Top 200 Bob Woodward Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “Priebus realized that the president didn’t care that it was a goal, not an obligation. Trump cared that he could sell it and try to win over public opinion.”

— Bob Woodward

152. “Over the decades Goldman Sachs had not done business with the Trump Organization or Trump himself, knowing that he might stiff anyone and everyone. He would just not pay, or sue. Early in Cohn’s time at Goldman there had been a junior salesperson who did a bond trade for a casino with Trump.”

— Bob Woodward

153. “Cohn concluded that Trump just loved to pit people against each other.”

— Bob Woodward

154. “It’s not what we did for the country,” Cohn said. “It’s what we saved him from doing.”

— Bob Woodward

155. “On July 25, the president again berated 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.”

— Bob Woodward

156. “For Mr. Trump, though, bringing in Mr. Bannon was the political equivalent of ordering comfort food.” Bannon tried to sit down with Trump and walk him through refinements of the strategy and how to focus on particular states. The candidate had no interest in talking about it.”

— Bob Woodward

157. “Endgame goals were fuzzy or unstated. The result was often weeks or months of delay.”

— Bob Woodward

158. “I don’t think it’s useful for somebody to argue with reviews.”

— Bob Woodward

159. “Cohn and Porter worked together to derail what they believed were Trump’s most impulsive and dangerous orders. That document and others like it just disappeared. When Trump had a draft on his desk to proofread, Cohn at times would just yank it, and the president would forget about it. But if it was on his desk, he’d sign it. “It’s not what we did for the country,” Cohn said privately. “It’s what we saved him from doing.”

— Bob Woodward

160. “Pence was staying out of the way. He didn’t want to be tweeted about or called an idiot.”

— Bob Woodward

161. “But how many more deaths?” Trump asked. “How many more lost limbs? How much longer are we going to be there?”

— Bob Woodward

162. “Grievance was a big part of Trump’s core, very much like a 14-year-old boy who felt he was being picked on unfairly.”

— Bob Woodward

163. “The president has zero psychological ability to recognize empathy or pity in any way.”

— Bob Woodward

164. “Because of Watergate in part, I am kind of a magnet for calls and information and suggestions.”

— Bob Woodward

165. “The president has zero psychological ability to recognize.”

— Bob Woodward

166. “The tweets were not incidental to his presidency. They were central. He ordered printouts of his recent tweets that had received a high number of likes, 200,000 or more. He studied them to find the common themes in the most successful. He seemed to want to become more strategic, find out whether success was tied to the subject, the language or simply the surprise that the president was weighing in. The most effective tweets were often the most shocking.”

— Bob Woodward

167. “Trump seemed not to remember his own decision because he did not ask about it. He had no list – in his mind or anywhere else – of tasks to complete.”

— Bob Woodward

168. “Kelly seemed to be just trying to keep the ship from sinking. At a senior staff meeting in early 2018, he announced with pride, “I now know that I will not be the shortest-serving chief of staff. I’ve now surpassed Reince.” Priebus had served 189 days, the shortest tenure of any White House chief of staff in history.”

— Bob Woodward

169. “When you’re in the White House,” Butterfield said, “everyone lies. You can sort of get feeling immune.”

— Bob Woodward

170. “Kelly said, “That was the greatest show of self-control I have ever seen. If that was me, I would have taken that resignation letter and shoved it up his ass six different times.”

— Bob Woodward

171. “If you have natural predators at the table,” Priebus said, “things don’t move.” So the White House was not leading on key issues like health care and tax reform. Foreign policy was not coherent and often contradictory. “Why?” asked Priebus. “Because when you put a snake and a rat and a falcon and a rabbit and a shark and a seal in a zoo without walls, things start getting nasty and bloody. That’s what happens.”

— Bob Woodward

172. “Any suggestion that I’m writing about political operatives because I’m interested in political operatives misses the entire point.”

— Bob Woodward

173. “Even now there is no evidence that anyone involved in the Nixon operation was going to threaten us.”

— Bob Woodward

174. “For Priebus, it was the worst meeting among many terrible ones. Six months into the administration, he could see vividly that they had a fundamental problem of goal setting. Where were they going? The distrust in the room had been thick and corrosive. The atmosphere was primitive; everyone was ostensibly on the same side, but they had seemed suited up in battle armor, particularly the president. This was what craziness was like, Priebus concluded.”

— Bob Woodward

175. “Trump listens to you. He’s always looking for adult supervision.”

— Bob Woodward

176. “There were four missions in Afghanistan: train and advise the Afghan Army and police; logistical support; counterterrorism; and the intelligence mission.”

— Bob Woodward

177. “Mattis and Gary Cohn had several quiet conversations about The Big Problem: The president did not understand the importance of allies overseas, the value of diplomacy or the relationship between the military, the economy and intelligence partnerships with foreign governments.”

— Bob Woodward

178. “If you want to do it now,” Priebus continued, “Pence is prepared to step up, and Condi Rice will come in as his VP.”

— Bob Woodward

179. “Trump’s memory needed a trigger – something on his desk or something he read in the newspaper or saw on television. Or Peter Navarro sneaking into the Oval Office again. Without something or someone activating him, it might be hours or days or even weeks before he would think, Wait, we’re going to withdraw from that, why didn’t we do that? Without a trigger, it conceivably might never happen.”

— Bob Woodward

180. “I go out and give a speech and it’s covered by CNN and nobody’s watching, nobody cares. I tweet something and it’s my megaphone to the world.”

— Bob Woodward

181. “On CBS, Stephen Colbert joked darkly, “It’s just like D-Day. Remember D-Day, two sides, Allies and the Nazis? There was a lot of violence on both sides. Ruined a beautiful beach. And it could have been a golf course.”

— Bob Woodward

182. “Porter saw it from up close – perhaps as close as anyone on the staff except Hope Hicks – the Trump election had rekindled the divide in the country. There was a more hostile relationship with the media. The culture wars were reinvigorated. There was a racist tinge. Trump accelerated it.”

— Bob Woodward

183. “Some newspapers have a hands-off policy on favored politicians. But it’s generally very small newspapers or local TV stations.”

— Bob Woodward

184. “Two thirds of the country thinks we’re on the wrong track, and 75 percent of the country thinks we’re in decline, he argued.”

— Bob Woodward

185. “Mattis showed signs that he was tired of the disparaging of the military and intelligence capability. And of Trump’s unwillingness to comprehend their significance. “We’re doing this in order to prevent World War III,” Mattis said. He was calm but stark. It was a breathtaking statement, a challenge to the president, suggesting he was risking nuclear war. Time stopped for more than one in attendance.”

— Bob Woodward

186. “Trump had no understanding of how government functioned. At times he would just start drafting orders himself or dictating. The basic tactic Porter had employed from the Priebus days until now was to stall and delay, mention the legal roadblocks and occasionally lift the drafts from the Resolute Desk.”

— Bob Woodward

187. “Kelly said of the president, “He’s an idiot. It’s pointless to try to convince him of anything. He’s gone off the rails. We’re in crazytown.”

— Bob Woodward

188. “A person always needed allies. And this was the tragedy of Trump’s leadership and the bottom line: “It was inexplicable to think otherwise. It was indefensible. It was jingoism. It was a misguided form of nationalism. It was not patriotism.”

— Bob Woodward

189. “The tweets were not incidental to his presidency. They were central.”

— Bob Woodward

190. “You’re running against the most joyless candidate in presidential history.”

— Bob Woodward

191. “All presidencies are audience driven, but Trump’s central audience was often himself. He kept giving himself reviews. Most were passionately positive. Much of his brain was in the press box.”

— Bob Woodward

192. “We need to know if the commander in chief is fully with us or not,” Mattis said. “We can’t fight a half-assed war anymore.” In order for the military to succeed, Mattis needed Trump to be all-in on the strategy. “I’m tired of hearing that we have to do this or that to protect our homeland or to ensure our national security,” Trump said.”

— Bob Woodward

193. “We’re going to put a tariff on all steel and aluminum, on everything coming in,” the president said, “and see what happens.” This approach drove Gary Cohn, the chief White House economic adviser, crazy. He had argued passionately that the American economy was too important to haphazardly experiment with.”

— Bob Woodward

194. “Bannon recalled, “that this is the real deal. This is a guy totally unprepared. Hillary Clinton spent her entire adult life getting ready for this moment. Trump hasn’t spent a second getting ready for this moment.”

— Bob Woodward

195. “The number of illegal activities were so large that one was bound to come out and lead to the uncovering of the others. Nixon was too willing to use the power of government to settle scores and get even with enemies.”

— Bob Woodward

196. “When Trump called Mexicans “rapists” in the speech announcing his candidacy on June 16, 2015, Priebus called him and said, “You can’t talk like that. We’ve been working really hard to win over Hispanics.”

— Bob Woodward

197. “Lawyers didn’t seriously get involved in the Watergate stories until quite late, when we realized we were on to something.”

— Bob Woodward

198. “I wish I could persuade you,” Dowd said. “Don’t testify. It’s either that or an orange jump suit.”

— Bob Woodward

199. “This degradation of the American experiment is real. This is tangible. Truth is no longer governing the White House statements. Nobody believes – even the people who believe in him somehow believe in him without believing what he says.”

— Bob Woodward

200. “Paris was one of the justifications the Obama administration used as part of the regulatory record to justify the cost and benefits of the Clean Power Plan.” That was an Obama-era 460-page rule to lower carbon dioxide emitted by power plants that the EPA estimated would save 4,500 lives a year. Pruitt was already moving to end the policy.”

— Bob Woodward