Category Archives: Donald Trump

Donald Trump knows a lot of numbers. Some very big, some catastrophically low, others staggering or just plain ridiculous.

Much has been made of the presidents rhetorical style, which by his own admission relies heavily on hyperbole. But its especiallyapparent when he delves into math and analytics. Trump rarely gives data without attaching descriptors that tell usexactly how to feel about that data. Often when hes talking about numbers, he ditchesspecifics altogether, in favor of superlatives.

In several instances, Trump has evenacknowledged concealing exact details from his audience. During his campaign, this became a recurring trope whenever he was discussing insurance premiums. I know the number. I will not tell you, Trump said at a rally in Iowa. I never do this with any of the groups; I dont say the number, because its so depressing.

In a sense, Trump has created his own nebulous numeric system that employs adjectives in lieu of traditional numerals. To illustrate, weve created this compilation of the president counting from a negative number to the biggest number ever, in his exuberant ifimprecise style.

See more here:

How to count with Donald Trump - VICE News

It was hard not to notice the odd medley of mainstream Republicanism and insurgent Trumpism during the GOP congressional candidates get-out-the-vote rally Saturday.

You could count on one hand the red Make America Great Again baseball caps in the crowd here Saturday at a get-out-the-vote rally for Karen Handel, who is in danger of being the first Republican since the 1970s to lose in Georgias 6th Congressional District.

At least two of the hats sat atop the heads of voters from the nearby 14th District. And that summed up rather neatly the struggle Handel and her GOP allies face.

They need to keep Donald Trump close. Just not too close.

The president beat Hillary Clinton by only 1.5 points last fall in the suburban Atlanta district. Polls suggest Tuesdays special election to fill the House vacancy left by Tom Price, whom Trump picked to be Health and Human Services secretary is a coin flip. Many Republicans fear the contest in its final days is trending toward Democrat Jon Ossoff, who has raised far more money in whats already the most expensive congressional race in history. Results will be parsed as a barometer for both parties nationally as they realign in the Trump era.

Handel has offered Trump an awkward and politically cautious embrace. He headlined a private fundraiser for her in April, though he already had been scheduled to come to town for a National Rifle Association event. That checked the box, Chip Lake, a Republican consultant in Georgia, told BuzzFeed News. Handel accepted an assist from the White House, but she didnt have to do it in front of TV cameras or the kind of raucous rally crowd that Trump draws. (More recently, Vice President Mike Pence came to the district for a low-key fundraiser with Handel.)

I think shes handled it very well, Lake said. Itd be a tricky situation for anyone.

It was hard not to notice the odd medley of mainstream Republicanism and insurgent Trumpism during Handels event Saturday in a muggy airport hangar.

One supporter carrying a Handel yard sign walked toward the media section. Thank you for being here, he said. It was a gentle contrast to what had happened a few weeks earlier leading up to a special congressional election in Montana, where the Republican candidate (and eventual winner) assaulted a reporter. Meanwhile members of Bikers for Trump, a group whose members are known for acting as enforcers at Trump campaign rallies, paced the floor. When one of the groups leaders spotted a woman standing up front with a sign criticizing Republicans on health care, he strolled casually toward her, said a few words, then escorted her away.

Handels opening acts at what was billed as her final major rally before Tuesday were two of Trumps Cabinet members: Price and Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue, the former Georgia governor whom Handel once served as a deputy chief of staff.

Just for the record, Im here in my personal capacity and as a former member of the United States House of Representatives, said Price, who reminded the audience that the seat also has been held by former Speaker Newt Gingrich and by Johnny Isakson, whos now in the Senate.

Those gentlemen represented the district sincerely, and diligently, and honestly, and faithfully, and thats exactly what Karen Handel is going to do, Price added.

Perdue hit on the message Handel hopes will resonate with voters skeptical of Trump. If its right, shell stand up for it, he said. If its wrong, you better watch out.

Then Perdue tried to draw a contrast with Ossoff, whom Republicans paint as being a puppet of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and the political left while also scoffing at his own attempts to play it safe with Trump voters. She doesnt have any strings to pull Ive already tried!

Perdue also made a pitch to those who dont like Trump. I know some of you out there, some Republicans, may even be turned off by our president. Im not, because let me tell you I know its hard, but let me just share. I was in Miami yesterday with him, Perdue said, noting Trumps reversal of friendlier US policy toward Cuba. The president keeps his promises.

It was the most Trumps name was mentioned during the half-hour event. Handel avoided reference to the president in her remarks. (My job is to represent the people of the 6th District, she told reporters the night before when asked about her relationship with Trump during a campaign stop at a local tavern. Im not an extension of the White House.)

Shell be independent, theres no doubt in my mind shell do that, Ed Painter, leader of the 14th District Republican Party and one of the Make America Great Again hat wearers in the crowd, told BuzzFeed News. I dont know that shell do it the way I like it. But she will do it.

If only Handel were running in Painters district. Trump won there by more than 50 points.

Read the rest here:

Karen Handel Is Keeping Donald Trump At Arm's Length In Georgia's 6th District - BuzzFeed News

(WASHINGTON) The Cuban government is rejecting what it calls the "hostile rhetoric" of President Donald Trump's speech announcing a new U.S. policy toward the island, but says it is willing to continue "respectful dialogue" with the U.S. on topics of mutual interest.

In a statement released on government-run websites and television Friday evening, President Raul Castro's administration says Trump's speech was "loaded with hostile rhetoric that recalls the times of open confrontation."

The lengthy statement goes on to strike a conciliatory tone, saying Cuba wants to continue negotiations with the U.S. on a variety of subjects.

Cuba says "the last two years have shown that the two countries can cooperate and coexist in a civilized way."

Trump announced a series of changes to the Obama-era Cuba policy and is challenging the Cuban government to negotiate a better deal.

Trump said in a speech in Miami that the U.S. will not lift sanctions on Cuba until it releases all political prisoners and respects the Cuban people's right to freedom of assembly and expression.

Trump is also calling for the legalization of all political parties, and free and internationally supervised elections.

The president says his new policy will also restrict the flow of American dollars to the military, security and intelligence services that are the core of the government led by Raul Castro.

He has challenged Cuba to "come to the table" to strike a deal that serves both country's interests.

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Cuba Says President Trump's Speech Was 'Loaded With Hostile Rhetoric' - TIME

An abstract, in-case-of-emergency-break-glass executive order drafted by the Trump administration in March may become real-world applicable as the president, raging publicly at his Justice Department, mulls firing special counsel Robert Mueller.

Since taking office, the Trump administration has twice rewritten an executive order that outlines the order of succession at the Justice Department once after President Donald Trump fired acting Attorney General Sally Yates for refusing to defend his travel ban, and then again two months later. The executive order outlines a list of who would be elevated to the position of acting attorney general if the person up the food chain recuses himself, resigns, gets fired or is no longer in a position to serve.

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In the past, former Justice Department officials and legal experts said, the order of succession is no more than an academic exercise a chain of command applicable only in the event of an attack or crisis when government officials are killed and it is not clear who should be in charge.

But Trump and the Russia investigation that is tightening around him have changed the game.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has already recused himself from overseeing the investigation into possible collusion between Trump campaign aides and Russian operatives, after it was revealed that he failed to disclose meetings with the Russian ambassador during the campaign. And Trump started his morning on Friday by appearing to take a public shot at his deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, who has increasingly become the target of his impulsive anger.

I am being investigated for firing the FBI Director by the man who told me to fire the FBI Director! Witch Hunt, the president tweeted.

The Justice Department said in a statement on Friday that there are no current plans for a recusal, but Rosenstein has said in the past that he would back away from overseeing Muellers investigation if his role in the ouster of former FBI Director James Comey becomes a conflict.

That has legal experts closely examining the dry executive order to figure out who might be next up to bat, or, as Democratic lawyers and consultants view it, who might serve as Trumps next sacrificial lamb.

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We know Rachel Brand is the next victim, said Benjamin Wittes, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the editor-in-chief of Lawfare, referring to the former George W. Bush official who was recently confirmed as associate attorney general, the third-highest position in the Justice Department.

For those of us who have high confidence in Rachel the more confidence you have in someone in this role, the less long you think theyll last, said Wittes, who said he considers Brand a friend. That does put a very high premium on the question of who is next.

That question, however, has become more complicated because the Trump administration has been slow to fill government positions and get those officials confirmed. Typically, the solicitor general would be next in line after the associate attorney general, followed by the list of five assistant U.S. attorneys, the order of which would be determined by the attorney general. But none of those individuals have been confirmed by the Senate, and they would be unable to serve as acting attorney general without Senate confirmation.

Because of that, the executive order comes into play one that puts next in line after Brand the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, Dana Boente. Boente, a career federal prosecutor and an appointee of former President Barack Obama, was tapped last April to serve as the interim head of the Justice Departments national security division, which oversees the FBIs Russia investigation.

Boente, who was briefly thrust into the no. 2 spot at the Justice Department after Yates was fired, was also tasked with phoning Preet Bharara, then U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, to deliver the unexpected news that he was fired. At the time, Boente also vowed to defend Trumps travel ban in the future.

Boente is followed, on the succession list, by the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina, John Stuart Bruce; and the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Texas, John Parker. Both are career prosecutors who are serving in their posts on an interim basis, until a presidential appointment is made. But they would not need to be Senate confirmed to take over.

It was not clear why the Trump administration chose those three U.S. attorneys to be in the succession line. During the Obama administration, sources familiar with the drafting of the old executive order said, the positions were chosen based on geographic diversity, and purposely included big cities where officials assumed there would be a talented attorney capable of stepping in: The U.S. attorneys on the succession list were from Washington, D.C., Chicago and Los Angeles.

Some former Justice Department officials said they would find it inconceivable for Trump to clean house, or to fire Mueller even taking into account the sometimes erratic behavior of the commander in chief.

This president is so unpredictable, its hard to say, said Emily Pierce, a former Justice Department official in the Obama administration. It would be the craziest thing hes done to date if he were to start firing the special counsel or Rosenstein. Im trying to give him the benefit of the doubt that he realizes how much trouble he may be in and that with the firing of Comey, he wouldnt do that.

Deputy U.S. Attorney General nominee Rod Rosenstein and Rachel Brand, then a nominee for associate attorney general, testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on March 7. Brand is considered the next person in the executive order at the Justice Department. | Getty

But others were less willing to predict the actions of a president who prides himself on being unpredictable. At the rate we're going, it's clearly possible, because you could go through a number of people in one go depending on the things that are asked of them, said Jane Chong, a national security and law associate at the Hoover Institution. If Rosenstein had refused to write the memo [laying out the case for Comeys firing], you can imagine him being fired, and you can imagine Brand doing the same thing. Its not difficult to see a scenario like that playing out down the line, Chong said.

In Washington circles, the comparison being made is between Trumps desire to rid himself of Mueller, at potentially any cost, and the Saturday Night Massacre during Watergate, in 1973, when the attorney general and the deputy attorney general both resigned after refusing to obey President Richard Nixons order to fire special prosecutor Archibald Cox. It fell to the solicitor general at the time, Robert Bork, to do the deed.

I think the Watergate scenario would make most self-respecting lawyers loath to put themselves in the role that Bork ended up playing, said Brian Fallon, a former Obama Justice Department and Hillary Clinton spokesman. Most career-minded independent lawyers that have high regard for the Justice Department as an institution would be loath to be the modern-day equivalent to Bork.

But Trump, too, is cognizant of the comparison to Nixon, according to one adviser. The president, who friends said does not enjoy living in Washington and is strained by the demanding hours of the job, is motivated to carry on because he doesnt want to go down in history as a guy who tried and failed, said the adviser. He doesnt want to be the second president in history to resign.

A White House spokeswoman referred queries to the Justice Department. A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.

Darren Samuelsohn contributed to this report.

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Trump threatens to break the glass on DOJ succession plan - Politico

President Donald Trumps financial disclosure released today by the U.S. Office of Government Ethics has provided the greatest detail yet of the CEO-turned-Commander-in-Chief since he ran and became President of the United States. The 98-page filing dropped today doesnt include his much-discussed still-private tax returns, but it does show Trumps income related to his Hollywood interests, including his annual SAG pension totaling $84,292, and monies from his production businesses that co-produced The Apprentice and The Celebrity Apprentice.

In the filing (read it in full here) submitted by Trump on June 14, Trump reported assets totaling around $1.4 billion, with $596.3 million in total for the reporting period through April 15. His debts totaled more than $300 million.

Among his Hollywood assets, Trump reported income from Miss Universe LLP of $10,973,722, and his Trump Productions LLC noted as the television production and entertainment business arm of the privately held Trump Organization brought in income of $1,103,161 and is valued between $1 million-$5 million.

He also received stock dividends during the period that included from such entertainment-industry related companies as Comcast, 21st Century Fox, NBCUniversal Media LLC, Apple, Yahoo, Alphabet, Verizon and Microsoft.

Among the 12 books listed in the filing, royalties for 1987s The Art Of The Deal grew to as much as $1 million as his profile rose during the GOP primaries and general election. Crippled America, published in 2015 the year he announced his POTUS run, netted royalties as high as $5 million.

Among his numerous golf holdings is Trump National Golf Club in Rancho Palos Verdes, which was valued at more than $50 million, earning $14,982,417 in golf-related income and $12,035,000 in land sales.

Continued here:

Donald Trump's Financial Disclosure Has Hollywood Starpower - Deadline

Gay teacher Nikos Giannopoulos displayed his LGBTQ pride as he sported a rainbow pin and clutched a lacy fan in an official photo with President Donald Trumpand first lady Melania Trump.And now the Rhode Island teacher of the years bold stand for LGBTQ rights has gotten global attention after the image went viral on Facebook.

Giannopoulos, who teaches 11th and 12th graders at Beacon Charter High School for the Arts in Woonsocket, visited the White House with other teacher of the year winners in April. He received the photo of his moment with Trump this week and immediately posted itto Facebook.

Though Trump has previously pledged to protect LGBTQ citizens, but members of the communityhave expressed concern that his administration is rolling backtheir civil rights in areas such as education.

Giannopoulos said he wore the pin to represent my gratitude for the LGBTQ community that has taught me to be proud, bold, and empowered by my identity even when circumstances make that difficult. He brought the fan that day tocelebrate the joy and freedom of gender nonconformity.

When I met the president as Rhode Islands state teacher of the year, I did not know what to expect, he wrote in the Facebook post. After a lengthy security process, we were welcomed into the Roosevelt Room where we each met Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. Shortly thereafter, we walked into the Oval Office. The man seated at the desk read prepared remarks from a sheet of paper and made some comments about CEOs and which states he loved, based on electoral votes that he had secured. He did not rise from his seat to present the national teacher of the year with her much-deserved award, nor did he allow her to speak.

He wanted to speak to the president, but none of the teachers got the chance.

The teacher had wanted to tell Trump that queer lives matter and anti-LGBTQ policies have a body count. He also wanted to tell the president how the LGBTQ community is hurt by politicians callously attacking our right to love or merely exist,Giannopoulos added.

But herevealed to NPR that Trump was happy for him to pose with the fan for the official photo.Absolutely go for it, he recalled the president saying. Trump said that he looked very stylish with his fan as the teachers gathered around the president, Giannopoulos told Yahoo.

Giannopoulos said when he thinks of the day he met the president, he will not remember the person seated at the desk. Hell remember the students he has taught and the other teachers with him that day, Giannopoulos added including one who presented Trump with letters from her refugee student, pleading with him to hear their voices.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article suggested incorrectly that Trump was unaware the teacher wanted to pose with the fan.

Originally posted here:

Gay Teacher Of The Year Fans LGBTQ Pride In Viral Photo With Donald Trump - HuffPost

And, man, did she have something to say Friday. Here's her full statement on President Donald Trump's latest tweets about the special counsel investigation being led by former FBI Director Bob Mueller:

"I'm growing increasingly concerned that the President will attempt to fire not only Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating possible obstruction of justice, but also Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein who appointed Mueller.

"The message the President is sending through his tweets is that he believes the rule of law doesn't apply to him and that anyone who thinks otherwise will be fired. That's undemocratic on its face and a blatant violation of the President's oath of office.

"First of all, the President has no authority to fire Robert Mueller. That authority clearly lies with the attorney generalor in this case, because the attorney general has recused himself, with the deputy attorney general. Rosenstein testified under oath this week that he would not fire Mueller without good cause and that none exists.

"And second, if the President thinks he can fire Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein and replace him with someone who will shut down the investigation, he's in for a rude awakening. Even his staunchest supporters will balk at such a blatant effort to subvert the law.

"It's becoming clear to me that the President has embarked on an effort to undermine anyone with the ability to bring any misdeeds to light, be that Congress, the media or the Justice Department. The Senate should not let that happen. We're a nation of laws that apply equally to everyone, a lesson the President would be wise to learn."

Just a few lines worth reading again:

* "The message the President is sending through his tweets is that he believes the rule of law doesn't apply to him."

* "If the President thinks he can fire Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein and replace him with someone who will shut down the investigation, he's in for a rude awakening."

* "It's becoming clear to me that the President has embarked on an effort to undermine anyone with the ability to bring any misdeeds to light."

* "We're a nation of laws that apply equally to everyone, a lesson the President would be wise to learn."

Any one of those lines is a 99-mile-an-hour fastball thrown way, way inside. Taken all altogether, it's a statement very clearly designed to send a message to Trump.

That message? Enough! Time to start acting like a president.

To be clear: Feinstein is a Democrat. She represents one of the most Democratic states in the country and risks absolutely nothing, politically speaking, by issuing a statement like this one that blisters Trump.

But she is also one of the institutions in the Senate, having spent the last 25 years in the chamber. Unlike her longtime colleague Barbara Boxer, who retired in 2016, Feinstein is not seen as terribly partisan and generally enjoys strong across-the-aisle relationships.

"Every conversation that I've had with her now that she's ranking member has been not only friendly, but has been productive, and these little heads-to-heads that you see us having when the committee's actually functioning, work things out right then."

In short: Feinstein isn't just a predictable partisan or someone who pops off at the slightest political provocation. This statement is a purposeful attempt to make clear that Trump has crossed a line and that he needs to take one big step back.

My prediction: He won't.

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Dianne Feinstein is done pulling punches when it comes to Donald Trump - CNN

New York Times

Donald Trump, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, 'All Eyez on Me': Your Friday Briefing New York Times Steve Garvey, a former major league star, led a prayer before the congressional baseball game in Washington on Thursday. Credit Al Drago/The New York Times. (Want to get this briefing by email? Here's the sign-up.) Good morning. Here's what you need to ... and more »

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Donald Trump, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, 'All Eyez on Me': Your Friday Briefing - New York Times

"The Fake News Media hates when I use what has turned out to be my very powerful Social Media - over 100 million people! I can go around them," Trump tweeted.

If Trump believes this -- and he certainly seem to -- it shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how the media views the president's Twitter feed and how he employs it.

The reality is this: Every political journalist in the world is absolutely thrilled that Donald Trump not only tweets but does with the frequency and bluntness that he does. NO reporter wants Donald Trump to stop tweeting. Not one.

Trump's Twitter feed gives the political media -- and anyone else who follows him -- a direct look into his thought processes. We know what he is thinking about -- or angry about -- at all times of day. That's absolutely invaluable. It's "The President: Raw and Uncut."

Even as his White House will be excoriating the media for focusing too little on some policy roll-out or another, Trump will drop a series of tweets about the "witch hunt" Russia investigation or complain, as he did yesterday, about why the Justice Department isn't investigating alleged improprieties surrounding Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.

All presidents have private thoughts that sometimes (often?) run counter to the official message the White House is pushing in a given day, week or month. But, no past president has been willing to put those discrepancies on public display in front of the tens of millions of people who follow him on Twitter before Trump.

What sort of reporter would want that pipeline to end?

The people who do want Trump to stop tweeting or to tweet less aren't the media. They're Republicans and Trump loyalists who believe his willingness to tell people exactly what is on his mind at any minute of the day fundamentally undermines the White House's efforts to find some consistent messaging and build the momentum the administration has been sorely lacking to date.

"[Twitter is] a powerful tool, but I do believe that it can be used more effectively to achieve his purpose," New York Rep. Lee Zeldin, a Trump supporter, said on CNN Friday morning. "I don't know the strategy behind, you know, this morning -- this latest tweet you are asking me about. But if there is a bigger strategy that makes sense, I'm all ears."

If you're reading this, Mr. Trump, let me be crystal clear as a card-carrying member of the media: Please keep tweeting. It provides us insight into how you think that we have never had before and may never get again from a president. Period.

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The one big thing Donald Trump gets totally wrong about the media - CNN

The yearning in the character of Donald Trump for dominance and praise is bottomless, a hunger that is never satisfied. Last week, the President gathered his Cabinet for a meeting with no other purpose than to praise him, to note the great honor and blessing of serving such a man as he. Trump nodded with grave self-satisfaction, accepting the serial hosannas as his daily due. But even as the members declared, Pyongyang-style, their everlasting gratitude and fealty to the Great Leader, this concocted dumb show of loyalty only served to suggest how unsustainable it all is.

The reason that this White House staff is so leaky, so prepared to express private anxiety and contempt, even while parading obeisance for the cameras, is that the President himself has so far been incapable of garnering its discretion or respect. Trump has made it plain that he is capable of turning his confused fury against anyone in his circle at any time. In a tweet on Friday morning, Trump confirmed that he is under investigation for firing the F.B.I. director James Comey, but blamed the Deputy Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein, for the legal imbroglio that Trump himself has created. The President has fired a few aides, he has made known his disdain and disappointment at many others, and he will, undoubtedly, turn against more. Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway, Jared Kushner, Jeff Sessions, Sean Spicerwho has not yet felt the lash?

Trumps egotism, his demand for one-way loyalty, and his incapacity to assume responsibility for his own untruths and mistakes were, his biographers make plain, his pattern in business and have proved to be his pattern as President.

Veteran Washington reporters tell me that they have never observed this kind of anxiety, regret, and sense of imminent personal doom among White House staffersnot to this degree, anyway. These troubled aides seem to think that they can help their own standing by turning on those around themand that by retailing information anonymously they will be able to live with themselves after serving a President who has proved so disconnected from the truth and reality.

I thought about Trump and his aides and councillors while reading The Last of the Presidents Men , Bob Woodwards 2015 book about Alexander Butterfield, a career Air Force officer who took a job as an assistant to Richard Nixon. He made the move less for ideological reasons than to indulge a yearning ambition to be in the smoketo be at the locus of power, where decisions are made.

As an undergraduate, at U.C.L.A., Butterfield knew H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, and, after serving in Vietnam and being stationed in Australia, he called on Haldeman, who was Nixons most important assistant. Haldeman made Butterfield his deputy. Butterfield got what every D.C. bureaucrat craves mostaccess. He worked on Nixons schedule, his paper flow, his travel; he offered advice, took orders, no matter how bizarre or transitory. Butterfield could not have been more in the smoke than he was then. He quickly discovered that Nixon was a fantastically weird and solitary manrude, unthoughtful, broiling with resentment against the Eastern lites who had somehow wounded him, be it in his imagination or in fact. Butterfield had to manage Nixons relations with everyone from his Cabinet members to his wife, Pat, who on vacations resided separately from the President. Butterfield carried out Nixons most peculiar orders, whether they involved barring a senior economic adviser from a White House faith service or making sure that Henry Kissinger was no longer seated at state dinners next to the most attractive woman at the occasion. (Nixon, who barely acknowledged, much less touched, his own wife in public, resented Kissingers public, and well-cultivated, image as a Washington sex symbol.)

Butterfield experienced what all aides do, eventually, if they have the constant access; he was witness to the unguarded and, in Nixons case, the most unattractive behavior of a powerful man. Incident after incident revealed Nixons distaste for his fellow human beings, his racism and anti-Semitism, his overpowering personal suspicions, and his sad longings. Nixon, the most anti-social of men, needed a briefing memo just to make it through the pleasantries of a staff birthday party. One evening, Butterfield recounts to Woodward, he sat across from Nixon on a night trip back to the White House from Camp David on Marine One, and watched as Nixon, in one of the more discomfiting passages in the literature of sexual misbehavior, kept patting the bare legs of one of his secretaries, Beverly Kaye:

And hes carrying on this small talk, but still patting her. Because I can see now, Nixon being Nixon, he doesnt quite know how to stop. You know, to stop is an action in itself. So hes pat, pat, patting her. And looking at her. And feelingI can see hes feeling more distressed all the time now about the situation hes got himself into. So he keeps trying to make this small talk, and I can see him saying [to himself], you know, when the small talk is over, what the hell am I going to do? . . . Shes petrified. Shes never had this happen before. The president of the United States is patting her bare legs.

For how long? Woodward asks.

It seems like half the way to Washington but Id say a long time, minutes.

When it appeared, The Last of the Presidents Men did not receive the attention that was paid to some of Woodwards early investigative books, but its intimacy and strangeness are very much worth returning to in the Trumpian momentespecially so if you are blessed with serving the current President. It is instructive.

Butterfield, who is ninety-one and spent dozens of hours with Woodward recounting his experiences in proximity to a President who ran what was essentially a criminal operation from the White House, emerges from the telling as a man of complex motivations. He hardly charged forward in the early days of the scandal to tell what he knew. After Nixons relection, Butterfield left the White House to lead the Federal Aviation Administration. But no matter how hard Butterfield worked to swallow his hurt feelings or to submerge his knowledge of the various enemies lists and the criminal cover-up that took shape all around him during Watergate, no matter how hard he tried to rationalize Nixons venality with his achievements, particularly the diplomatic opening to China, he came to an almost inevitable moment of reckoning.

In February, 1971, Nixon came up with the idea of putting a voice-activated taping system in his offices. Butterfield was charged with the installation. Haldeman told Butterfield that Nixon wanted the system installed on his telephones and in the Oval Office, his office in the Executive Office Building, the Cabinet Room, and the Lincoln Sitting Room. Kissinger was not to know; neither was his senior-most secretary, Rose Mary Woods. Only a few aides and the President were aware that no conversation was now truly confidential. Tiny holes were drilled into the Presidents desktop to make way for the microphones. A set of Sony 800B tape recorders was set up in the White House basement.

It was all for the sake of history, Nixon said. Kennedy and Johnson had taped selectively, but Nixon wanted it all for the recordhis own recordsbut no one was to know. Goddamn it, this cannot get out, Nixon told Butterfield. Mums the word.

In the end, of course, the tapes were Nixons undoing. In July, 1973, when Senate Watergate investigators asked Butterfield point-blank whether the White House taped conversations, Butterfield decided that his loyalty was not to the cesspool of Nixons White House but to the truth. And by confirming what so few knewthat there were tapes of Nixon and his cronies discussing Watergate and its cover-upButterfield helped end a Presidency.

Donald Trump now faces an investigation led by Robert Mueller, late of the F.B.I., and it could last many months. There is hardly any guarantee that the Administration will be found guilty of collusion with Russia, or with Russians, on any score; to predict that is to leap ahead of any publicly available evidence. Nor is there any guarantee, despite the testimony of Comey, and the testimony coming from other top national-security figures, that there will be a charge of obstruction of justice. This is bound to take some time.

But, while Trumps personality is different from Nixons, there is little evidence that the show of bogus loyalty performed last week has any basis in real life. Will Bannon, Spicer, Conway, Sessions, Kushner, and many others who have been battered in one way or another by Trump keep their counsel? Will all of them risk their futures to protect someone whose focus is on himself alone, the rest be damned? Will none of them conclude that they are working for a President whose honesty is on a par with his loyalty to others? The government is already filled with public servants and bureaucrats who have found ways to protest this Presidents actions and describe them to investigators and reporters. Will the inner circle follow? Have they already?

Alexander Butterfield, day after day, would hear Nixon say, Were going to nail those sons of bitches. He heard the lies; he watched the President try to crush his opponents with surveillance and dirty tricks. It disgusted him, but, for a good while, he assumed that the Presidency would endure; it was too powerful an institution to fall. But then momentum toward the truth began to build a wave, as Butterfield called it. He was, all along, ambivalent, torn between loyalty to the Presidentor, at least, to the idea of the Presidencyand a desire to do the right thing. When his time came, though, Butterfield testified.

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Who in the White House Will Turn Against Donald Trump? - The New Yorker