Donald Trump in Team of Five, by Kate Brower
On Principles & Values:
Has not spoken with Obama or Clinton since his inauguration
Former presidents used to help each other in times of crisis. Trump has made that impossible. He has not spoken with Obama or Clinton since his inauguration more than three years ago (aside from a brief hello and goodbye to Obama during George H.W.
Bush's funeral in December 2018). In fact, the only substantive conversation he and Obama have had was during the customary visit Trump made to the Oval Office two days after he won the 2016 election. He has been criticizing him ever since.
"I didn't like the job that he and Biden did," Trump said at a Fox News Town Hall in March. "I didn't like the position they put us in." Seeking to justify his administration's bungled response to the novel-coronavirus outbreak in
America, he attacked Obama, tweeting that his handling of the 2009 H1N1 swine flu was "a full scale disaster, with thousands dying, and nothing meaningful done to fix the testing problem."
Source: Team of Five, by Kate Andersen Brower
Apr 21, 2020
On Principles & Values:
Presidential library to be located in New York or Florida
Have the years Trump has spent in that awe-inspiring office given him empathy for what his predecessors went through? "No," he replies flatly. When I ask him whether he would go to Obama's presidential-library opening, the question sounds preposterous.
Presidents have always attended one another's library openings as a sign of respect. But: "I don't know," he answers. "He probably wouldn't invite me." Trump mulls it over for a moment and says, "Why should he?"On the subject of the location of his
own presidential library, he uses our interview to distinguish himself from his predecessors--and to take a swipe at them. "That's a very interesting question. I have thought about it very little. I'm more thinking about all of the things that we're
doing, which are a lot," he says, jutting his chin out proudly. "New York seems to be the most natural place, but Florida is another one. I know location like nobody," says the former real estate developer. "We'll pick somewhere very appropriate."
Source: Team of Five, by Kate Andersen Brower
Apr 21, 2020
On Principles & Values:
Admired Pres. Andrew Jackson; undid Pres.Obama's Oval Office
Trump has disparaged all the former living presidents and has not said much about the dead ones. The only president he seems to truly admire is the 19th-century populist Andrew Jackson. He has a portrait of the slave-owning general who fought
Native Americans hanging prominently in the Oval Office. Unlike most presidents, who are too busy with policy to make decorating decisions,
Trump picked out his wallpaper and rugs. He enjoyed moving Winston Churchill's bust back to the Oval, after Obama had it placed in a hallway outside the Treaty Room on the second floor of the residence.
Everything Obama had done, from letting the rug in the West Wing corridors get dingy to moving that bust, was anathema to Trump.
Source: Team of Five, by Kate Andersen Brower
Apr 21, 2020
On War & Peace:
I like people who weren't captured, unlike McCain
Trump was always well aware of how the Bush dynasty viewed him--he was not part of the plan. Jeb Bush was supposed to win the Republican nomination, and Trump got in the way. But George H.W. Bush's dislike of Trump ran deeper than Trump assumes.
Bush was particularly disturbed when Trump, who received four student deferments from military service between 1964 and 1968, and one medical deferment after college, famously attacked John McCain at a Christian conservative gathering in the summer of
2015. "I like people who weren't captured," Trump said, referring to the Arizona senator's 5 years as a prisoner who was tortured at the infamous "Hanoi Hilton" during the Vietnam War. "He's not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured,"
Trump said."I can't understand how somebody could say that and still be taken seriously," Bush said, particularly upset because of his own service during World War II. "I'm getting old," he told friends, "at just the right time."
Source: Team of Five, by Kate Andersen Brower
Apr 21, 2020
Page last updated: Mar 16, 2021