 EFTA_R1_01366545 EFTA02367924 If you follow

rding to two people familiar with the case. ...q=pan> Mr. Flynn=E2404$ disclosure, on Jan. 4, was first made to the transition team's chief lawyer, Donald F. =cGahn II, who is now the White House counsel. That conversation, and another one two =ays later between Mr. Flynn's lawyer and transition lawyers,

, Thanks for the memoriesvery-very4, best. <=> Donald Trump's disastrously bad week in Washington No M

sider This </=pan> Trying to come to terms with=President Trump's proposal to increase the US military budget by

</=pan> Trying to come to terms with=President Trump's proposal to increase the US military budget by an

=ere's a sampling: "There wa= no communication between the campaign and any foreign entity during the campaign." =E244, Trump campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks in November "The campaign had no cont=ct with Russian officials." — Hicks, also in November<=span> "This i= a nonstory because, to the best of our

From: The Washington Post <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Subject: The Daily 202: Hope Hicks's FBI interviews underscore Trump's impulse to stonewall and hold back damaging info Sent: Tue. 3 Dec 2019 16:24:54 +0000 If you're having trouble reading this, click here. Share:

nd said she hopes the ousted Ricardo Rossello appoints a new secretary of state who can take over instead. (CNN) "I understand that eve hin • that Donald Trum. sa s Page 17384 EFTA00046895 is offensive to some people." — Mulvaney on Trump's comments about Baltimore. (Felicia Sonmez) SOCIAL MEDIA SPEED

overy of damning emails about the meeting his son Donald Trump Jr., son-in-law Jared Kushner and campaign

impulse to stonewall and hold back damaging info President Trump kisses Hope Hicks goodbye on her last day as Whit

urt of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed. ... When Mr. Trump was elected, Mr. al-Malik received a coveted inv

Daily 202: Hope Hicks's FBI interviews underscore Trump's impulse to stonewall and hold back damaging info

will never get out? During two interviews with FBI agents and members of Bob Mueller's team last year, former White House communications director Hope Hicks recounted the president's reaction to the discovery of damning emails about the meeting his son Donald Trump Jr., son-in-law Jared Kushner and camp

MUELLER 6o 6. MICHAEL COHEN 75 7. THE WOMEN 88 8. MICHAEL FLYNN 99 9. MIDTERMS 113 10. KUSHNER 125 11. HANNITY 1 43 12. TRUMP ABROAD 156 13. TRUMP AND PUTIN 169 EFTA00316513 x CONTENTS 14.100 DAYS 185 15. MANAPORT 196 16. PECKER, COHEN, WEISSELBERG 209 17. MCCAIN, WOODWARD, ANONYMOUS 223

S 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

ENTS 317 INDEX 319 Author's Note Shortly after Donald Trump's inauguration as the forty-fifth president

7 INDEX 319 Author's Note Shortly after Donald Trump's inauguration as the forty-fifth president of the

tember budget bill. The next time it carne up, the Wall would be funded or, he threatened, the government would be shut down. Even the hardest-core Trumpers in Congress seemed content not to have to die on the actual battlefield of funding the Wall, since that would mean embracing or at least enduring a

affel, who, like Kushn was a Democrat, had worked for Hiltzik Strategies, the New York Pub relations firm that represented ivanka's clothing line. Hope Hicks, who had also worked for the Hiltzik firm—perhaps b known for having long represented the film producer Harvey Weinste caught, in the fall of 2017,

fore It Happens and Help FBI • Analysis: The SEC Has a Big, New Cyber Rule for Public Companies CAPITOL VIOLENCE NEWS • Unanswered Questions About Trump's Looming Jan. 6 Indictment • Trump Grand Jury Leaves for Day With No Indictment in Sight • In Georgia, Trump Investigation Entangles Allies • The

al Team Meets With Special Counsel as Federal Indictment in 2020 Election Interference Probe Looms CNN (07/27, Holmes, Perez, et al.) reported that Donald Trump's defense lawyers met with special counsel Jack Smith in Washington, D.C. on Thursday, seeking clarity on a potential indictment concerning the invest

rges were filed Thursday against former President Donald Trump in a case involving illegally possessing c

g attempt" by the Biden administration "to harass President Trump and those around him" and to influence the 2024

cing Methods, Months After Tyre Nichols' Death • Trump's Legal Team Meets With Special Counsel as Federal

rmation, to which he pleaded not guilty. Secret Service agents, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Jared Kushner, and former Trump aide Hope Hicks also testified before the grand jury. In mid-July, Smith informed Trump he was a target in the investigation, and his attorneys met with Smith's tea

fore It Happens and Help FBI • Analysis: The SEC Has a Big, New Cyber Rule for Public Companies CAPITOL VIOLENCE NEWS • Unanswered Questions About Trump's Looming Jan. 6 Indictment • Trump Grand Jury Leaves for Day With No Indictment in Sight • In Georgia, Trump Investigation Entangles Allies • The

p Grand Jury Leaves for Day With No Indictment in Sight CNBC reported that a Washington D.C. grand jury, which has been assessing evidence regarding Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election, concluded a session without issuing a criminal indictment of the former president. According to the article,

rges were filed Thursday against former President Donald Trump in a case involving illegally possessing c

g attempt" by the Biden administration "to harass President Trump and those around him" and to influence the 2024

cing Methods, Months After Tyre Nichols' Death • Trump's Legal Team Meets With Special Counsel as Federal

rmation, to which he pleaded not guilty. Secret Service agents, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Jared Kushner, and former Trump aide Hope Hicks also testified before the grand jury. In mid-July, Smith informed Trump he was a target in the investigation, and his attorneys met with Smith's tea

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

who was anywhere near it. + + + The ultimate keeper of the secrets from the campaign, the transition, through the first year in the White House was Hope Hicks, the W House communications director. She had witnessed most everyth HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_021126 --- PAGE BREAK --- 6 MICHAEL WOLFF She saw what the p

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