War Bob Woodward Quotes

...Obama said, 'I welcome debate among my team, but I won't tolerate division.

Sometimes,doing nothing is the best reaction.

Finally, the president added, 'The American people are idealists, but they also want their leaders to be realistic...

Obama had campaigned against Bush's ideas and approaches. But, Donilon, for one, thought that Obama had perhaps underestimated the extent to which he had inherited George W. Bush's presidency - the apparatus, personnel and mind-set of war making.

Sometimes, the more you protect your force, the less secure you may be. Sometimes, the more force is used, the less effective it is.

Bradlee had been recruited with the idea that the New York Times need nod exercise absolute preeminence in American journalism. That vision had suffered a setback in 1971 when the Times published the Pentagon Papers. Though the Post was the second news organization to obtain a copy of the secret study of the Vietnam war, Bradlee noted that 'there was blood on every word' of the Times' initial stories. Bradlee could convey his opinions with a single disgusted glance at an indolent reporter or editor. -- Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward

McChrystal had organized a jaw-dropping counterterrorism campaign inside Iraq, but the tactical successes did not translate into a strategic victory. This was why counterinsurgency - blanketing the population in safety and winning them over - was necessary.

When Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un amped up the rhetoric, he was warned, “Twitter could get us into a war.

Russia had privately warned Mattis that if there was a war in the Baltics, Russia would not hesitate to use tactical nuclear weapons against NATO.

Biden’s next words would stick forever with Klain: “This guy just isn’t really an American president.

During discussions in his office, Bradlee frequently picked up an undersize sponge-rubber basketball from the table and tossed it toward a hoop attached by suction cups to the picture window. The gesture was indicative both of the editor's short attention span and of a studied informality. There was an alluring combination of aristocrat and commoner about Bradlee: Boston Brahmin, Harvard, the World War II Navy, press attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Paris, police-beat reporter, news-magazine political reporter and Washington bureau chief of Newsweek. -- Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward

President Trump had secretly sent Putin a bunch of Abbott Point of Care Covid test machines for his personal use as the virus spread rapidly through Russia.

Many on Twitter wondered if Trump had violated the platform’s terms of service by threatening nuclear war.

the Trump election had rekindled the divide in the country. There was a more hostile relationship with the media. The culture wars were reinvigorated. There was a racist tinge. Trump accelerated it.

Biden had later claimed during that meeting he said to Putin, “I’m looking into your eyes and I don’t think you have a soul.” Putin smiled and told Biden, through an interpreter, “We understand one another.

Finally, I will forever be grateful to W. Mark Felt. It was a tug-of-war at times, but he came through, providing the kind of guidance, information and understanding that were essential to the Watergate story.

Overall, Hamas killed more than 1,200 Israelis and dragged more than 240 hostages and back across the border into underground tunnels in Gaza. It was the deadliest attack in Jewish history since the Holocaust.

Donald Trump is not only the wrong many for the presidency, he is unfit to lead the country. Trump was far worse than Richard Nixon, the provably criminal president. As I have pointed out, Trump governed by fear and rage. And indifference to the public and national interest. Trump was the most reckless and impulsive president in American history and is demonstrating the very same character as a presidential candidate in 2024.

Almost everything about Afghanistan was troubling Mullen. As Obama was giving intense focus on the war, Mullen was feeling more personal responsibility. Afghanistan had been marked by 'incredible neglect,' he told some of his officers. 'It's almost like you're on a hunger strike and you're on the 50th day, and all of a sudden you're going to try to feed this person. Well, they're not going to eat very quickly. I mean, every organ in the body is collapsing. The under-resourcing of Afghanistan was much deeper and wider than even I thought. It wasn't just about troops. It was intellectually, it was strategically, it was physically, culturally.

I'm done doing this!' Obama said, finally erupting. 'We've all agreed on a plan. And we're all going to stick to that plan. I haven't agreed to anything beyond that.' The 30,000 was a 'hard cap,' he said forcefully. 'I don't want enablers to be used as wiggle room. The easy thing for me to do - politically - would actually be to say no' to the 30,000. Then he gestured out the Oval Office windows, across the Potomac, in the direction of the Pentagon. Referring to Gates and the uniformed military, he said. 'They think it's the opposite. I'd be perfectly happy -' He stopped mid-sentence. 'Nothing would make Rahm happier than if I said no to the 30,000.' There was some subdued laughter. 'Rahm would tell me it'd be much easier to do what I want to do by saying no,' the president said. He could then focus on the domestic agenda that he wanted to be the heart of his presidency. The military did not understand. 'Politically, what these guys don't get is it'd be a lot easier for me to go out and give a speech saying, 'You know what? The American people are sick of this war, and we're going to get out of there.

You need to remember we’re a nuclear power. As powerful as you. You Americans think you won the Cold War. You did not win the Cold War. We never fought that war. We could have, but we didn’t.’ And that put chills up my spine.

The second high-profile Trump critis was retired General Stanley McChrystal, who had commanded U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan a decade earlier. McChrystal had recently appeared on CNN and called Trump immoral and dishonest.

In the 2020 election, Trump received 74 million votes, more than any presidential candidate in history with the exception of Joe Biden, who won 81 million votes. Biden secured the Electoral College with 306 votes to Trump's 232.

The vice president laughed. “That might be the only reason that he still really is comfortable with me to a point,” Harris said, “because he knows that I’m the only person around who knows how to properly pronounce the word motherfucker.

Russia had privately warned Mattis that if there was a war in the Baltics, Russia would not hesitate to use tactical nuclear weapons against NATO. Mattis, with agreement from Dunford, began saying that Russia was an existential threat to the United States.

Many of Trump's former top cabinet officers and aides have said publicly that Trump should not be president again and should not even be on the ballot. Those include: former vice president MIke Pence; former secretary of defense Mark Esper; former chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Mark Milley; former national security adviser John Bolton; former secretary of defense James Mattis; former director of national intelligence Dan Coats, former chief of staff John Kelley; former chief of staf Mick Mulvaney; and former secretary of state Rex Tillerson.

Porter saw it from up close—perhaps as close as anyone on the staff except Hope Hicks—the Trump election had rekindled the divide in the country. There was a more hostile relationship with the media. The culture wars were reinvigorated. There was a racist tinge. Trump accelerated it.

Maybe that would be less crucial under Obama, Podesta thought, because Obama's approach was so intellectual. He compared Obama to Spock from Star Trek. The president-elect wanted to put his own ideas to work. He was unsentimental and capable of being ruthless. Podesta was not sure that Obama felt anything, especially in his gut. He intellectualized and then charted the path forward, essentially picking up the emotions of others and translating them into ideas. He had thus created a different kind of politics, seizing the moment of 2008 and driving it to a political victory.

The FBL later estimated that over 2,000 people entered the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Five people died, 172 police officers were injured, and more than 500 were arrested. The cost of the camage to the historic Capitol building exceeded $2.7 million. It took President Trump 187 minutes to post a tweet telling his supporters to "go home.

We need to know if the commander in chief is fully with us or not,” Mattis said. “We can’t fight a half-assed war anymore.” In order for the military to succeed, Mattis needed Trump to be all-in on the strategy. “I’m tired of hearing that we have to do this or that to protect our homeland or to ensure our national security,” Trump said.

Mattis showed signs that he was tired of the disparaging of the military and intelligence capability. And of Trump’s unwillingness to comprehend their significance. “We’re doing this in order to prevent World War III,” Mattis said. He was calm but stark. It was a breathtaking statement, a challenge to the president, suggesting he was risking nuclear war. Time stopped for more than one in attendance.

Trump lashed out, suggesting that McCain had taken the coward’s way out of Vietnam as a prisoner of war. He said that as a Navy pilot during the Vietnam War McCain, whose father was Admiral John McCain, the Pacific commander, had been offered and taken early release, leaving other POWs behind. “No, Mr. President,” Mattis said quickly, “I think you’ve got it reversed.” McCain had turned down early release and been brutally tortured and held five years in the Hanoi Hilton. “Oh, okay,” Trump said.

During an hour-long conversation mid-flight, he laid out his theory of the war. First, Jones said, the United States could not lose the war or be seen as losing the war. 'If we're not successful here,' Jones said, 'you'll have a staging base for global terrorism all over the world. People will say the terrorists won. And you'll see expressions of these kinds of things in Africa, South America, you name it. Any developing country is going to say, this is the way we beat [the United States], and we're going to have a bigger problem.' A setback or loss for the United States would be 'a tremendous boost for jihadist extremists, fundamentalists all over the world' and provide 'a global infusion of morale and energy, and these people don't need much.' Jones went on, using the kind of rhetoric that Obama had shied away from, 'It's certainly a clash of civilizations. It's a clash of religions. It's a clash of almost concepts of how to live.' The conflict is that deep, he said. 'So I think if you don't succeed in Afghanistan, you will be fighting in more places. 'Second, if we don't succeed here, organizations like NATO, by association the European Union, and the United Nations might be relegated to the dustbin of history.' Third, 'I say, be careful you don't over-Americanize the war. I know that we're going to do a large part of it,' but it was essential to get active, increased participation by the other 41 nations, get their buy-in and make them feel they have ownership in the outcome. Fourth, he said that there had been way too much emphasis on the military, almost an overmilitarization of the war. The key to leaving a somewhat stable Afghanistan in a reasonable time frame was improving governance and the rule of law, in order to reduce corruption. There also needed to be economic development and more participation by the Afghan security forces. It sounded like a good case, but I wondered if everyone on the American side had the same understanding of our goals. What was meant by victory? For that matter, what constituted not losing? And when might that happen? Could there be a deadline?

In an ope-ed in The Washington Post in February 2020, Navy Admiral William McRaven, who was the U.S. Special Operations commander who oversaw the raid that killed Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden a decade earlier said: As Americans we should be frightened - deeply afraid for the future of the nation. When good men and women can't speak the truth, when facts are inconvenient, when integrity and character no longer matter, when presidential ego and self preservation are more important than national security - then there is nothing left to stop the triumph of evil.

Biden could be much more indignant and profane in private than he appeared in public. One Saturday afternoon during his first year as president, Biden had called a friend from the Oval Office. “I have spent almost five hours going back and forth, back and forth on the phone with two of the biggest fucking assholes in the world—Bibi Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas,” he said, referring to the prime minister of Israel and the Palestinian leader. “Two of the biggest fucking assholes in the world,” Biden repeated with emphasis. When Air Force One landed at Ben Gurion Airport the morning of October 18, Netanyahu was waiting for Biden on the tarmac. Biden descended the steps of the plane, aviator

In 2015, Trump had made one of his most cruel and thoughtless comments about McCain. “He’s not a war hero. He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.” Graham knew McCain hated Trump. He knew that in Washington, you had to deal with people who hated you. But he did not impart that particular piece of advice to the president. “My chief job is to keep John McCain calm,” Graham remarked. Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell was “scared to death of John McCain. Because John knows no boundaries. He’ll pop our leadership as much as he’ll pop their leadership. And I will, at times, but mine’s more calculated. John’s just purely John. He’s just the world’s nicest man. And a media whore like me. Anyway, he’s a much nicer guy than I am.

Mattis and Gary Cohn had several quiet conversations about The Big Problem: The president did not understand the importance of allies overseas, the value of diplomacy or the relationship between the military, the economy and intelligence partnerships with foreign governments. They met for lunch at the Pentagon to develop an action plan. One cause of the problem was the president’s fervent belief that annual trade deficits of about $500 billion harmed the American economy. He was on a crusade to impose tariffs and quotas despite Cohn’s best efforts to educate him about the benefits of free trade. How could they convince and, in their frank view, educate the president? Cohn and Mattis realized they were nowhere close to persuading him. The Groundhog Day–like meetings on trade continued and the acrimony only grew. “Let’s get him over here to the Tank,” Mattis proposed. The Tank is the Pentagon’s secure meeting room for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It might focus him. “Great idea,” Cohn said. “Let’s get him out of the White House.” No press; no TVs; no Madeleine Westerhout, Trump’s personal secretary, who worked within shouting distance of the Oval Office. There wouldn’t even be any looking out the window, because there were no windows in the Tank. Getting Trump out of his natural environment could do the trick. The idea was straight from the corporate playbook—a retreat or off-site meeting. They would get Trump to the Tank with his key national security and economic team to discuss worldwide strategic relations. Mattis and Cohn agreed. Together they would fight Trump on this. Trade wars or disruptions in the global markets could savage and undermine the precarious stability in the world. The threat could spill over to the military and intelligence community. Mattis couldn’t understand why the U.S. would want to pick a fight with allies, whether it was NATO, or friends in the Middle East, or Japan—or particularly with South Korea.

A word of explanation about how the information in this book was obtained, evaluated and used. This book is designed to present, as best my reporting could determine, what really happened. The core of this book comes from the written record—National Security Council meeting notes, personal notes, memos, chronologies, letters, PowerPoint slides, e-mails, reports, government cables, calendars, transcripts, diaries and maps. Information in the book was supplied by more than 100 people involved in the Afghanistan War and national security during the first 18 months of President Barack Obama’s administration. Interviews were conducted on “background,” meaning the information could be used but the sources would not be identified by name. Many sources were interviewed five or more times. Most allowed me to record the interviews, which were then transcribed. For several sources, the combined interview transcripts run more than 300 pages. I have attempted to preserve the language of the main characters and sources as much as possible, using their words even when they are not directly quoted, reflecting the flavor of their speech and attitudes. Many key White House aides were interviewed in-depth. They shared meeting notes, important documents, recollections of what happened before, during and after meetings, and assisted extensively with their interpretations. Senior and well-placed military, intelligence and diplomatic officials also provided detailed recollections, read from notes or assisted with documents. Since the reporting was done over 18 months, many interviews were conducted within days or even hours after critical discussions. This often provided a fresher and less-calculated account. Dialogue comes mostly from the written record, but also from participants, usually more than one. Any attribution of thoughts, conclusions or feelings to a person was obtained directly from that person, from notes or from a colleague whom the person told. Occasionally, a source said mid-conversation that something was “off-the-record,” meaning it could not be used unless the information was obtained elsewhere. In many cases, I was able to get the information elsewhere so that it could be included in this book. Some people think they can lock up and prevent publication of information by declaring it “off-the-record” or that they don’t want to see it in the book. But inside any White House, nearly everyone’s business and attitudes become known to others. And in the course of multiple, extensive interviews with firsthand sources about key decision points in the war, the role of the players became clear. Given the diversity of sources, stakes and the lives involved, there is no way I could write a sterilized or laundered version of this story. I interviewed President Obama on-the-record in the Oval Office for one hour and 15 minutes on Saturday, July 10, 2

Mattis was a student of historian Barbara Tuchman’s book The Guns of August about the outbreak of World War I. “He’s obsessed with August 1914,” one official said, “and the idea that you take actions, military actions, that are seen as prudent planning, and the unintended consequences are you can’t get off the war train.” A momentum to war builds, “and you just can’t stop it.

K [Kissinger] called from New York all disturbed because he felt someone had been getting to the P [President] on Vietnam... Henry's concerned that the P's looking for a way to bug out and he thinks that would be a disaster now.

The White House argument would be strong. Ziegler and St. Clair would pound away at the ghastly spectacle of a President on trial in a courtroom. There seemed to be some reasonableness to the position they would probably take. What would the President do if someone started a nuclear war - ask for a recess?

Men who take up arms against one another in public war do not cease on this account to be moral beings responsible to one another and to God.

One question was: Would you vote for someone you like but don’t agree with his policies, or would you vote for someone you don’t like but you like his policies? “One hundred percent said, I’ll vote for the guy I don’t like, but like his policies. One thousand to zero.” Whether true or not, it seemed to be his strong view. Here was the paradox, according to Parscale. Trump believed “presence is so important. He’d say it’s probably more important how I look when I give a speech than the speech I give.” Parscale added a corollary: “You get a picture with the president of China. It’s more important than whatever you did there” in the meeting. The average voter would think, “Oh, the president’s in China. I feel safe. We’re not going to war with them.” As Parscale described it, Trump had a power to persuade that is almost mystical.

Smith liked to think of Donald Trump as a hundred-year flood in American democracy. But he told colleagues there was nothing Congress could put into law to protect the country if a lunatic wound up in the White House. The war-making power was ceded to the president as commander in chief. The only power Congress had, in a practical sense, was to cut off the money. He believed the system for controlling the use of nuclear weapons was vulnerable.

Quiet intelligence sharing was not proving persuasive and that was dangerous when faced with an adversary like Russia that was so highly skilled in the art of disinformation. It gave Putin an opportunity to divide public opinion using carefully crafted pretexts and lies to explain away an invasion.

U.S. intelligence showed that Russia planned to create concentration camps in the Ukrainian cities and towns it occupied to “filter out” civilians who would not succumb to Russian rule.

It was clear to Merkel that Putin had spent a lot of his time in isolation just digging around in the archives, taking things out, studying ancient maps. Taking Ukraine had become kind of a fever dream during his Covid isolation. But the fever didn’t pass. It didn’t break.

More than 2,400 Ukrainian civilians were killed in Mariupol. More than 450 civilians were massacred in Bucha with clear evidence of execution: hands tied behind backs, gunshots to the head, slit throats. In Irpin, more than 290 civilians were found dead—many from indiscriminate Russian fire or execution. The missile strikes in crowded urban centers were at the busiest time of the day. Putin was also responsible for the mass abduction of at least 6,000 Ukrainian children, taken from occupied territories like Mariupol, Kherson and Kharkiv and adopted out to Russian families.

This is genius,” Trump said during an interview on a conservative radio show the next day, February 22, at Mar-a-Lago, praising Putin’s move to declare certain Ukrainian regions independent.

Putin had long lamented the breakup of the Soviet Union, which he called the greatest catastrophe of the 20th century. Ukraine’s lands, Putin believed, were “the cradle of Russia.

This cavalier attitude about nuclear weapons and impulsive, combative diplomacy terrified Trump’s national security advisers.

Based on my reporting, Trump’s language and conduct has at times presented risks to national security—both during his presidency and afterward. Many of Trump’s former top cabinet officers and aides have said publicly that Trump should not be president again and should not even be on the ballot. Those include: former vice president Mike Pence; former secretary of defense Mark Esper; former chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Mark Milley; former national security adviser John Bolton; former secretary of defense James Mattis; former director of national intelligence Dan Coats; former chief of staff John Kelly; former chief of staff Mick Mulvaney; and former secretary of state Rex Tillerson.

Kahl saw the essay as another showcase of Putin’s imperial ambition. “He dreams of reconstituting a Russian empire and there is no Russian empire that doesn’t include Ukraine,” he said. “It’s always weird to read things like that as an American,” Kahl added, “because our history doesn’t go back very far. So the notion that countries would give a shit about what happened 9,000 years ago or whatever or, you know, 2,000 years ago or 1,000. Americans don’t think like that.

Israel was not going to kill every Hamas person and

There was a “Lion in Winter” quality to Biden. An aging leader convinced he was still vital and able to lead, unsure anyone else could assume the mantle as well as he could at a perilous time.

Take a look at all the things that I’ve done,” Trump declared. “Obama sent them pillows. I sent them tank-busters.” President Obama had provided Ukraine with more than $120 million in security assistance but refused to send lethal weapons. Trump was the first president to approve the sale of U.S. lethal weapons to Ukraine, including Javelin antitank missiles.

Dear Ukrainians,” Zelensky said in his inauguration address. “After my election win, my six-year-old son said: ‘Dad, they say on TV that Zelensky is the president…. So, it means that I am the President too?!’ At the time, it sounded funny, but later I realized that it was true. Because each of us is the president. “From now on, each of us is responsible for the country that we leave to our children,” Zelensky said. “Each of us, in his place, can do everything for the prosperity of Ukraine.” He raised his first priority: a cease-fire in the Donbas where Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian forces had been fighting since Putin’s 2014 invasion. “I have been often asked: What price are you ready to pay for the cease-fire? It’s a strange question,” Zelensky said. “What price are you ready to pay for the lives of your loved ones? I can assure that I’m ready to pay any price to stop the deaths of our heroes. I’m definitely not afraid to make difficult decisions and I’m ready to lose my fame, my ratings, and if need be without any hesitation, my position to bring peace, as long as we do not give up our territories. “History is unfair,” Zelensky added. “We are not the ones who have started this war. But we are the ones who have to finish it. “I really do not want you to hang my portraits on your office walls. Because a president is not an icon and not an idol. A president is not a portrait. Hang pictures of your children. And before you make any decision, look into their eyes,” he said. “And finally,” Zelensky concluded, “all my life I tried to do all I could so that Ukrainians laughed. That was my mission. Now I will do all I can so that Ukrainians at least do not cry anymore.

When I interviewed Trump at Mar-a-Lago, Florida, on December 30, 2019, about his impeachment, Trump said: “There’s nobody that’s tougher than me. Nobody’s tougher than me. You asked me about impeachment. I’m under impeachment, and you said you just act like you just won the fucking race. Nixon was in a corner with his thumb in his mouth. Bill Clinton took it very, very hard. I just do things, okay? I do what I want.

Trump’s war was the coronavirus pandemic and his performance revealed his character. These interviews showed a man with no fidelity to the truth, fixated on re-election and unequipped to deal with a genuine crisis.

Trump described his strategy of refusing to pay the property violations he received from inspectors until they disappeared or forgot about them. “From day one, I said fuck them,” Trump said of the inspectors.

But Biden drew the line on the kinds of weapons he was prepared to send. He would not go too big or too powerful. If Russia invaded and Ukraine fell in three to five days, the president did not want top-of-the-line American military technology falling into Russian hands. After the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the images of the Taliban brandishing U.S. weapons and equipment provided to the Afghan military still burned.

It was August 24, 2021, the 30th anniversary of Ukraine’s independence from the Soviet Union. President Zelensky, who previously had criticized military parades, decided it was time to send Putin a message.

Trump was warned by his national security advisers that the virus was deadly and a major threat to the country but he never developed a plan to respond. He did not know how to use his extraordinary executive power to prioritize saving American lives. Through defiant pronouncements, he downplayed and deflected any responsibility for handling it. There was no compassion. No courage.

Lavrov denied any invasion was planned. The U.S. intelligence later found that Lavrov still was not fully informed of what Putin had in store. Blinken almost felt sorry for Lavrov. He had become a mouthpiece. It was sad someone so senior and with such longevity was not clued in, making the attempt at diplomacy pointless.

The secretary’s top advisers who traveled with him and attended many of his meetings reported a common theme: former president Trump’s “Article 5 saber rattling” over four years was causing many NATO allies to question if the U.S. would actually show up when it mattered. The nervousness in the room was palpable.

He is “pretty smart,” Trump said of Putin during a Florida fundraiser that evening, assessing the invasion like a real estate deal rather than a former president. “He’s taken over a country for $2 worth of sanctions,” Trump said, “really a vast, vast location, a great piece of land with a lot of people—and just walking right in.

It was a cornerstone belief of Biden’s foreign policy that America’s presence in Afghanistan was a classic case of mission creep. Too many troops for an unclear purpose.

Listen to me, boss,” Biden said. “Maybe I’ve been around this town for too long, but one thing I know is when these generals are trying to box in a new president.” He leaned in toward Obama and stage-whispered, “Don’t let them jam you.” Obama had been rolled and fed “bullshit” by his military generals, who in Biden’s view had executed a tragic power play against a young, inexperienced president. The initial U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 had been intended to destroy Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda terrorist group responsible for the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington,

Admiral Whitworth was in Washington, D.C., standing beside Chairman Milley and Defense Secretary Austin when the last plane left Afghanistan. A trio who had served together in Afghanistan all those years before. “I’ll treasure forever our being there together

Chairman, you’re not going to believe what I’m about to show you,” said Admiral Frank Whitworth, bursting into General Milley’s office one morning a few weeks after the Afghanistan withdrawal. “I think we’ve got some indications that could change the rest of, certainly your chairmanship,” he said. New pieces of intelligence were coming in that suggested Russia was planning a large-scale military attack on Ukraine. The warning was not singular but multifaceted. Milley and Whitworth were thunderstruck. “And by a nuclear nation,” Admiral Whitworth said. “You’re talking about by a nuclear nation. Conquest by a nuclear nation.

I’m done,” Trump said, cutting her off. “I’m starting my own party.” McDaniel balked. “You cannot do that,” McDaniel implored Trump on the phone. “If you do, we will lose forever.” “This isn’t their Republican Party anymore. This is Donald Trump’s Republican Party,” Trump’s eldest son, Don Jr., had declared onstage at the “Save America” rally on January 6. “Exactly. You lose forever without me,” Trump snapped at McDaniel. “This is what Republicans deserve for not sticking with me.” He wanted to take down the Republican Party. The Republican National Committee leadership would later make clear to Trump’s advisers that the former president’s lust for revenge would hurt not only his legacy but his finances. The Republican Party threatened to cease paying Trump’s legal bills and destroy the value of his campaign’s email list that contained 40 million Trump voters. Trump had been selling the list to other Republican candidates. If he tried to use it they would give it away for free. Trump backed down.

Zelensky, who became president in 2019, was a new guy on the political scene. Trump was still trying to feel Zelensky out. So was Putin, Kellogg believed. “To him, Putin, Trump was an unknown,” Kellogg said. “Hell, we didn’t know how Trump would react at times. “Trump was basically Jekyll and Hyde.

In the White House, Director for Intelligence Programs Maher Bitar reviewed intel reports that Russia planned to stage an explosion in eastern Ukraine and claim Ukraine was responsible. Russia would say the Ukrainian government had killed ethnic Russians and then move into Ukraine under the false pretext of rescuing them. The Russian plot even talked about hiring actors who could play mourners at a funeral.

Johnson, a member of the British Conservative Party and the product of prestigious Eton and Oxford, found the conversation with Putin “very creepy,” later confiding to an associate that the Russian autocrat was a “small, puckish, lowlife.

Putin was not a fan of the Soviet Union,” Kahl said, “but he still saw the collapse of the Soviet Union as the biggest crime of the 20th century and believed that the Russians had been serially stabbed in the back since then.

When Admiral Whitworth was ready to move from his two-star role into a three-star position, Milley stepped in and personally petitioned the Pentagon to make the J2 intelligence post into a three-star role so General Milley could keep Whitworth alongside him. Now both felt the sting of Kabul’s swift fall. For months they had chewed on tabletop exercises, tweaking preparations, and been briefed on the latest intelligence. They had seen a degradation in the ability of the Afghans to defend themselves, but not how swiftly the collapse would be.

Blinken did not want to believe what the Russians were contemplating could be serious. But Biden did not want to be surprised by Putin again. Surprise was a weapon that gave an immediate battlefield advantage to the aggressor. The president didn’t want to start out on the back foot this time.

Putin would not stop at Ukraine, Biden was convinced of that. The Ukraine war was now a fight for freedom and freedom loving nations everywhere. Russia had displayed shocking ineptitude in the opening hours and days of the war, piercing the mythology that the Russian army was a formidable, super-capable fighting force.

Even in 1989, Trump’s character was focused on winning, fighting and surviving. “And the only way you do that,” he said, “is instinct. “If people know you’re a folder,” he said, “if people know that you’re going to be weak, they’re going to go after you.” Trump said it was “a whole presentation. It’s a way of presenting. “You’ve got to know your audience and by the way, for some people be a killer, for some people be all candy. For some people be different. For some people both.” Killer, candy, or both. That’s Donald Trump.

Russia would occupy 18 percent of Ukraine. “That will trap 100,000 or 200,000 Russian troops in Ukraine for a long, long time, occupying that part of the country.

What am I missing? If there was something really wrong with Biden’s assessment of Putin, the president wanted to know. Hill found Biden’s approach refreshing. Usually consulting an expert was a paint-by-numbers exercise for most presidents—a formality without real purpose other than so the president could say they had talked to experts.

The last time she had been in the Roosevelt Room, President Trump had spent the entire briefing glowering at a picture of Teddy Roosevelt’s Nobel Peace Prize on display, unable to concentrate. “Trump hated it,” Hill thought. Did he think it was unfair? Did he think he deserved his own?

I am not sending U.S. troops to Ukraine,” Biden said to Sullivan as the two sat alone in the Oval Office. This was his firm position, his red line not to be crossed—no American troops. U.S. troops in Vietnam had led to catastrophe. The same problem in Afghanistan when Biden as vice president had unsuccessfully opposed adding 30,000 troops.

The psychological dynamic in play was that Zelensky did not want to signal that a full Russian invasion was going to happen because it would create a self-fulfilling prophecy of the Ukrainian economy and potentially the government collapsing.

Carl asked, who are your greatest enemies? “Well, I hate to say because then you’re just going to go and interview ’em. I hate playing the role of a critic.” Trump in fact loved it.

Two months earlier, Donald Trump had lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden. But he rejected the loss. Instead, he said it was “rigged,” “a fraud on the American public,” and “stolen.” Even now, 35 years after our interview, Trump was convinced any loss—even a presidential election loss—could be brushed aside if he simply didn’t fold.

Insecurity and confidence are two sides of the same coin with Putin, Haines said. “He can be insecure, he can also be somebody who believes that he’s the only person that can restore Russia to its former glory.

We will never allow our historical territories and people close to us living there to be used against Russia,” Putin warned. “And to those who will undertake such an attempt, I would like to say this way they will destroy their own country.” For CIA director Bill Burns, who had served as ambassador to Moscow from 2005 to 2008, the manifesto was reminiscent of many of his conversations with Putin over the years. “There was nothing really new in it,” Burns believed. Some of it is dressing up a conviction which is mostly at its core about power and what Russia believes it is entitled to do, he said. Then you dress it up with a lot of history—selectively.

There are those who would say we should have stayed indefinitely for years on end,” Biden said. “Why don’t we just keep doing what we were doing? Why did we have to change anything?” Biden shifted blame onto Trump. “The fact is: Everything had changed. My predecessor had made a deal with the Taliban. When I came into office, we faced a deadline—May 1. The Taliban onslaught was coming. “To those asking for a third decade of war in Afghanistan, I ask: What is the vital national interest? In my view, we only have one: to make sure Afghanistan can never be used again to launch an attack on our homeland.

The next morning she came out to find the puzzle, about 30 pieces, had been beautifully completed. “Pretty standard of Russian intelligence services,” Woods said. “They want to scare you: We can do this anytime we want.” There were other occasions they found candelabras turned upside down. “We weren’t fazed by it,” Woods said. “We were quite amused.

In the President’s Daily Brief every morning Biden was presented with an extraordinary intelligence trove on what the Russians were visibly doing with their military forces, but also what the Russians were talking and thinking about doing with those forces. Putin’s ultimate intentions remained unclear. There was an unsettling sense of déjà vu. Biden had been vice president and Blinken was President Obama’s deputy national security adviser when Russian forces swiftly annexed Crimea in southern Ukraine and seized a portion of the Donbas in 2014. Obama and their team had failed to spot Putin’s brazen land grab for what it was and adequately push back on it in time. It had been an easy win for Putin, with few lasting negative ramifications for Russia.

Donald Trump is not only the wrong man for the presidency, he is unfit to lead the country. Trump was far worse than Richard Nixon, the provably criminal president. As I have pointed out, Trump governed by fear and rage. And indifference to the public and national interest. Trump was the most reckless and impulsive president in American history and is demonstrating the very same character as a presidential candidate in 2024.

The legacy of the Biden presidency will be the core national security team that he built and kept in place for nearly four years. They brought decades of experience as well as basic human decency. War shows the traditional and novel ways Biden and his core team pursued an intelligence-driven foreign policy to warn the world that war was coming in Ukraine, to supply Ukraine with the weapons they need to defend themselves against Russia, and to try to tamp down escalations in the Israel-Gaza war.

As this book shows, there were failures and mistakes. The full story is, of course, not yet known. But based on the evidence available now, I believe President Biden and this team will be largely studied in history as an example of steady and purposeful leadership.

Ukraine had fought the David and Goliath of battles and held Russia off against all of their expectations. But U.S. intel reports to Biden showed that Putin believed time and the size of Russia’s army were on his side.

Trump idolized Putin, Hill believed, and that made him extremely vulnerable to manipulation. “He had a very fragile ego,” Hill said of Trump. “When you’re the president of the United States, it becomes a fatal flaw, because President Trump couldn’t disassociate or disentangle himself from many of the issues that were the critical ones to address. So, when people were concerned about Russian influence in the United States election, he only thought about how that affected him.

Without getting into too much detail,” Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said in a public briefing on January 14, “we do have information that indicates that Russia is already working actively to create a pretext for a potential invasion. “We’ve seen this kind of thing before out of Russia,” Kirby said. “When there isn’t an actual crisis to suit their needs, they’ll make one up.

You show by where you go and by the use of your time what’s most important.

And then, after publication of Bob Woodward’s book Obama’s Wars

impish