Truman and MacArthur: The Winding Road to Dismissal

I have been with the president on occasions when he had what appeared
to me to be a perfectly normal and amiable conversation with a
caller. After the caller left, he would say to me ‘I certainly set him
straight’ or ‘I let him have it.’ The president’s remarks seemed to me
to have no conceivable relation to the conversation I had just heard.
He may have been commenting on what he wished he had said.

As always he was very, very gentle—too gentle.

Admiral Robert Dennison,

White House assistant to President Truman, 1948-1953