Latest / THE DAILY BRIEF / Haass WARNS Trump presidency CHAOS fueled by 'cabinet members trying to please the KING'

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Haass WARNS Trump presidency CHAOS fueled by 'cabinet members trying to please the KING' · THE DAILY BRIEF

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  Speaker 1: This is yet another example of just being subservient to
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  Speaker 1: President Trump and also to being post-fact, which they are
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  Speaker 1: fine with.
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  Speaker 2: They embrace these conspiracy theories. And it's all about the gotcha.
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  Speaker 1: And that's sort of what you've been writing about for
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  Speaker 1: your last piece for The Times, about this sort of
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  Speaker 1: this mean girl's presidency where it's just about the put down,
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  Speaker 1: no real substance.
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  Speaker 2: I can't imagine voters care.
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  Speaker 3: So I think one of the problems we see in
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  Speaker 3: this administration is that Donald Trump is the principal and
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  Speaker 3: there's not a lot of it tends to be you
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  Speaker 3: don't have a like normal administration. You would have different fiefdoms.
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  Speaker 2: You would have ideas.
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  Speaker 3: They would be war game. Do they be thought out?
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  Speaker 3: People would try to poke holes in them. They would
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  Speaker 3: try to sort of see what would happen if you
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  Speaker 3: would put something in practice where you hear you have
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  Speaker 3: a White House that is focused just on a principal.
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  Speaker 4: Right. Right.
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  Speaker 2: Mean girl, for lack of a better word.
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  Speaker 3: And then you have other people around them who are
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  Speaker 3: trying to please them, who are trying to give them
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  Speaker 3: information that makes them happy, like a Natalie Harp. Or
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  Speaker 3: you have people who are trying to sort of, you know,
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  Speaker 3: so you're not getting you have a principal who's not
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  Speaker 3: necessarily getting what's really happening in the world. And that
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  Speaker 3: creates a problem. And so you see that Donald Trump
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  Speaker 3: sometimes says things which can't possibly be right.
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  Speaker 2: Right.
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  Speaker 3: And you see that he has maybe a very rosy
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  Speaker 3: sense of what's actually happening. And when you I mean,
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  Speaker 3: a great if you read the Maggie Haberman book, Regime Change,
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  Speaker 3: the Jonathan Smart Maggie Haberman book, there are so many
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  Speaker 3: examples of people editing information to go to Trump, of
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  Speaker 3: people trying to please Trump. of people trying to sort
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  Speaker 3: of get the idea of what might make him happy
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  Speaker 3: and do it even before. And I think that is
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  Speaker 3: because the White House is such a simple social structure.
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  Speaker 2: Well, he's been so hurt.
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  Speaker 5: He's been so damaged politically by the fact that he
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  Speaker 5: doesn't have people around him. to counterbalance some of the
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  Speaker 5: information that he's getting. He doesn't have competent cabinet members
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  Speaker 5: around him. If he had competent cabinet members around him,
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  Speaker 5: he wouldn't have gone to war in Iran. He just
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  Speaker 5: wouldn't have gone to war in Iran. There is no
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  Speaker 5: way if he had, let's say, Mattis in there or
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  Speaker 5: if he had Bob Gates in there or if he
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  Speaker 5: had a Colin Powell type figure in there. They would
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  Speaker 5: have said, Mr. President, no, because the second you go in,
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  Speaker 5: they're going to close the Strait of Hormuz. You just
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  Speaker 5: don't want to do this. But he hasn't done it.
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  Speaker 5: And who's been the most damaged by that politically? Donald
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  Speaker 5: Trump has. I will tell you, even when when I
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  Speaker 5: was in Congress and Bill Clinton was president, Bill Clinton
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  Speaker 5: was president.
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  Speaker 2: He had the power of the presidency.
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  Speaker 5: But I will tell you, we Republicans were in the
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  Speaker 5: majority and.
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  Speaker 2: Had a pretty big majority. Pretty, pretty, pretty big majority.
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  Speaker 5: Do you know who everybody stood around back in the chamber?
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  Speaker 5: You'll remember his name, Jack Murtha, because Jack Murtha, even
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  Speaker 5: in the minority, had power. And so this power in
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  Speaker 5: Congress was dissipated. You had new you had Republicans that
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  Speaker 5: were running, you know, the the the committees that really matter.
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  Speaker 5: Appropriation committees. You had Jack Murtha. But it's what Washington's
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  Speaker 5: supposed to be.
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  Speaker 4: Right.
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  Speaker 5: So everybody balances everybody out. Everybody compromises. When a really
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  Speaker 5: bad idea comes up, you don't have a president who
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  Speaker 5: has nobody saying, Mr.
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  Speaker 2: President, you shouldn't do this because of A, B, C, D, E, F, G.
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  Speaker 5: In the Maggie and Jonathan book, the most remarkable part
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  Speaker 5: is he was just going around making up numbers on tariffs.
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  Speaker 5: And at one point when he wanted to sort of
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  Speaker 5: throw a bone to she, he goes. So tell me,
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  Speaker 5: how much? What are the tariffs on China? And when
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  Speaker 5: they gave him the number, he was like, you know,
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  Speaker 5: let out an X.
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  Speaker 2: Holy cow. Are you kidding me? It's that high?
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  Speaker 5: Just didn't know because there's no system in place. And
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  Speaker 5: he's not being served well by his own decision to
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  Speaker 5: not be served well. And that needs to change for
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  Speaker 5: his sake and America's.
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  Speaker 4: I think the beginning of understanding with this president, this
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  Speaker 4: is not an administration. This is a court. And what
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  Speaker 4: you have are all the people trying to.
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  Speaker 5: When you say a court, you mean like a medieval court?
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  Speaker 4: 100%.
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  Speaker 2: He's the king.
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  Speaker 4: The jugglers.
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  Speaker 2: The courtiers. The courtiers.
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  Speaker 4: And what you have are people... Candidates for that.
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  Speaker 2: We know some people who are the jugglers.
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  Speaker 4: What you have are cabinet members essentially trying to please
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  Speaker 4: the king. Right. And no one wants to speak truth
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  Speaker 4: to power. No one wants to say anything that is
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  Speaker 4: not welcome. So you have all these people from the
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  Speaker 4: Secretary of Defense to the Secretary of the Treasury and
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  Speaker 4: so forth. Essentially, they've got to know, at least one
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  Speaker 4: hopes they know, that it can't be true. And there's also, Joe,
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  Speaker 4: as you said, there's no process. Ultimately, presidents need systems
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  Speaker 4: to protect them from themselves. We went to war in
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  Speaker 4: Iraq in some ways because George W. Bush did not
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  Speaker 4: let his system work. He went to war in Iraq
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  Speaker 4: without a formal meeting at the NSA. This entire administration,
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  Speaker 4: you read how we went to war in Iran. It
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  Speaker 4: was a casual and formal lack of process. And there
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  Speaker 4: was no one in the room who had any experience
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  Speaker 4: or any understanding of the country we were going to
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  Speaker 4: go to war with. Presidents need to be protected from themselves.
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  Speaker 4: This president more than most, because he has such strong biases.
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  Speaker 4: Many of them are, shall we say, at odds with reality.
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  Speaker 4: He hasn't done a lot of governing before he became president.
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  Speaker 4: And he has less protection. And as a result, we
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  Speaker 4: have what we have.
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  Speaker 5: It goes back, Peter Baker, to when he was running
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  Speaker 5: for office. I said, hey, Donald, when you're making a
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  Speaker 5: big decision... And you're in the White House. Who are
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  Speaker 5: you going to have there to bounce the idea off of?
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  Speaker 5: He goes, well, I'm pretty smart guy. Said something along
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  Speaker 5: the lines of I'm kind of the smartest guy in
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  Speaker 5: the room. So I'm just going to ask myself and and.
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  Speaker 5: I don't know if I said it then, but I
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  Speaker 5: thought that, whoa, boy, that is very bad because I'm
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  Speaker 5: a big believer. When somebody gets to Congress, they say,
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  Speaker 5: what do you do? I said, I always have people
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  Speaker 5: around you that'll tell you no. Always make sure you're
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  Speaker 5: the dumbest guy in the room. Always make sure that
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  Speaker 5: like when you have an idea, you have got to
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  Speaker 5: fight through people in your own office before that idea
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  Speaker 5: gets out the door.
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  Speaker 2: And gets to the floor.
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  Speaker 5: And that way, you know, it's a strong idea and
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  Speaker 5: you're going to win. There's none of that in the
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  Speaker 5: White House this time. There was a little bit of
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  Speaker 5: that in the first term, but absolutely none now, Peter.
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  Speaker 5: And tell me, when did he make that decision?
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  Speaker 6: Yeah, I think the second term is, in fact, the
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  Speaker 6: story of how much changed since the first term with
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  Speaker 6: staff around him, with advisors around him.
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  Speaker 2: Right.
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  Speaker 6: So a lot of the things he's doing this term
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  Speaker 6: have surprised people, shocked people. They've gone further than he
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  Speaker 6: went in his first term. People like, wow, why this time,
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  Speaker 6: not last time?
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  Speaker 2: I think in part.
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  Speaker 6: Because last time he did have people who provided contrary advice.
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  Speaker 6: You know, John Kelly, Jim Mattis, you mentioned last.
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  Speaker 2: Some others.
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  Speaker 6: And they, you know, restrained him and he didn't have
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  Speaker 6: the confidence perhaps yet.
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  Speaker 2: To overrule them. This time he wanted to make sure he.
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  Speaker 6: Had people he thought were more loyal, people who were
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  Speaker 6: going to try to facilitate what he wanted to do,
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  Speaker 6: not stop him from doing what he did. And I
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  Speaker 6: think that, you know, look, it's always hard, I think,
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  Speaker 6: to tell a president no. It's always hard. And Richard
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  Speaker 6: knows this better than I do. But it's always hard,
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  Speaker 6: I think, even under Trump. a normal administration for people
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  Speaker 6: to say to the president, you're heading down the wrong path.
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  Speaker 5: Hey, by the way, Peter, by the way, Peter Baker,
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  Speaker 5: you know, Joe Biden had that reputation. It was very
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  Speaker 5: hard to tell Joe Biden, no.
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  Speaker 2: Barack Obama, the biggest.
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  Speaker 5: Complaint about Barack Obama was he always thought he was
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  Speaker 5: the smartest guy in the room, always thought he was
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  Speaker 5: smarter than the generals, always thought he was smarter than
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  Speaker 5: the CEOs.
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  Speaker 2: George W.
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  Speaker 5: Bush, he wouldn't even talk to Colin Powell before he
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  Speaker 5: went into Iraq. Because he knew Colin, he was asked why.
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  Speaker 5: He said, well, because I knew he was against Iraq. No,
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  Speaker 5: that's when you want to talk to them. When you
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  Speaker 5: know they have been there before and they think it's
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  Speaker 5: a mistake. So I only bring all of those presidents up.
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  Speaker 5: And I'm not saying the earth is flat and comparing
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  Speaker 5: them to Trump.
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  Speaker 2: I'm just saying. You've studied presidencies. This is an ongoing problem,
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  Speaker 2: isn't it? Yeah.
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  Speaker 6: The best chiefs of staff, the best national security advisors,
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  Speaker 6: they find ways to make sure that contrary opinions get
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  Speaker 6: to the president.
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  Speaker 4: Right.
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  Speaker 6: They don't try to shave down the differences and get
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  Speaker 6: to a single recommendation because then you haven't given the
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  Speaker 6: president a chance to.
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  Speaker 2: To think through what the options are.
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  Speaker 6: And part of the problem in Washington is even when
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  Speaker 6: you get to options, sometimes they're sort of fake options, right?
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  Speaker 2: A Pentagon will say, here are your three options.
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  Speaker 6: Here's the top one, which is unreasonably big, the small one,
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  Speaker 6: which is unreasonably minor. And so what they call the
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  Speaker 6: Goldilocks option is the one in the middle that they
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  Speaker 6: really want you to.
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  Speaker 3: Do, right?
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  Speaker 6: And that's not really giving a president a chance to.
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  Speaker 2: Absorb information, make considered decisions. I think you're right.
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  Speaker 6: Obama Biden, I've heard this about every president to some extent. Now,
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  Speaker 6: Trump obviously is different than every other president because everything
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  Speaker 6: in his administration is kind of on steroids by comparison.
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  Speaker 6: But you're right that the dynamic is not new. And
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  Speaker 6: the best presidents try to get around that, try to
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  Speaker 6: get around that bubble that they live in and seek
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  Speaker 6: other kinds of information.
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  Speaker 2: Or just click below. Thanks.