with Mr McMaster's guidance and more to do with Ivanka Trump's visual presentation, which featured photos of the chemical attacks in the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun.

Ivanka had long ago figured out how to make successful pitches to her father. You had to push his enthusiasm buttons.

When the two women showed the presentation to the president, he went through it several times. He seemed mesmerized.

Watching the president's response, Bannon saw Trumpism melting before his eyes. Trump—despite his visceral resistance to the establishment ass-covering and standard-issue foreign policy expertise that had pulled the country into hopeless wars—was putty. After seeing all the horrifying photos he immediately adopted a completely conventional point of view: it seemed inconceivable to him that we could not do something. (pg 191)

10) The president's senioraides question his intelligence

The most prolific theme in the book, according to Wolff's reporting, is that even those closest to Mr Trump question his intelligence and ability to lead the country.

Everyone, in his or her own way, struggled to express the baldly obvious fact that the president did not know enough, did not know what he didn't know, did not particularly care, and to boot, was confident if not serene in his unquestioned certitudes.

For Steve Mnuchin and Reince Priebus, he was an "idiot." For Gary Cohn, he was "dumb as shit." For H.R. McMaster he was a "dope." The list went on. (pg 304)

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