Peter Baker > Quotes

“WASHINGTON LOVES the ones who grease its gears. But history only remembers the ones who shift them,” the late Washington Post writer Marjorie Williams wrote of Baker.”
― Peter Baker, The Man Who Ran Washington: The Life and Times of James A. Baker III

“He divided problems into three categories, according to David Gergen, a former adviser from his White House days: easy; hard but doable; and impossible. The first category he left to others, the last he wrote off, and the middle is where he focused his energies.”
― Peter Baker, The Man Who Ran Washington: The Life and Times of James A. Baker III

“He has betrayed our national security and he will do so again. He has compromised our elections and he will do so again. You will not change him, you cannot constrain him. He is who he is. Truth matters little to him. What’s right matters even less, and decency matters not at all. I do not ask you to convict him because truth or right or decency matters nothing to him, but because we have proven our case and it matters to you. Truth matters to you. Right matters to you. You are decent. He is not who you are.[36]”
― Peter Baker, The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021

“Larry Speakes estimated that Baker spent as much as 50 percent of his time with reporters and editors, probably an exaggeration but a revealing one. The media, at least the part of it that really mattered, was still small enough that it could be managed; aside from ABC, CBS, and NBC, there were the wire services, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and the weekly newsmagazines Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News & World Report. Baker, as chief of staff, became an expert in their care and feeding.”
― Peter Baker, The Man Who Ran Washington: The Life and Times of James A. Baker III

“For years, the suspicion that Mr. Putin has a secret fortune has intrigued scholars, industry analysts, opposition figures, journalists and intelligence agencies but defied their efforts to uncover it. Numbers are thrown around suggesting that Mr. Putin may control $40 billion or even $70 billion, in theory making him the richest head of state in world history. For all the rumors and speculation, though, there has been little if any hard evidence, and Gunvor has adamantly denied any financial ties to Mr. Putin and repeated that denial on Friday. But Mr. Obama’s response to the Ukraine crisis, while derided by critics as slow and weak, has reinvigorated a 15-year global hunt for Mr. Putin’s hidden wealth. Now, as the Obama administration prepares to announce another round of sanctions as early as Monday targeting Russians it considers part of Mr. Putin’s financial circle, it is sending a not-very-subtle message that it thinks it knows where the Russian leader has his money, and that he could ultimately be targeted directly or indirectly. “It’s something that could be done that would send a very clear signal of taking the gloves off and not just dance around it,” said Juan C. Zarate, a White House counterterrorism adviser to President George W. Bush who helped pioneer the government’s modern financial campaign techniques to choke off terrorist money.”
― Peter Baker

“As for the coronavirus, Trump remained in denial mode. The president repeatedly told the public that the outbreak was “totally under control,” that it would “miraculously” disappear on its own with warmer weather, that it “will go away,” that it was comparable to the ordinary flu, that the number of cases would go “down close to zero,” that a vaccine would be available soon, and that anyone who wanted to be tested could get a test.[21] None of it was true.”
― Peter Baker, The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021

“One of Giuliani’s favorite claims was the charge that anywhere between 8,000 and 30,000 dead people voted in Philadelphia. In fact, investigations would show that it was exactly two. Similarly in Georgia, he variously claimed that 800 or 6,000 or 10,515 dead people voted. There, as well, it would eventually be determined that at most it was just four. But that did not deter Giuliani. He also asserted that 65,000 or 165,000 underage people voted in Georgia, when, in fact, the number was zero. In Arizona, he said at different points that “way more than 10,000” or “32,000” or “probably about 250,000” or “a few hundred thousand” undocumented immigrants had voted illegally in the state, but investigators found no evidence that any had.[22] Not hundreds of thousands, not tens of thousands, not any.”
― Peter Baker, The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021

“You can’t just go and just flip a switch and change the election,” Rosen responded. “I don’t expect you to do that,” Trump said. “Just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen.”[17] Just say it was corrupt. Even though Rosen had told him there was no evidence that it was. Much as with his campaign to get Ukraine to undermine Joe Biden, Trump was not looking for corruption, just someone to say there was so he could weaponize it.”
― Peter Baker, The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021

“Trump was often just one yes-man away from doing what he wanted. One attorney general. One military commander. One vice president.”
― Peter Baker, The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021

“It did not matter, to Trump or his followers, that not one independent authority, not one judge, not one prosecutor, not one election agency, not one official who was not a Trump partisan ever found widespread fraud. None. Even an audit in Arizona sponsored by Trump allies only confirmed the result. A federal judge described the effort to overturn the election as a “coup in search of a legal theory” and opined that Trump most likely committed conspiracy to defraud the United States and obstruct the work of Congress. A bipartisan House investigating committee concluded that Trump had committed a crime.”
― Peter Baker, The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021

“It is midnight in Washington,” Schiff began. “The lights are finally going out in the Capitol after a long day in the impeachment trial of Donald J. Trump.” Over the course of the next twenty-five minutes, he said it was not enough to let voters decide because if the Senate were to let Trump off, he would be free to use his power to advantage himself with impunity in the election. “He has done it before, he will do it again,” Schiff warned.”
― Peter Baker, The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021

“Trump also said out loud what he had made abundantly clear in private, that his main concern was not the health of Americans at risk but what their illnesses would mean for him politically. Asked whether he would allow people to disembark from a cruise ship idling off the coast of San Francisco where nineteen crew members and two passengers had tested positive for the virus, Trump said he would rather not, since their cases would be added to the total number of infections in the United States. And that would make him look bad. “I like the numbers being where they are,” he said. “I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn’t our fault.”[3]”
― Peter Baker, The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021

“Mattis had a line to explain what was happening: Trump was so out of his depth that he had decided to drain the pool. Once it got shallow enough, he must have figured, he would not be underwater anymore.”
― Peter Baker, The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021

“He would pursue vengeance against his enemies. He would politicize the courts, the Justice Department, and the military. He would challenge allies and seek common cause with autocrats. We know he would do these things because those are exactly the things that he did and said for all four years of his first term in the presidency. Even if”
― Peter Baker, The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021

“To Trump, talking with Murdoch was more important than just about anything. No one played a more central role in Trump’s media world than the Australian-born impresario of conservative journalism who owned Fox News, Fox Business, The Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, and other”
― Peter Baker, The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021

“As he had demonstrated with the Soviets, Baker recognized that the person across the table had his or her own domestic politics to worry about and he made a point of looking for ways to satisfy those needs while still getting what he wanted.”
― Peter Baker, The Man Who Ran Washington: The Life and Times of James A. Baker III

“After years of experience, Trump knew how to sell a big lie. He had done it many times before. As a real estate developer, he had claimed his buildings were taller than they were. As a reality television star, he had made up conflicts between contestants to juice his ratings. As a political provocateur, he had claimed without a lick of proof that the nation’s first Black president was secretly born in Africa. The trick with conspiracy theories, he had demonstrated, was repetition and conviction. “You say something enough times,” he once told Chris Christie’s wife, “and it becomes true.”
― Peter Baker, The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021

“The more Trump listened to them, the more he hardened around the notion that he had been robbed, and in the days following the election he would resolve to do what no other sitting president has done in the history of the United States—hold on to power despite the indisputable will of the voters. The next ten weeks would prove to be the most elaborate and extensive campaign to overturn a presidential election since the ratification of the Constitution, all orchestrated from the Oval Office.”
― Peter Baker, The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021

“Pompeo and his explosive temper. Pompeo would curse and yell even at early-morning staff meetings with his top advisers. He often vented about leaks. Women were a particular target, especially Lisa Kenna, the career diplomat who served as his executive secretary. His tirades at her, described by three senior officials who observed them directly, were blistering. “I don’t know if I’ve ever seen such sustained abuse in my life,” one senior official said about Pompeo’s treatment of Kenna.”
― Peter Baker, The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021

“All important business is always done in men’s rooms and smoking rooms,” Gorbachev joked.”
― Peter Baker, The Man Who Ran Washington: The Life and Times of James A. Baker III

“Trump was checked in his ability to do what he was tempted to do in the early weeks of the administration, which was to cut a deal and simply give them Ukraine,” Fried recalled. “They were blocked by Congress.” In July of 2017, Congress passed a version of the measure that McConnell had threatened, the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, broadened to include Iran and North Korea as well as Russia.”
― Peter Baker, The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021

“He was impressed with the California governor’s political skills, but for years viewed Reagan warily. “We thought he was a nut,” Baker said later. “I didn’t necessarily think that,” he added, “but that was the line on him. Everybody said that he was.” Reagan’s bellicose rhetoric”
― Peter Baker, The Man Who Ran Washington: The Life and Times of James A. Baker III

“When the prosecutor finally did issue his report in November 1995, he cleared the Baker team, saying some of them had acted stupidly but not illegally. Indeed, diGenova went on to say that Barr should never have sought his appointment in the first place.”
― Peter Baker, The Man Who Ran Washington: The Life and Times of James A. Baker III

“And then he decided. “Fuck that shit,” he told his staff. “I’ll just fight him.”
― Peter Baker, The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021

“But it would be a tendentious argument, they believed, not one an experienced prosecutor would take to a real court with a real jury. The only meaningful debate was about the Trump Tower meeting—some prosecutors thought they did not need to make a big deal out of it since it turned out to be so inconsequential, while others argued that even if not criminal it was still a deeply troubling episode that belonged in their final report.”
― Peter Baker, The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021

“Theirs was the largest class in Princeton history and, while homogenous by later standards, it was more diverse than many of its predecessors, with the largest share of public high school students (37 percent)”
― Peter Baker, The Man Who Ran Washington: The Life and Times of James A. Baker III

“Bush felt fortified in his resolve when he stopped by Rice’s office one day that week while she was meeting with Elie Wiesel, the famed Holocaust survivor. Bush had just read Michael Beschloss’s book The Conquerors, about how Franklin Roosevelt and other leaders failed to act to stop the Holocaust. “I’m against silence,” Wiesel told him. “I’m against neutrality because it doesn’t ever help the victim. It helps the aggressor.”
― Peter Baker, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House

“2 Timothy 47.”
― Peter Baker, The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021

“Barr had just requested the appointment of a prosecutor in the passport matter only hours before the deadline. He had acted on the recommendation of the head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, Robert S. Mueller III.”
― Peter Baker, The Man Who Ran Washington: The Life and Times of James A. Baker III

“Both sides in the internal American feud, meanwhile, were suspicious of America’s ally South Korea, fearing that the government of President Moon Jae-in had staked its political future on a deal and was actually working in concert with the North Koreans to box in Trump.”
― Peter Baker, The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021