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21 " The two prosecutors also delved into the president’s personal life. How often did he cheat on his wife? With whom? How were trysts arranged? What were the president’s sexual interests? "
― Michael Wolff , Siege: Trump Under Fire
22 " Not only is Trump not like other presidents, he is not like anyone most of us have ever known. "
23 " Upon publication of Woodward’s new book, it was immediately evident that one of his key sources was H. R. McMaster, the three-star general who had joined the Trump administration in February 2017 as national security advisor, replacing Michael Flynn. "
24 " Communication of this message required a coordinated effort. Each person’s willingness to talk to Woodward was cross-checked against the willingness of several others to talk to him. This was part of Woodward’s standard method of establishing a critical mass of inside sources: he created a kind of in-group, and this also suggested that if you failed to participate, you would not only lose your opportunity to be part of the in-group but lose your place in history "
25 " Being a Trump staffer had become an existential predicament: even if you wanted to get out, and almost all of them did, there was nowhere to go. "
26 " I can’t say, ‘I want to put a Protestant on the Court for better representation.’ No, you can’t say that. But I should be able to. You should be able to have the main religion in this country represented on the Supreme Court. "
27 " Still, Sean Hannity had 5.8 million viewers on the night of the Blasey Ford–Kavanaugh hearing. “That’s a lot of fucking hobbits,” said Bannon. "
28 " It was a badly kept secret in foreign policy circles that Mohammed bin Salman—MBS—had a cocaine problem and could disappear for days or longer on benders, or on long and frightening (at least for other passengers) trips on his yacht. He also spent hours every day planted in front of a screen playing video games. Like Trump, he was often described as a petulant child. "
29 " In 1996, his second wife, Marla Maples, was caught one night with a Trump bodyguard on the beach near Mar-a-Lago under the lifeguard stand. This, Bannon was aware, had been a primal blow for Trump. "
30 " Melania sometimes spoke Slovenian with Barron, particularly when her parents were around—and they were frequently around—infuriating Trump and causing him to bolt from any room they were in. "
31 " In front of the grand jury, prosecutors from the special counsel’s office drilled down into the details of Trump’s sexual behavior—where, how often, with whom, and of what nature. This was, speculated one witness who described Trump’s “nefarious activities” in testimony, as much a way to bias the grand jury against Trump the lowlife as it was to help chart the relationships "
32 " Bill Burck, for instance, represented Don McGahn, Steve Bannon, and Reince Priebus. As a consequence, all three men could communicate under the seal of their lawyer’s privilege. "
33 " There were too many members of the House. He couldn’t remember their names. He launched into dramatic eye-rolling when told where they were from. “Flyovers,” he said. “Men’s shop salesmen. "
34 " McConnell’s contempt for Trump was boundless. He was not just the stupidest president McConnell had ever dealt with, he was the stupidest person McConnell had ever met in politics—and that was saying something. He and his wife, Elaine Chao, the secretary of transportation, regularly mocked and mimicked Trump, a set piece they would perform for friends. "
35 " Nunberg was also a go-to, often astute, and always available source for almost every reporter covering Trump. Certainly Nunberg could be counted on to provide a confirmation of every negative story about Trump. When Trump criticized the media, he was in many instances criticizing Sam Nunberg. "
36 " On February 14, William P. Barr was sworn in as attorney general. "
37 " I think of Maggie Haberman”—the New York Times reporter covering Trump—“the way I think of my grandmother,” said Nunberg. “I always go running to her. "
38 " Whatever you could say by the spring of 2018 about the Trump White House, Jared had, for the most part, successfully navigated it—the only person, other than his wife, to have done so. And in the back channels of a world that he was counting on to play an essential role in securing his wealth, he had had a singular impact. "
39 " Most members of Mueller’s staff were already planning their exits. The once collegial mood among the nineteen attorneys who had worked on the investigation had turned, at best, sullen. Two years of investigation and internal debate had reduced the special counsel’s broad mandate to a prudent, carefully defined pair of issues. "
40 " Weissmann had promised to see the investigation through to the end. But now, bitterly disappointed, he would tell friends, by how narrowly Mueller had come to focus the scope of the investigation, he wanted to stay not a moment longer. "