Trump Cabinet Meeting Quotes

Trump’s pick for secretary of state? Rex Tillerson, a figure known and trusted in Moscow, and recipient of the Order of Friendship. National security adviser? Michael Flynn, Putin’s dinner companion and a beneficiary of undeclared Russian fees. Campaign manager? Paul Manafort, longtime confidant to ex-Soviet oligarchs. Foreign policy adviser? Carter Page, an alleged Moscow asset who gave documents to Putin’s spies. Commerce secretary? Wilbur Ross, an entrepreneur with Russia-connected investments. Personal lawyer? Michael Cohen, who sent emails to Putin’s press secretary. Business partner? Felix Sater, son of a Russian American mafia boss. And other personalities, too. It was almost as if Putin had played a role in naming Trump’s cabinet. The U.S. president, of course, had done the choosing. But the constellation of individuals, and their immaculate alignment with Russian interests, formed a discernible pattern, like stars against a clear night sky. A pattern of collusion.

Trump convened his first full cabinet meeting, a now infamous session in which U.S. government officials took turns pledging fealty to their master.

McMaster said he had been completely in the dark about this. The secretary of state had not consulted or even informed him in advance. He had learned from press reports! In a news conference in Qatar, Tillerson had said the agreement “represents weeks of intensive discussions” between the two governments so it had been in the works for a while. Porter said Tillerson had not gone through the policy process at the White House and had not involved the president either. Clearly Tillerson was going off on his own. “It is more loyal to the president,” McMaster said, “to try to persuade rather the circumvent.” He said he carried out direct orders when the president was clear, and felt duty bound to do so as an Army officer. Tillerson in particular did not. “He’s such a prick,” McMaster said. “He thinks he’s smarter than anyone. So he thinks he can do his own thing.” In his long quest to bring order to the chaos, Priebus arranged for each of the key cabinet members to regularly check in. Tillerson came to his office at 5:15 p.m. on Tuesday, July 18. McMaster had not been invited but joined the meeting anyway. He took a seat at the conference table. The national security adviser’s silent presence was ominous and electric. Tell me, Priebus asked Tillerson, how are things going? Are you on track to achieve your primary objectives? How is the relationship between the State Department and the White House? Between you and the president? “You guys in the White House don’t have your act together,” Tillerson said, and the floodgates gushed open. “The president can’t make a decision. He doesn’t know how to make a decision. He won’t make a decision. He makes a decision and then changes his mind a couple of days later.” McMaster broke his silence and raged at the secretary of state. “You don’t work with the White House,” McMaster said. “You never consult me or anybody on the NSC staff. You blow us off constantly.” He cited examples when he tried to set up calls or meetings or breakfasts with Tillerson. “You are off doing your own thing” and communicate directly with the president, Mattis, Priebus or Porter. “But it’s never with the National Security Council,” and “that’s what we’re here to do.” Then he issued his most dramatic charge. “You’re affirmatively seeking to undermine the national security process.” “That’s not true,” Tillerson replied. “I’m available anytime. I talk to you all the time. We just had a conference call yesterday. We do these morning calls three times a week. What are you talking about, H.R.? I’ve worked with you. I’ll work with anybody.” Tillerson continued, “I’ve also got to be secretary of state. Sometimes I’m traveling. Sometimes I’m in a different time zone. I can’t always take your calls.” McMaster said he consulted with the relevant assistant secretaries of state if the positions were filled. “I don’t have assistant secretaries,” Tillerson said, coldly, “because I haven’t picked them, or the ones that I have, I don’t like and I don’t trust and I don’t work with. So you can check with whoever you want. That has no bearing on me.” The rest of the State Department didn’t matter; if you didn’t go through him, it didn’t count.

At 5:21 p.m. Trump tweeted: “General Jim Mattis will be retiring, with distinction, at the end of February… General Mattis was a great help to me in getting allies and other countries to pay their share of military obligations… I greatly thank Jim for his service!” But three days later, Trump said that Mattis would be leaving early, on January 1. At a cabinet meeting the next day, Trump said, “What’s he done for me? How has he done in Afghanistan? Not so good. I’m not happy with what he’s done in Afghanistan and I shouldn’t be happy.” Trump continued, “As you know, President Obama fired him, and essentially so did I.” Later he called Mattis “the world’s most overrated general.” When I asked Trump about Mattis a year later, the president said Mattis was “just a PR guy.” Mattis summarized, “When I was basically directed to do something that I thought went beyond stupid to felony stupid, strategically jeopardizing our place in the world and everything else, that’s when I quit.

Former secretary of defense James Mattis told colleagues he would often get late-night calls from Trump, in which the president fulminated about an issue, often threatening to carry out wildly irresponsible actions. These included, according to a source close to Mattis, the belief that we should immediately attack North Korea (during the early days of his intemperate Twitter campaign against that country). In each of these instances, the cerebral, seasoned Mattis would adopt what became an approach emulated by many in Trump’s cabinet. He would hear out the president’s late-night rant and then, to defuse the issue, promise to think about it and ask to meet the next day to discuss it. Often by then Trump’s “temperature had gone down a few degrees,” said one very senior Trump Pentagon official. “Or at least you could invite other people into the room—the calls late at night were often one on one—and ideally some of them were more rational and would help talk the president off the ledge.