School’s Out!

We Read Those Trump Admin Memoirs So You Don’t Have To

 

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Who better to illustrate Trump’s approach to national security and foreign policy than some of his (former) trusted advisors?  Below are some of the  juiciest bits of Trump’s outrageous behavior, absurd ideas, reckless trashing of American values, and so much more. Consider it just a small taste of the crazy from those who lived it up close and personal - and a scary reminder that there won’t be many of these guardrails around in Trump’s  second administration.

Unhinged and wacky ideas

  • Twice in 2020 “[Trump] asked [Former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper] if the military could ‘shoot missiles into Mexico to destroy the drug labs’ and take out the cartels’…. [Esper] took a long pause, and then said, again, ‘This would be an act of war, Mr. President, and there would be no way to keep it quiet.’”(Mark Esper, Former Secretary of Defense for Trump – A Sacred Oath)

  • In 2019, after Trump visited North Korean President, Kim Jong Un in the Korean Demilitarized Zone, former national security advisor John Bolton wrote, “The whole thing made me ill. It didn’t get better later when the media reported Trump had invited Kim to the White House.” (John Bolton, Former National Security Advisor for Trump – The Room Where it Happened)

  • Trump allegedly proposed to solve the immigration crisis by classifying undocumented migrants as “enemy combatants,” a designation normally reserved for terrorists, and “shipping the migrants to Guantánamo Bay.” (Miles Taylor, Former Chief of Staff for the Department of Homeland Security in Trump’s Administration – A Warning)

  • In 2020, during a meeting between Trump and his advisors regarding Black Lives Matter protests, Trump “turned to General Milley and asked why our soldiers couldn’t shoot the protesters. ‘Can’t you just shoot them. Just shoot them in the legs or something.’” (Mark Esper – A Sacred Oath)

  • “‘I could win [the Afghanistan war] in a week. I just don’t want to kill 10 million people.’ [Trump’s] statement betrayed a misunderstanding of the nature of the conflict in Afghanistan…” (Lt. General H.R. McMaster, Former National Security Advisor for Trump – Battlegrounds: the Fight to Defend the Free World)

Unfit to lead

  • “This book aims to tell that story—the story of my decisions and perspectives during one of the most chaotic, difficult, and consequential periods in modern American history…[I] endeavored to do all of this while dealing with an idiosyncratic, unpredictable, and unprincipled commander in chief.” (Mark Esper – A Sacred Oath)

  • “In no arena of American affairs has the Trump aberration been more destructive than in national security. His short attention span (except on matters of personal advantage) renders coherent foreign policy almost unattainable. The United States missed an incalculable number of opportunities in Trump’s first term because senior officials necessarily concentrated on keeping a few key policies on track.” (John Bolton – The Room Where it Happened)

  • “The day-to-day management of the executive branch was falling apart before our eyes. Trump was all over the place. He was like a twelve-year-old in an air traffic control tower, pushing the buttons of government indiscriminately, indifferent to the planes skidding across the runway and the flights frantically diverting away from the airport.” (Miles Taylor – A Warning)

  • “[Trump] stopped listening to his advisers, became manic and unreasonable, and was off the rails…He surrounded himself with sycophants, including many whack jobs from outside the government, who fed him a steady diet of comforting but unsupported conspiracy theories.”( William Barr, Former U.S. Attorney General for Trump – One Damn Thing After Another: Memoirs of an Attorney General)

  • “Charles Krauthammer, a sharp critic of [Trump], told me he had been wrong earlier to characterize Trump’s behavior as that of an eleven-year-old boy. ‘I was off by ten years,’ Krauthammer remarked. ‘He’s like a one-year-old. Everything is seen through the prism of whether it benefits Donald Trump.’” (John Bolton – The Room Where it Happened)

America going it alone

  • “Unfortunately, there is the even greater danger that Trump, in office, will implement his desire to withdraw America from NATO. He came precariously close to doing so in 2018, and his subsequent criticism has been unrelenting.” (John Bolton – The Room Where it Happened) 

  • Trump wanted to pull U.S. troops out of South Korea, during a time when North Korea was increasingly acting aggressively: “[South Korea] sell[s] us Samsung TVs and we protect them. It makes no sense.” To stall, Esper wrote that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said, “Mr. President, you should make [withdrawing U.S. forces from South Korea] a second-term priority. Trump agreed, “Yeah, yeah, second term.” (Mark Esper – A Sacred Oath)

  • "I did as well as I could for as long as I could. When my concrete solutions and strategic advice, especially keeping faith with our allies, no longer resonated, it was time to resign.” (Jim Mattis, Former Secretary of Defense for Trump – Call Sign Chaos)

  • “We defend [Japan], by treaty. We defend [Japan], but not the other way around. We had bad negotiators, right, John?” [Trump] asked, looking at me. “We’ll defend [Japan] without a treaty,” Trump continued, but said, “It’s not fair.” (John Bolton – The Room Where it Happened)

  • “After I left the White House, when Trump abandoned the Kurds in Syria, there was speculation about who he might abandon next. Taiwan was right near the top of the list, and would probably stay there as long as Trump remain[s] President…” (John Bolton – The Room Where it Happened) 

  • He tossed Starburst candy at German chancellor Angela Merkel, remarking, ‘Here, Angela. Don’t say I never give you anything.’” (Miles Taylor – A Warning)

Deference to authoritarian leaders

  • “Trump repeatedly objected to criticizing Russia and pressed us not to be so critical of Russia publicly.” (John Bolton – The Room Where it Happened)

  • Trump often said “improved relations with Russia ‘would be a good thing, not a bad thing.’” However, “Trump treated some of Putin’s most brazen criminal actions with dismissiveness and moral equivalency.”(H.R. McMaster – Battlegrounds: the Fight to Defend the Free World)

  • “I always had the impression that [Trump] felt that acknowledging Russian meddling would somehow cheapen our victory. But in my view, there was no reason for Trump not to call out Russia’s bad behavior…”(Mike Pence, Former Vice President for Trump – So Help Me God)

  • In 2018 during a press conference, Trump contradicted U.S. intelligence on their assessment of Russia’s election inference in 2016, by saying  “I have President Putin, He just said it's not Russia,” U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley immediately called Trump to emphasize “the Russians aren’t our friends.” (Nikki Haley, Former Ambassador to the U.N. during the Trump Administration – With All Due Respect)

  • Trump backed away from using “the term maximum pressure” with Kim Jong Un because Trump thought he and Kim were “getting along.” (H.R. McMaster – Battlegrounds: the Fight to Defend the Free World)

  • When Trump met with President Xi Jinping and addressed China’s human rights abuses against the Uighurs, a largely Muslim people who lived in the Xinjiang province, “Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which he thought was exactly the right thing to do.” (John Bolton – The Room Where it Happened)

  • “The intelligence community unequivocally laid blame at Saudi officials’ feet and Congress denounced the killing [of reporter Jamal Khashoggi], but President Trump failed to condemn MBS or impose any meaningful costs on the Saudi regime.” (H.R. McMaster – Battlegrounds: the Fight to Defend the Free World)

Postscript 

All these warnings make the prospect of a Trump second presidential term a terrifying prospect. Recently, Mark Esper, reminded us all what is a stake: 

“I do regard [Trump] as a threat to democracy, democracy as we know it, our institutions, our political culture, all those things that make America great….”

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Published: June 2024

Updated: November 2024