“You are not a good witness.”
Part 2 of the Post on Woodward on Trump:
Gary Cohn kept Trump from yanking the US out of NAFTA by stealing the letter saying “We’re out!” off his desk.
Cohn and Kelly both pretty much hate him.
Woodward illustrates how the dread in Trump’s orbit became all-encompassing over the course of Trump’s first year in office, leaving some staff members and Cabinet members confounded by the president’s lack of understanding about how government functions and his inability and unwillingness to learn.
But, again, who did they think he was? Other than an angry loudmouth?
Last March, John Dowd met with Mueller and his deputy.
Dowd then explained to Mueller and Quarles why he was trying to keep the president from testifying: “I’m not going to sit there and let him look like an idiot. And you publish that transcript, because everything leaks in Washington, and the guys overseas are going to say, ‘I told you he was an idiot. I told you he was a goddamn dumbbell. What are we dealing with this idiot for?’ ”
“John, I understand,” Mueller replied, according to Woodward.
Later that month, Dowd told Trump: “Don’t testify. It’s either that or an orange jumpsuit.”
But Trump, concerned about the optics of a president refusing to testify and convinced that he could handle Mueller’s questions, had by then decided otherwise.
“I’ll be a real good witness,” Trump told Dowd, according to Woodward.
“You are not a good witness,” Dowd replied. “Mr. President, I’m afraid I just can’t help you.”
The next morning, Dowd resigned.
Nobody can help him. Or, apparently, us.
“lack of understanding about how government functions and his inability and unwillingness to learn”
This thing is, this doesn’t phase his supporters because it’s a good description of them as well. It’s probably even part of why they like him – he ‘tells it like it is’ (read: is arrogantly incorrect about the same things they are).
Why would he want to understand how government functions? He wants it to stop doing most of what it’s doing. Except for the military, and he has all the best generals to advise him there.
I wonder if he’ll be cranking up the twitter machine? Who am I kidding, he’ll be in major meltdown mode now, and every single person quoted in those parts he’s had read to him will be getting both barrels once he’s calm enough to get his tiny, tweet-typing thumbs under some sort of control.
By many accounts, George W. Bush was a bit smarter than the bumbling, homey, malapropism-toting doofus that he purported to be. It’s not that unreasonable that many career government staffers might think that, like so many politicians before him, a fair amount of Fuckface von Clownstick’s angry loudmouth asshole act was… an act.
I wonder if this kind of thing has actually helped the US in the long run. Getting rid of Trump, if it doesn’t need the help of a large number of Republicans, will go a lot faster the sooner that large numbers of Republicans decide to help. If the aides surrounding Trump had let him fuck up bigger and sooner, there would be more support for getting rid of him than there is now, and it’s possible that the total amount of damange he could do to the country would be less.