US President Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House. Photo / AP
US President Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House. Photo / AP
US President Donald Trump's denials of the stories in Bob Woodward's new book turned to tacit admission.
Trump may be an unwieldy boss, he seemed to admit, but that's part of why Americans elected him.
"I'm tough as hell on people & if I weren't, nothing would get done," Trump tweeted. "Also, I question everybody & everything-which is why I got elected!"
It's interesting spin.
But Trump's defence here doesn't actually line up with what we know about Woodward's book. Woodward doesn't just paint Trump as a president who ruffles feathers, you see, but also as a man who struggles with very basic facts about very important matters - including on things about which he should definitely know better.
They explained to him that it would mean we wouldn't know about North Korean missile launches for 15 minutes rather than learning about them almost instantly, within seven seconds.
This is the flap that led Defence Secretary Jim Mattis to reportedly suggest Trump was intellectually and temperamentally akin to "a fifth- or sixth-grader."
What the Washington Post's story yesterday didn't detail, though, is that this exchange didn't happen early in Trump's presidency; it came on January 19, 2018 - almost exactly one full year into it.
It came months after North Korea had threatened an attack on Guam, a US territory in the Pacific Ocean. It also came a couple of months after North Korea said it had developed a nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that could reach the continental United States.
What got Mattis' goat was that he felt like they'd had this exact conversation many times before, and Trump refused to either remember or process it.
Cindy McCain walks with Defence Secretary Jim Mattis, followed by children Jack, Bridget, Jimmy and Andrew at Andrews Air Force base in Maryland before John McCain's burial. Photo / AP file
As Mattis explained the reasons for a US-South Korean alliance, Trump repeatedly returned to the idea that the United States is running a trade deficit with South Korea - suggesting the alliance was hurting the American economy.
Mattis tried to explain that having troops in South Korea was actually the most cost-effective - and effective, period - means of preventing World War III. Trump, who often seems to misunderstand what exactly a trade deficit means, wouldn't have it.
"But we're losing so much money in trade with South Korea and others," Trump pushes back at one point, according to Woodward.
At another: "We're spending massive amounts for very rich countries who aren't burden-sharing."
And at another: "I think we could be so rich if we weren't so stupid. We're being played [as] suckers, especially Nato."
Trump would argue this was merely him "question[ing] everybody and everything," but it didn't seem to come off that way to Mattis.
Exclusive, from @dandeluce and @KenDilanianNBC After Trump’s outreach to North Korea’s dictator Kim Jong Un, Beijing relaxed restrictions on trade. Now the U.S. is losing its leverage over Pyongyang. https://t.co/JooSjqqzyF
It seemed to be him asking the same dumb, middle-school-aged questions for the millionth time. And it drew a curt rebuke from Mattis that took those in the room aback.
The other anecdote is Trump's comments about Senator John McCain, R, who died two weeks ago. In Woodward's telling, Trump was at a dinner with military leaders including Mattis and General Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, when he suggested that McCain had been given an early release as a prisoner of war in Vietnam because of his father's military rank.
This is quite the opposite of what happened; McCain actually turned down early release.
And in fact, that may be the single biggest reason he is viewed as an American hero, because it meant he served for more than five years as a POW. Mattis had to correct Trump, according to Woodward, by saying, "No, Mr President. I think you've got it reversed." Trump responded: "Oh, okay."
But again, the timing is key. The dinner was held on February 8, 2017, shortly after Trump had been inaugurated.
Just a year and a half earlier, Trump had caused arguably his first major splash of the 2016 campaign by attacking McCain's lack of war-hero bona fides.
It was a major early inflection point in his 2015-16 Republican primary campaign. This is also a president who also questioned McCain's war-hero status back in 1999 and tangled with McCain regularly.
How he could be so unaware of perhaps the seminal event in McCain's life - and the one which directly pertains to a war-hero debate which Trump participated in an extremely high-profile way just a couple years ago? It is inexplicable.
It's tempting to view Trump's conspiracy theorising and falsehoods as a show or even a strategy. Perhaps he's doing it for the base!
This anecdote suggests he's really just ill-informed, even about major issues in which he inserts himself. Either that or he's so committed to this ruse that he even makes himself out to be ill-informed behind closed doors with military leaders.
And combined with the South Korea story, it paints the picture of a man who indeed has lots of questions - probably more than he should.
