The two most overlooked, inexplicable stories from Bob Woodward's Trump book
The two most overlooked, inexplicable stories from Bob Woodward’s Trump book
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/09/05/most-overlooked-inexplicable-stories-bob-woodwards-trump-book/?utm_term=.03e9f0d042de&wpisrc=nl_rainbow&wpmm=1
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The first is Trump's apparent confusion about South Korea's importance as an ally. According to Woodward, Trump at one point asked his military leaders why the United States couldn't just withdraw from the Korean Peninsula. 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 Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to reportedly suggest Trump was intellectually and temperamentally akin to “a fifth- or sixth-grader."
What The Washington Post's story Tuesday didn't detail, though, is that this exchange didn't happen early in Trump's presidency; it came on Jan. 19, 2018 — almost exactly one full year into it. It came months after North Korea had threatened an attack on Guam, a U.S. territory in the Pacific Ocean. It also came a couple 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's goat, according to the book, was that he felt like they'd had this exact conversation many times before, and Trump refused to either remember or process it. As Mattis explained the reasons for a U.S.-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. According to Woodward's reporting, it seemed to be Trump asking the same dumb middle-school-esque questions for the millionth time. And it drew a curt rebuke from Mattis that took those in the room aback.
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