‘You’re a bunch of dopes and babies’: Inside Trump’s
stunning tirade against generals
By
Carol D. Leonnig and
Philip Rucker
Jan. 17, 2020 at 5:00 a.m. CST
This
article is adapted from “A Very Stable Genius: Donald
J. Trump’s Testing of America,” which will be published on Jan.
21 by Penguin Press.
There
is no more sacred room for military officers than 2E924 of the Pentagon, a
windowless and secure vault where the Joint Chiefs of Staff meet regularly to
wrestle with classified matters. Its more common name is “the Tank.” The Tank
resembles a small corporate boardroom, with a gleaming golden oak table,
leather swivel armchairs and other mid-century stylings. Inside its walls, flag
officers observe a reverence and decorum for the wrenching decisions that have
been made there.
Hanging
prominently on one of the walls is The Peacemakers, a painting that depicts an
1865 Civil War strategy session with President Abraham Lincoln and his three
service chiefs — Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant, Major General William
Tecumseh Sherman, and Rear Admiral David Dixon Porter. One hundred fifty-two years after Lincoln
hatched plans to preserve the Union, President Trump’s
advisers staged an intervention inside the Tank to try to preserve the world
order.
By that
point, six months into his administration, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis,
Director of the National Economic Council Gary Cohn, and Secretary of State Rex
Tillerson had grown alarmed by gaping holes in Trump’s knowledge of history,
especially the key alliances forged following World War II. Trump had dismissed
allies as worthless, cozied up to authoritarian regimes in Russia and
elsewhere, and advocated withdrawing troops from strategic outposts and active
theaters alike.
Trump
organized his unorthodox worldview under the simplistic banner of “America
First,” but Mattis, Tillerson, and Cohn feared his proposals were rash, barely
considered, and a danger to America’s superpower standing. They also felt that
many of Trump’s impulsive ideas stemmed from his lack of familiarity with U.S.
history and, even, where countries were located. To have a useful discussion
with him, the trio agreed, they had to create a basic knowledge, a shared
language.
So on
July 20, 2017, Mattis invited Trump to the Tank for what he, Tillerson, and
Cohn had carefully organized as a tailored tutorial. What happened inside the
Tank that day crystallized the commander in chief’s berating, derisive and
dismissive manner, foreshadowing decisions such as the one earlier this month
that brought the United States to the brink of war with Iran. The Tank meeting
was a turning point in Trump’s presidency. Rather than getting him to
appreciate America’s traditional role and alliances, Trump began to tune out
and eventually push away the experts who believed their duty was to protect the
country by restraining his more dangerous impulses.
The
episode has been documented numerous times, but subsequent reporting reveals a
more complete picture of the moment and the chilling effect Trump’s comments
and hostility had on the nation’s military and national security leadership.
Just
before 10 a.m. on a scorching summer Thursday, Trump arrived at the Pentagon.
He stepped out of his motorcade, walked along a corridor with portraits
honoring former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs, and stepped inside the Tank. The
uniformed officers greeted their commander in chief. Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs General Joseph F. Dunford Jr. sat in the seat of honor midway down the
table, because this was his room, and Trump sat at the head of the table facing
a projection screen. Mattis and the newly confirmed deputy defense secretary,
Patrick Shanahan, sat to the president’s left, with Vice President Pence and
Tillerson to his right. Down the table sat the leaders of the military
branches, along with Cohn and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. White House
chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon was in the outer ring of chairs with other
staff, taking his seat just behind Mattis and directly in Trump’s line of
sight.
Mattis,
Cohn, and Tillerson and their aides decided to use maps, graphics, and charts
to tutor the president, figuring they would help keep him from getting bored.
Mattis opened with a slide show punctuated by lots of dollar signs. Mattis
devised a strategy to use terms the impatient president, schooled in real
estate, would appreciate to impress upon him the value of U.S. investments
abroad. He sought to explain why U.S. troops were deployed in so many regions
and why America’s safety hinged on a complex web of trade deals, alliances, and
bases across the globe.
An
opening line flashed on the screen, setting the tone: “The post-war
international rules-based order is the greatest gift of the greatest
generation.” Mattis then gave a 20-minute briefing on the power of the NATO
alliance to stabilize Europe and keep the United States safe. Bannon thought to
himself, “Not good. Trump is not going to like that one bit.” The
internationalist language Mattis was using was a trigger for Trump.
“Oh,
baby, this is going to be f---ing wild,” Bannon thought. “If you stood up and
threatened to shoot [Trump], he couldn’t say ‘postwar rules-based international
order.’
It’s
just not the way he thinks.”
For the
next 90 minutes, Mattis, Tillerson, and Cohn took turns trying to emphasize
their points, pointing to their charts and diagrams. They showed where U.S.
personnel were positioned, at military bases, CIA stations, and embassies, and
how U.S. deployments fended off the threats of terror cells, nuclear blasts,
and destabilizing enemies in places including Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, the
Korea Peninsula, and Syria. Cohn spoke for about 20 minutes about the value of
free trade with America’s allies, emphasizing how he saw each trade agreement
working together as part of an overall structure to solidify U.S. economic and
national security.
Trump
appeared peeved by the schoolhouse vibe but also allergic to the dynamic of his
advisers talking at him. His ricocheting attention span led him to repeatedly
interrupt the lesson. He heard an adviser say a word or phrase and then seized
on that to interject with his take. For instance, the word “base” prompted him
to launch in to say how “crazy” and “stupid” it was to pay for bases in some
countries.
Trump’s
first complaint was to repeat what he had vented about to his national security
adviser months earlier: South Korea should pay for a $10 billion missile
defense system that the United States built for it. The system was designed to
shoot down any short- and medium-range ballistic missiles from North Korea to
protect South Korea and American troops stationed there. But Trump argued that
the South Koreans should pay for it, proposing that the administration pull
U.S. troops out of the region or bill the South Koreans for their protection.
“We
should charge them rent,” Trump said of South Korea. “We should make them pay
for our soldiers. We should make money off of everything.”
Trump
proceeded to explain that NATO, too, was worthless. U.S. generals were letting
the allied member countries get away with murder, he said, and they owed the
United States a lot of money after not living up to their promise of paying
their dues.
“They’re
in arrears,” Trump said, reverting to the language of real estate. He lifted
both his arms at his sides in frustration. Then he scolded top officials for
the untold millions of dollars he believed they had let slip through their
fingers by allowing allies to avoid their obligations.
“We are
owed money you haven’t been collecting!” Trump told them. “You would totally go
bankrupt if you had to run your own business.”
Mattis
wasn’t trying to convince the president of anything, only to explain and
provide facts. Now things were devolving quickly. The general tried to calmly
explain to the president that he was not quite right. The NATO allies didn’t
owe the United States back rent, he said. The truth was more complicated. NATO
had a nonbinding goal that members should pay at least 2 percent of their gross
domestic product on their defenses. Only five of the countries currently met
that goal, but it wasn’t as if they were shorting the United States on the
bill.
More
broadly, Mattis argued, the NATO alliance was not serving only to protect
western Europe. It protected America, too. “This is what keeps us safe,” Mattis
said. Cohn tried to explain to Trump that he needed to see the value of the
trade deals. “These are commitments that help keep us safe,” Cohn said.
Bannon
interjected. “Stop, stop, stop,” he said. “All you guys talk about all these
great things, they’re all our partners, I want you to name me now one country and
one company that’s going to have his back.”
Trump
then repeated a threat he’d made countless times before. He wanted out of the
Iran nuclear deal that President Obama had struck in 2015, which called for
Iran to reduce its uranium stockpile and cut its nuclear program.
“It’s
the worst deal in history!” Trump declared.
“Well,
actually . . .,”
Tillerson interjected.
“I
don’t want to hear it,” Trump said, cutting off the secretary of state before
he could explain some of the benefits of the agreement. “They’re cheating.
They’re building. We’re getting out of it. I keep telling you, I keep giving
you time, and you keep delaying me. I want out of it.”
Before
they could debate the Iran deal, Trump erupted to revive another frequent
complaint: the war in Afghanistan, which was now America’s longest war. He
demanded an explanation for why the United States hadn’t won in Afghanistan
yet, now 16 years after the nation began fighting there in the wake of the 9/11
terrorist attacks. Trump unleashed his disdain, calling Afghanistan a “loser
war.” That phrase hung in the air and disgusted not only the military leaders
at the table but also the men and women in uniform sitting along the back wall
behind their principals. They all were sworn to obey their commander in chief’s
commands, and here he was calling the war they had been fighting a loser war.
“You’re
all losers,” Trump said. “You don’t know how to win anymore.”
Trump
questioned why the United States couldn’t get some oil as payment for the
troops stationed in the Persian Gulf. “We spent $7 trillion; they’re ripping us
off,” Trump boomed. “Where is the f---ing oil?”
Trump seemed
to be speaking up for the voters who elected him, and several attendees thought
they heard Bannon in Trump’s words. Bannon had been trying to persuade Trump to
withdraw forces by telling him, “The American people are saying we can’t spend
a trillion dollars a year on this. We just can’t. It’s going to bankrupt us.”
“And
not just that, the deplorables don’t want their kids in the South China Sea at
the 38th parallel or in Syria, in Afghanistan, in perpetuity,” Bannon would
add, invoking Hillary Clinton’s infamous “basket of deplorables” reference to
Trump supporters.
Trump
mused about removing General John Nicholson, the U.S. commander in charge of
troops in Afghanistan. “I don’t think he knows how to win,” the president said,
impugning Nicholson, who was not present at the meeting.
Dunford
tried to come to Nicholson’s defense, but the mild-mannered general struggled
to convey his points to the irascible president.
“Mr.
President, that’s just not . . .,”
Dunford started. “We’ve been under different orders.”
Dunford
sought to explain that he hadn’t been charged with annihilating the enemy in
Afghanistan but was instead following a strategy started by the Obama
administration to gradually reduce the military presence in the country in
hopes of training locals to maintain a stable government so that eventually the
United States could pull out. Trump shot back in more plain language.
“I want
to win,” he said. “We don’t win any wars anymore . . . We spend $7 trillion,
everybody else got the oil and we’re not winning anymore.”
Trump
by now was in one of his rages. He was so angry that he wasn’t taking many
breaths. All morning, he had been coarse and cavalier, but the next several
things he bellowed went beyond that description. They stunned nearly everyone
in the room, and some vowed that they would never repeat them. Indeed, they
have not been reported until now.
“I
wouldn’t go to war with you people,” Trump told the assembled brass.
Addressing
the room, the commander in chief barked, “You’re a bunch of dopes and babies.”
For a
president known for verbiage he euphemistically called “locker room talk,” this
was the gravest insult he could have delivered to these people, in this sacred
space. The flag officers in the room were shocked. Some staff began looking
down at their papers, rearranging folders, almost wishing themselves out of the
room. A few considered walking out. They tried not to reveal their revulsion on
their faces, but questions raced through their minds. “How does the commander
in chief say that?” one thought. “What would our worst adversaries think if
they knew he said this?”
This
was a president who had been labeled a “draft dodger” for avoiding service in
the Vietnam War under questionable circumstances. Trump was a young man born of
privilege and in seemingly perfect health: six feet two inches with a muscular
build and a flawless medical record. He played several sports, including
football. Then, in 1968 at age 22, he obtained a diagnosis of bone spurs in his
heels that exempted him from military service just as the United States was
drafting men his age to fulfill massive troop deployments to Vietnam.
Tillerson
in particular was stunned by Trump’s diatribe and began visibly seething. For
too many minutes, others in the room noticed, he had been staring straight,
dumbfounded, at Mattis, who was speechless, his head bowed down toward the
table.
Tillerson
thought to himself, “Gosh darn it, Jim, say something. Why aren’t you saying
something?”
But, as
he would later tell close aides, Tillerson realized in that moment that Mattis
was genetically a Marine, unable to talk back to his commander in chief, no
matter what nonsense came out of his mouth.
The
more perplexing silence was from Pence, a leader who should have been able to
stand up to Trump. Instead, one attendee thought, “He’s sitting there frozen
like a statue. Why doesn’t he stop the president?” Another recalled the vice
president was “a wax museum guy.” From the start of the meeting, Pence looked
as if he wanted to escape and put an end to the president’s torrent. Surely, he
disagreed with Trump’s characterization of military leaders as “dopes and
babies,” considering his son, Michael, was a Marine first lieutenant then
training for his naval aviator wings. But some surmised Pence feared getting crosswise
with Trump. “A total deer in the headlights,” recalled a third attendee.
Others
at the table noticed Trump’s stream of venom had taken an emotional toll. So
many people in that room had gone to war and risked their lives for their
country, and now they were being dressed down by a president who had not. They
felt sick to their stomachs. Tillerson told others he thought he saw a woman in
the room silently crying. He was furious and decided he couldn’t stand it
another minute. His voice broke into Trump’s tirade, this one about trying to
make money off U.S. troops.
“No,
that’s just wrong,” the secretary of state said. “Mr. President, you’re totally
wrong.
None of
that is true.”
Tillerson’s
father and uncle had both been combat veterans, and he was deeply proud of
their service.
“The
men and women who put on a uniform don’t do it to become soldiers of fortune,”
Tillerson said. “That’s not why they put on a uniform and go out and die . . . They do it to protect
our freedom.”
There
was silence in the Tank. Several military officers in the room were grateful to
the secretary of state for defending them when no one else would. The meeting
soon ended and Trump walked out, saying goodbye to a group of servicemen lining
the corridor as he made his way to his motorcade waiting outside. Mattis,
Tillerson, and Cohn were deflated. Standing in the hall with a small cluster of
people he trusted, Tillerson finally let down his guard.
“He’s a
f---ing moron,” the secretary of state said of the president.
The
plan by Mattis, Tillerson, and Cohn to train the president to appreciate the
internationalist view had clearly backfired.
“We
were starting to get out on the wrong path, and we really needed to have a
course correction and needed to educate, to teach, to help him understand the
reason and basis for a lot of these things,” said one senior official involved
in the planning. “We needed to change how he thinks about this, to course
correct. Everybody was on board, 100 percent agreed with that sentiment. [But]
they were dismayed and in shock when not only did it not have the intended
effect, but he dug in his heels and pushed it even further on the spectrum,
further solidifying his views.”
A few
days later, Pence’s national security adviser, Andrea Thompson, a retired Army
colonel who had served in Afghanistan and Iraq, reached out to thank Tillerson
for speaking up on behalf of the military and the public servants who had been
in the Tank. By September 2017, she would leave the White House and join
Tillerson at Foggy Bottom as undersecretary of state for arms control and
international security affairs.
The
Tank meeting had so thoroughly shocked the conscience of military leaders that
they tried to keep it a secret. At the Aspen Security Forum two days later,
longtime NBC News correspondent Andrea Mitchell asked Dunford how Trump had
interacted during the Tank meeting. The Joint Chiefs chairman misleadingly
described the meeting, skipping over the fireworks.
“He
asked a lot of hard questions, and the one thing he does is question some
fundamental assumptions that we make as military leaders — and he will come in
and question those,” Dunford told Mitchell on July 22. “It’s a pretty energetic
and an interactive dialogue.”
One
victim of the Tank meeting was Trump’s relationship with Tillerson, which
forever after was strained. The secretary of state came to see it as the
beginning of the end. It would only worsen when news that Tillerson had called
Trump a “moron” was first reported in October 2017 by NBC
News.
Trump
once again gathered his generals and top diplomats in December 2017 for a
meeting as part of the administration’s ongoing strategy talks about troop
deployments in Afghanistan in the Situation Room, a secure meeting room on the
ground floor of the West Wing. Trump didn’t like the Situation Room as much as
the Pentagon’s Tank, because he didn’t think it had enough gravitas. It just
wasn’t impressive.
But
there Trump was, struggling to come up with a new Afghanistan policy and
frustrated that so many U.S. forces were deployed in so many places around the
world. The conversation began to tilt in the same direction as it had in the
Tank back in July.
“All
these countries need to start paying us for the troops we are sending to their
countries. We need to be making a profit,” Trump said. “We could turn a profit
on this.”
Dunford
tried to explain to the president once again, gently, that troops deployed in
these regions provided stability there, which helped make America safer.
Another officer chimed in that charging other countries for U.S. soldiers would
be against the law.
“But it
just wasn’t working,” one former Trump aide recalled. “Nothing worked.”
Following
the Tank meeting, Tillerson had told his aides that he would never silently
tolerate such demeaning talk from Trump about making money off the deployments
of U.S. soldiers. Tillerson’s father, at the age of 17, had committed to enlist
in the Navy on his next birthday, wanting so much to serve his country in World
War II. His great-uncle was a career officer in the Navy as well. Both men had
been on his mind, Tillerson told aides, when Trump unleashed his tirade in the
Tank and again when he repeated those points in the Situation Room in December.
“We
need to get our money back,” Trump told his assembled advisers.
That
was it. Tillerson stood up. But when he did so, he turned his back to the
president and faced the flag officers and the rest of the aides in the room. He
didn’t want a repeat of the scene in the Tank.
“I’ve
never put on a uniform, but I know this,” Tillerson said. “Every person who has
put on a uniform, the people in this room, they don’t do it to make a buck.
They did it for their country, to protect us. I want everyone to be clear about
how much we as a country value their service.”
Tillerson’s
rebuke made Trump angry. He got a little red in the face. But the president
decided not to engage Tillerson at that moment. He would wait to take him on
another day.
Later
that evening, after 8:00, Tillerson was working in his office at the State
Department’s Foggy Bottom headquarters, preparing for the next day. The phone
rang. It was Dunford. The Joint Chiefs chairman’s voice was unsteady with
emotion. Dunford had much earlier joked with Tillerson that in past
administrations the secretaries of state and Defense Department leaders wouldn’t
be caught dead walking on the same side of the street, for their rivalry was
that fierce. But now, as both men served Trump, they were brothers joined
against what they saw as disrespect for service members. Dunford thanked
Tillerson for standing up for them in the Situation Room.
“You
took the body blows for us,” Dunford said. “Punch after punch. Thank you. I
will never forget it.”
Tillerson,
Dunford, and Mattis would not take those body blows for much longer. They
failed to rein in Trump’s impulses or to break through what they regarded as
the president’s stubborn, even dangerous insistence that he knew best. Piece by
piece, the guardrails that had hemmed in the chaos of Trump’s presidency
crumpled.
In
March 2018, Trump abruptly fired
Tillerson while the secretary of state was halfway across the
globe on a sensitive diplomatic mission to Africa to ease tensions caused by
Trump’s demeaning insults about African countries. Trump gave Tillerson no
rationale for his firing, and afterward acted as if they were buddies, inviting
him to come by the Oval Office to take a picture and have the president sign
it. Tillerson never went.
Mattis
continued serving as the defense secretary, but the president’s sudden decision
in December 2018 to withdraw troops from Syria and abandon America’s Kurdish
allies there — one the president soon reversed, only to remake 10 months later
— inspired him to resign.
Mattis saw Trump’s desired withdrawal as an assault on a soldier’s code. “He
began to feel like he was becoming complicit,” recalled one of the secretary’s
confidants.
The
media interpretation of Mattis’ resignation letter as a scathing rebuke of
Trump’s worldview brought the president’s anger to a boiling point. Trump
decided to remove Mattis two months ahead of the secretary’s chosen departure
date. His treatment of Mattis upset the secretary’s staff. They decided to
arrange the biggest clap out they could. The event was a tradition for all
departing secretaries. They wanted a line of Pentagon personnel that stretched
for a mile applauding Mattis as he left for the last time. It was going to be
“yuge,” staffers joked, borrowing from Trump’s glossary.
But
Mattis would not allow it.
“No, we
are not doing that,” he told his aides. “You don’t understand the president. I
work with him. You don’t know him like I do. He will take it out on Shanahan
and Dunford.”
Dunford
stayed on until September 2019, retiring at the conclusion of his four-year
term as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. One of Dunford’s first public
acts after leaving office was to defend a military officer attacked by Trump,
Army Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, a National Security Council official
who testified in the House impeachment inquiry about
his worries over Trump’s conduct with Ukraine.
Trump
dismissed Vindman as a “Never Trumper,” but Dunford stepped forward to praise
the Purple Heart recipient as “a professional, competent, patriotic, and loyal
officer. He has made an extraordinary contribution to the security of our
nation.”
By
then, however, Trump had become a president entirely unrestrained. He had
replaced his raft of seasoned advisers with a cast of enablers who executed his
orders and engaged his obsessions. They saw their mission as telling the
president yes.
