#fear book

[deadpresidents]

The American economy overall is in okay shape, (then-Goldman Sachs president Gary) Cohn told Trump (during the transition), but it was ready to experience a growth explosion if certain actions were taken. To achieve this, the economy needed tax reform and the removal of the shackles of overregulation.

Cohn knew this was what Trump wanted to hear. Then the New York City Democrat told the president-elect something he did not want to hear. We’re a trade-based economy, he said. Free, fair and open trade was essential. Trump had campaigned against international trade deals.

Second, the United States is an immigration center to the world. “We’ve got to continue to have open borders,” Cohn said. The employment picture was so favorable that the United States would run out of workers soon. So immigration had to continue. “We have many jobs in this country that Americans won’t do.”

Next, Cohn repeated what everyone was saying: Interest rates were going to go up over the foreseeable future.

I agree, Trump said. “We should just go borrow a lot of money right now, hold it, and then sell it and make money.”

Cohn was astounded at Trump’s lack of basic understanding. He tried to explain. If you as the federal government borrow money through issuing bonds, you are increasing the U.S. deficit.

What do you mean? Trump asked. Just run the presses -- print money.

You don’t get to do it that way, Cohn said. We have huge deficits and they matter.

---

(Later in the same meeting between President-elect Trump and Goldman Sachs president Gary Cohn, who would eventually join Trump’s White House as Director of the National Economic Council:)

Trump returned to printing money. “We’ll just borrow,” he said, enamored with the idea of heading the federal government, which had the best credit rating in the world, so they could borrow at the lowest interest rate.

Cohn didn’t mention a report that had come out during the campaign which said the Trump Organization’s business credit score was a 19 out of 100, below the national average by 30 points, and that it could have difficulty borrowing money.

You can’t just print money, Cohn said.

“Why not? Why not?”

Congress had a debt ceiling which set a cap on how much money the federal government could borrow, and it was legally binding. It was clear that Trump did not understand the way the U.S. government debt cycle balance sheet worked.

-- Bob Woodward, Fear: Trump in the White House

[pretentious-blog2]

The ‘Gone’ Series by Michael Grant

I’d like to begin by mentioning how I don’t believe that this series has received the recognition it deserves. The series is is a dystopian, science fiction series, which takes place in a Californian town. 

A brief summary, without giving too much away:

One second, all of the residents of Perdido Beach were there. In the next second, all residents above the age of fifteen had disappeared and a giant barrier is created, not allowing anyone in, or out of the area. The main protagonist, Sam Temple, and his group of friends try to keep everyone safe and everything in order, especially when the wealthy children from a nearby private school arrive. Some of the youths show interesting capabilities whilst others just try to help as they can. Of course, chaos ensues. Devastating revelations are made, and dark forces work in the background. 

This series is truly one of my favourite series, and is what I believe prompted my interest in science fiction, and dystopian/post-apocalyptic fiction. It explores the ideas of a society without leadership and other interesting themes, with a subtle element of romance. I would definitely recommend it to anyone who is interested in other series, like the Divergent series, or The Maze Runner series.

The series consists of six books:

Gone

Hunger

Lies

Plague

Fear

Light

[deadpresidents]

“We’re upside down” on trade deals, Trump said. “We’re underwater on every one of these.” The other countries are making money. “Just look at all this stuff up there. We’re paying for it all.” Those countries were “protectorates”, he declared.

“It’s actually good for our economy,” (Director of the National Economic Council Gary) Cohn said again.

“I don’t want to hear that,” Trump replied. “It’s all bullshit.”

As the meeting was winding down, (Secretary of State Rex) Tillerson leaned back in his chair. He seemed to be speaking to the president but did not make eye contact with him. Instead he looked at (Defense Secretary James) Mattis.

“You’re deal,” the secretary of state said. “It’s your deal.”

It was a Texas walk-back -- as if to say, I will obey and execute, but it is your design, not mine.

“We spend $3.5 billion a year to have troops in South Korea,” Trump said angrily. The South could not decide if they wanted the THAAD antimissile system or not! And whether they are going to pay for it or not!

Some South Koreans believed the system could provoke war with North Korea and had protested the installation, arguing it was for the benefit of the U.S. and Japan.

“Pull the fucking thing out!” Trump said. “I don’t give a shit.”

“The South Koreans subsidize the hell out of us,” Cohn said, challenging the president directly. The trade deal was good for the United States economy, he said again. “We buy the most amazing TVs in the world for $245. Which means that people are spending less money on TVs and more money on other products in the United States.”

If the U.S. pulled its troops out, it would require more Navy carrier groups in that part of the world to feel comfortable. That might cost 10 times as much, Cohn stated.

Then there was the ultra-sensitive intelligence gained through the Special Access Programs South Korea allowed the U.S. to run. Trump seemed not to comprehend the value and the necessity.

“Like $3.5 billion, 28,000 troops,” the president said. He was really hot. “I don’t know why they’re there. Let’s bring them all home!”

“So, Mr. President,” Cohn said, “what would you need in the region to sleep well at night?”

“I wouldn’t need a fucking thing,” the president said. “And I’d sleep like a baby.”

(White House Chief of Staff Reince) Priebus called an end to the meeting. Mattis seemed completely deflated.

Trump got up and walked out.

All the air seemed to have come out of Tillerson. He could not abide Trump’s attack on the generals. The president was speaking as if the U.S. military was a mercenary force for hire. If a country wouldn’t pay us to be there, then we didn’t want to be there. As if there were no American interests in forging and keeping a peaceful world order, as if the American organizing principle was money.

“Are you okay?” Cohn asked him.

“He’s a fucking moron,” Tillerson said so everyone heard.

-- Bob Woodward, describing a meeting held at the Pentagon so that leading national security officials could try to convince President Trump of the immense importance of maintaining international trade and security agreements with longtime American allies, Fear: Trump in the White House.

[deadpresidents]

(Even after resigning as Trump’s lawyer, John) Dowd remained convinced that (Special Counsel Robert) Mueller never had a Russian case or an obstruction case. He was looking for the perjury trap. And in a brutally honest self-evaluation, he believed that Mueller had played him, and the president, for suckers in order to get their cooperation on witnesses and documents.

Dowd was disappointed in Mueller, pulling such a sleight of hand.

After 47 years, Dowd knew the game, knew prosecutors. They built cases. With all the testimony and documents, Mueller could string together something that would look bad. Maybe they had something new and damning as he now more than half-suspected. Maybe some witness like (Trump’s first National Security Adviser Michael) Flynn had changed his testimony. Things like that happened and that could change the ball game dramatically. Former top aide comes clean, admits to lying, turns on the president. Dowd didn’t think so but he had to worry and consider the possibility.

Some things were clear and many were not in such a complex, tangled investigation. There was no perfect X-ray, no tapes, no engineer’s drawing. Dowd believed that the president had not colluded with Russia or obstructed justice.

But in the man and his presidency, Dowd had seen the tragic flaw. In the political back-and-forth, the evasions, the denials, the tweeting, the obscuring, crying “Fake News,” the indignation, Trump had one overriding problem that Dowd knew but could not bring himself to say to the president: “You’re a fucking liar.”

-- Bob Woodward, Fear: Trump in the White House

[deadpresidents]

(White House counsel Ty) Cobb began saying publicly that the president really wanted to testify and answer a few questions.

“Mr. President,” (Trump’s personal lawyer John) Dowd said, “it ain’t a few. There’s 49 of them. That’s (testifying) not my advice.”

“What are people going to say?” Trump asked. “How’s it going to look in the press?”

“Mr. President, it’s a trap. They don’t have a legal or constitutional reason to talk to you.” He mentioned lawyers who had represented Trump in the past. “If you don’t want to take my word for it,” call them.

Trump called Dowd from Air Force One later in March.

“Mr. President, you just need to take my advice,” Dowd said. “Otherwise we’re going to have a major disaster. There’s no way you can get through these. You remember our meeting when you read our letter? You remember you were comfortable, you understood the strategy? Mr. President, we have won this thing hands down. The 49 questions, you agree, have already been answered. You’ve got people here that answered them. You’ve got lawyers that answered them. You’ve got staff. I mean, Priebus, Bannon, all of them gave testimony acceptable to the special counsel. He has no quarrel with it.

“Mr. President, there’s no poison in the well. No one has lied. No documents are missing. There’s no president in our history that’s done what you’ve done. Why can’t I get you to just be proud of that and sit on it?

“And Mr. President, what I recommend is we just make all that public. We politely tell Bob (Mueller) you’re not going to sit for an interview, for the obvious reasons and for the constitutional reasons, and you’re protecting the office for your successors. If you testify, then we’re going to go through decades of gotcha and let’s get the president under the oath. It’s just the new game. Particularly when there’s no crime and no basis, you know?”

The investigations of Reagan in Iran-Contra, Clinton in Whitewater-Lewinsky and Nixon in Watergate all involved criminal activity, he said. “And by the way, if there was criminal activity where your White House could help out, I have no doubt you would respond. And that you would -- if someone asked you about someone on your staff that had misbehaved and you witnessed something, you’d be a good witness. You’d testify. But that’s not the case here. This is a case where all of the questions have been answered.

“Mr. President, you’re just cutting my legs off. I’m trying to be a good lawyer.”

“You’re a good lawyer,” Trump said. “You’re a great lawyer.”

“Mr. President, I cannot, as a lawyer, as an officer of the court, sit next to you and have you answer these questions when I full well know that you’re not really capable.”

Dowd wanted to dress it up as much as possible, to say, it’s not your fault. It’s the burden of the office. He knew in this confrontation he could not be insulting. He could not say what he knew was true: “You’re a fucking liar.” That was the problem.

So Dowd said, “You do have trouble staying on the subject. And that can defeat you. Then you try to catch yourself, and you misstate something, and bam. It’s like Mike Flynn not remembering the conversation with (Russian Ambassador Sergey) Kislyak”

-- Bob Woodward, Fear: Trump in the White House

[deadpresidents]

On July 25, the president again berated (National Security Adviser H.R.) McMaster. He had no interest in allies, Trump said. He didn’t want any troops in South Korea even when reminded about the differential between the seven seconds to detect an ICBM launch from there as opposed to 15-minute detection from Alaska.

On the colonnade outside the Oval Office, McMaster spoke with Cohn and Porter.

McMaster said that at 6:03 a.m., Trump had tweeted: “Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump campaign -- ‘quietly working to boost Clinton.’ So where is the investigation A.G. [attorney general]”

It was clearly Russian propaganda, McMaster said. He and the NSC and intelligence experts had concluded that. But the president had picked it up and shot it out.

McMaster said he wasn’t sure how long he could stay.

In the Oval Office later that day, McMaster had a sensitive order he wanted the president to sign relating to Libya.

I’m not going to sign it, Trump said. The United States should be getting oil. The generals aren’t sufficiently focused on getting or making money. They don’t understand what our objectives should be and they have the United States engaged in all the wrong ways.

-- Bob Woodward, Fear: Trump in the White House

[thebristolboard]

I wrote a lot about Stephen Bissette’s early work in my most recent Strip Mine column for The Comics Journal. Here’s an original page of his that first appeared in Weird Worlds #2 in 1979, and was later collected in Fear Book by Eclipse Comics in 1986.

[nyanmarumori]

Bob Woodward. Fear. 2018:357