Bob Woodward:

What happened in that meeting, Gary Cohn, the chief economic adviser in the White House, and Secretary of Defense Mattis formed an alliance. This has not been reported before.

And they said, my God, we have got to get the president out of the White House, where he's not watching television, where he's not kind of prisoner to the calls that are coming in.

So they brought him over to the Pentagon, the Tank, which is the Joint Chiefs' secret meeting room. There are no windows. There are no distractions. And Secretary of Defense Mattis put up on a screen a list and maps showing this triad of support for the United States' trade deals, secret intelligence partnerships, and very — in a very, very important way, security alliances, like the one with South Korea, like NATO.

And Mattis literally said, the great gift from the greatest generation, the past, is this rules-based international order.

Secretary of State Tillerson said, this is what's kept the peace for 70 years.

And Trump erupted, said, this is B.S., and gets in a dispute about all of these issues. At the end of this meeting, Mattis, according to people who were there, just is deflated, because the president doesn't understand the basics.