On the Asia trip, both Tillerson and McMaster hopped into the president’s vehicle in succession to give Trump his morning update before the motorcade took off for its appointed meetings. But as McMaster spoke, Trump frowned, turned his back, and interrupted him midsentence to ask Tillerson a question. It was a not-very-gentle cue for Tillerson to take over the role of updating the president on the key facts he needed to know. Tillerson engaged in a little small talk, then returned to tee up the debates Trump would tackle in his meetings that day.
“As H.R. was saying, Mr. President,” Tillerson began, a sign of respect and deference to the national security adviser at an otherwise painful moment. Tillerson didn’t always agree with McMaster on style or process, but he told aides the man was selfless and dedicated to the mission.
McMaster had occasional disagreements with Trump, such as over the long-term strategy in Afghanistan and the Iran nuclear agreement. Unlike several other senior advisers, though, he genuinely tried to help implement the president’s wishes. Rather than impose his own agenda, McMaster generally sought to curate the opinions of the relevant administration officials and present a range of options to Trump.
“Sometimes you have very forceful differences of opinion among the president’s senior advisers,” Senator Tom Cotton, a McMaster ally, said at the time. “H.R. is indispensable in helping the president hear all those viewpoints and have the information he needs, and framed in time for the president to make a decision.”
U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley added, “When we’re in those meetings, he’s all about getting options on the table for the president.”
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Another episode startled Trump’s advisers on the Asia trip. As the president and his entourage embarked on the journey, they stopped in Hawaii on November 3 to break up the long flight and allow Air Force One to refuel. White House aides arranged for the president and first lady to make a somber pilgrimage so many of their predecessors had made: to visit Pearl Harbor and honor the twenty-three hundred American sailors, soldiers, and marines who lost their lives there.
The first couple was set to take a private tour of the USS Arizona Memorial, which sits just off the coast of Honolulu and straddles the hull of the battleship that sank into the Pacific during the Japanese surprise bombing attack in 1941. As a passenger boat ferried the Trumps to the stark white memorial, the president pulled Kelly aside for a quiet consult.
“Hey, John, what’s this all about? What’s this a tour of?” Trump asked his chief of staff.
Kelly was momentarily stunned. Trump had heard the phrase “Pearl Harbor” and appeared to understand that he was visiting the scene of a historic battle, but he did not seem to know much else. Kelly explained to him that the stealth Japanese attack here had devastated the U.S. Pacific Fleet and prompted the country’s entrance into World War II, eventually leading the United States to drop atom bombs on Japan. If Trump had learned about “a date which will live in infamy” in school, it hadn’t really pierced his consciousness or stuck with him.
“He was at times dangerously uninformed,” said one senior former adviser.
Trump’s lack of basic historical knowledge surprised some foreign leaders as well. When he met with President Emmanuel Macron of France at the United Nations back in September 2017, Trump complimented him on the spectacular Bastille Day military parade they had attended together that summer in Paris. Trump said he did not realize until seeing the parade that France had had such a rich history of military conquest. He told Macron something along the lines of “You know, I really didn’t know, but the French have won a lot of battles. I didn’t know.”
A senior European official observed, “He’s totally ignorant of everything. But he doesn’t care. He’s not interested.”
Tillerson developed a polite and self-effacing way to manage the gaps in Trump’s knowledge. If he saw the president was completely lost in the conversation with a foreign leader, other advisers noticed, the secretary of state would step in to ask a question. As Tillerson lodged his question, he would reframe the topic by explaining some of the basics at issue, giving Trump a little time to think.
Over time, the president developed a tell that he would use to get out of a sticky conversation in which a world leader mentioned a topic that was totally foreign or unrecognizable to him. He would turn to McMaster, Tillerson, or another adviser and say, “What do you think of it?”
“There was always the concern when no one was there that he would be maneuvered into a condition or an agreement that he didn’t realize he had committed to,” one former senior adviser said. “They tell him to do something and he does it.”
Oftentimes after meetings with Trump, Kelly and Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis would huddle together—sometimes with McMaster in the national security adviser’s office, sometimes without him—to compare notes on the presidential performance they had just witnessed. In words and sometimes simply facial expressions, they communicated a shared concern: “This guy doesn’t know what he’s doing.”
In the spring of 2017, as aides gathered in the Oval Office one day to brief Trump on upcoming meetings with foreign leaders, they made a passing reference to some foreign government officials who were under scrutiny for corruption, for taking bribes. Trump perked up at the mention of bribes and got rather agitated. He told Tillerson he wanted him to help him get rid of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
“It’s just so unfair that American companies aren’t allowed to pay bribes to get business overseas,” Trump told the group. “We’re going to change that.”
Looking at Tillerson, Trump said, “I need you to get rid of that law,” as if the secretary of state had the power to magically repeal an act of Congress.
The business developer turned president was angry about the FCPA ostensibly because it restricted his industry buddies or his own company’s executives from paying off foreign governments in faraway lands. Other aides in the room turned to Tillerson to gauge his reaction. Surprised at Trump’s request, Tillerson first paused, then found his words.
“Mr. President,” he said. “I’m not the guy to do that.”
Tillerson explained the way laws work. He said the Justice Department should be consulted about a series of statutes that now made it a crime for American businesspeople to give bribes to foreign officials or business leaders to get contracts or deals struck in other countries. Then, in a somber kind of Schoolhouse Rock! episode that had become a regular feature of the Oval Office education of this president, Tillerson said that Congress would have to be involved in the repeal of the law.
Trump didn’t miss a beat. He was unmoved by Tillerson’s explanations and turned to Stephen Miller, the White House’s senior policy adviser who had long before proved that he could be relied upon to dutifully execute almost all of the president’s wishes.