by Jon Sopel
That said, there have been common features about how the various chiefs of staff have done the job, and what they saw as the common threads of it. You are the centre of managing the vast federal US bureaucracy, ensuring the policy priorities that the president has set out are enacted, so keeping an eye on the disparate government departments and agencies. You are the person liaising with Congress to get bills passed; you are the person through which everything is funnelled in the White House. You are the eyes and ears of the president: the rat-catcher when there is a rodent in the building; the progress chaser when things are moving slowly; the ultimate arbiter when disputes break out. You are the diary keeper, so you know who the president is seeing and speaking to – don’t crowd the schedule with people who don’t need an appointment; keep a record of what the president has discussed, so that on any given topic, at any given time you know what is in the president’s mind, or what ought to be in the president’s mind. You are also the person who might need to do the president’s dirty work: to tidy up messes that might arise; fire those who have transgressed; be the smoother of ruffled feathers when plumage has been disturbed. It is a job which it is probably impossible to do properly because there simply aren’t enough hours in the day to get it done.
Seeing as Donald Trump had never really expected to get elected president, he hadn’t given a whole lot of thought to who should be his chief of staff. And the Trump organisation, for all its global reach and ubiquitous branding – visit one of his golf courses and the number of times you see the word ‘Trump’ is truly astonishing – is ultimately run as a family business, with few formal structures.
Trump’s choice of Reince Priebus to be his chief of staff after the election was in some ways a very traditional and conservative appointment – and yet simultaneously wipe-your-eyes-with-amazement surprising. It was traditional because Priebus was steeped in Republican politics and during the election campaign had been the chairman of the Republican National Committee. That meant they had worked together closely, and not only on Trump’s campaign. Priebus had been the point person for the Republican party on all the ‘down ticket’ races – for the House and Senate, for state legislatures and the myriad other vacant seats. Priebus also hailed from Wisconsin, where he’d cut his political teeth, and which was also the home state of the Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan. Though Priebus hadn’t held elected office, the fact that he had a close relationship with Ryan was an undoubted boon given the legislative battles that would lie ahead. The party establishment, wary of what a Trump presidency might look like, given that he had surrounded himself with iconoclasts who seemed as antipathetic to the establishment Republican Party as they did to the Democratic Party, found the choice of Priebus reassuring. ‘Phew’ was the most common reaction.
Why it was so unexpected, though, was that, to put it mildly, they were not exactly natural soulmates. In fact, let me go further: the two men have absolutely nothing in common – the billionaire property guy, and the geeky bureaucrat. Trump’s people were typically exceptionally wealthy, or they were kindred spirits in populist politics, or they had a background in the military. Priebus was none of those things. And during the one major crisis of Donald Trump’s freewheeling campaign they came to starkly different conclusions about what should happen next.
Access Hollywood is a hugely popular programme in the US, a kind of Hello magazine of the airwaves. It is full of celebrity guests, has the latest Hollywood gossip, and comes on after the nightly news bulletin on NBC. The programme had been out on the road in a tour bus. And on the bus, Donald Trump – long before he was running for president – was discussing women with the programme’s host, Billy Bush (ironically, a scion of the Bush family and first cousin to George W. Bush and Governor Jeb Bush). It was a discussion that, had Trump remembered he was wearing a microphone, he might not have had. The property man and host of The Apprentice was telling Bush what he could and would do to women as a result of his fame. He could grab them ‘by the pussy’. He described how he would just start kissing beautiful women. In essence, he was bragging about being able to commit sexual assault.
The tape emerged on a Friday afternoon, with just weeks to go before polling day. On the Saturday there was a council of war for leading figures in the Republican Party. Priebus tried to convince Trump that it was all over; he had to withdraw from the race with as much dignity as he could muster. There was a strained atmosphere in Trump Tower as this all played out. There were different people on different floors of the building, each with their own take on what should happen next. Eventually a meeting bringing everyone together was called.
One of the chief iconoclasts, Steve Bannon, who was then running the campaign and would go into the White House as Chief of Strategy, described after he was fired what unfolded at that fateful meeting following the Washington Post’s release of the Access Hollywood tape. Priebus had already issued a public statement through his chairmanship of the RNC saying, ‘No woman should ever be described in these terms or talked about in this manner. Ever.’
In what passed as the Trump Tower ‘situation room’, Trump according to a number of sources opened up the conversation. He went around the room and asked those present what they thought the percentage chances were of him still winning and what their recommendation was. Priebus was the first to wade in. He was blunt, telling the presidential candidate: ‘You have two choices. You either drop out right now, or you lose in the biggest landslide in American political history.’ Trump, with deadpan humour, replies, ‘Well, I’m glad we’re starting off on a positive note.’ Bannon now spoke up, declaring the Priebus analysis total bullshit. Priebus, meanwhile, had brought in the top TV anchor from one of the networks to stand by in another room for the interview at which Trump would make the bombshell announcement that he was pulling out of the race.
Except that, by the end, Bannon had convinced Trump to fight on. And fight on he did in characteristic style. Instead of giving an interview to announce he was going, he released a tape that evening during which he spoke directly to camera. Yes, he expressed regret for what he had said during ‘pussygate’, while also dismissing it as ‘locker room banter’. And then alleging that whatever his transgressions, Bill Clinton’s had been far worse. Not for the first time in Donald Trump’s life he had chosen to meet fire with ire!
It was a pivotal moment in the campaign. The moment where once again this exceptional candidate would raise a middle finger to the party and to the media. But it was crucial in another respect too. It demonstrated vividly how much Donald Trump valued Priebus’s judgement. Not a whole lot. His alter ego? Forget it. Trump thought the party apparatchik was spineless and too much in thrall to a Republican establishment that the insurgent candidate held in disdain. So, it was quite a surprise on the night of Trump’s stunning election victory to find the president-elect seeking Reince Priebus out from the crowd.
The man who quarrelled repeatedly with candidate Trump, imploring – forlornly – the New York tycoon to tone down his rhetoric, was being given the big, warm embrace. ‘I tell you Reince is really a star and he is the hardest-working guy,’ said the president-elect in the wee small hours of that Wednesday morning. The bureaucrat and functionary was clearly being lined up for greater things.
The other person that Trump considered to fill the chief of staff role was Steve Bannon, the polar opposite of Priebus in every way imaginable. Where Priebus was cautious, Bannon was cavalier; where Priebus was a respecter of tradition, Bannon wanted to tear the walls down; where Priebus was a product of the Republican Party, Bannon loathed it. One was an internationalist, the other isolationist. Where Priebus was small, neat and dapper and would feel stark naked if he wasn’t wearing a tie, Bannon was large and lumbering, and had the rumpled look and rheumy, watery eyes of someone who had just been woken from sleep on a park bench after a particularly heavy night on the sauce. And, ultimately, where one was trying to rein Trump in, the other was trying to egg him on.
This was the a
ngel that Trump had on one shoulder and the devil he had on the other. And there was quite a lot of swivelling of the head between the two before he finally selected Priebus. But it would turn out to be a short-lived victory for establishment Republicans. No sooner had Trump confirmed Priebus as the chief of staff than he appointed Bannon to a newly created post of Chief Strategist at the White House. Not only that, but they would be of equal rank, and work next door to one another in the West Wing. The press release making the announcement listed Bannon first.
For a while the two partners did their best to show they could get along. In the early weeks of the Trump presidency they even tried to project the idea that far from them having been yoked in a shotgun wedding, this was an affair of the heart. At one get-together of hundreds of conservative activists Priebus said, ‘We’re just buds … we share an office suite together. We’re basically together from 6.30 in the morning until 11 at night.’ And he went on to claim that everything people had said about their relationship was wrong. In one interview for New York magazine, so much did they profess their affection for each other that it all felt a little bit creepy:
‘We talk a lot, pretty much all day long,’ Priebus said. ‘And then we communicate at night –’
‘Until we fall asleep,’ Bannon interjected with a laugh.
Priebus cut in, ‘Until somebody falls asleep … You fell asleep last night.’
‘I did,’ Bannon said.
‘I think, like, a quarter to 11,’ Priebus added.
‘I did,’ Bannon said.
‘He became unresponsive,’ Priebus laughed.
But even if this bromance was ever real, it wouldn’t last long. A month after the inauguration, Time magazine put Bannon on the front cover, with the headline ‘The Great Manipulator’. The headline used for the associated article was ‘Is Steve Bannon the Second Most Powerful Man in the World?’, alluding to Bannon’s perceived far greater influence in the White House than Priebus’s. It was bad for Priebus, making the chief of staff look as though he was some bit part player in someone else’s drama. Ultimately it was even worse for Bannon. In the President’s mind there should only be one face on the cover of Time magazine from the administration – his. If the Rasputin figure was daring to think he was as important as the tsar he would need to be pulled down a peg or two.
Priebus could only dream of having the same problems. No one was talking about him having too much power. Quite the reverse. Weak and ineffective were the adjectives that most frequently attached themselves to the Wisconsin man. And to be a successful chief of staff that is fatal. You need to be seen as the top of the tree, the highest point in the evolutionary food chain. You are the person that every subordinate needs to respect, and if not respect at least fear – and therefore aim to please. Because ultimately if you displease the chief of staff, you are displeasing the President. One other thing needed for success in the role is for America and the world to know that when you open your mouth, you are speaking for the Commander in Chief. You are his master’s voice.
This was the core of the problem for Priebus. Trump would never allow him to accrue that sort of power; the man in the Oval Office didn’t seem to respect the judgement of his appointee down the corridor. This wasn’t just a matter of Priebus’s shortcomings – the truth was Trump really didn’t want anyone to change his freewheeling ways. The President didn’t want to submit to order, discipline and structure; he wanted things to carry on, much as they had at Trump Tower. The only final arbiter on anything would be Trump himself.
The one thing that the President had hoped Priebus would achieve, thanks to his close working relationship with Paul Ryan in the House, was a successful overhaul of healthcare. They persuaded the President that this should be his first legislative battle, before then going on to other key priority areas like infrastructure renewal and tax reform. It ate up most of the effort in the first year of Trump’s presidency – before running aground.
Trump would now openly disparage him in meetings with staff – referring in mocking terms to the man he now dubbed ‘Reincey’. Once executive branch workers picked up on that, what little authority he had drained away very quickly. In a White House roiled by factional infighting, Priebus seemed incapable of banging heads together and showing some stick, or of recruiting the President to sort out the turf fights. The sunbed king seemed to rather enjoy his court fighting for his attention and preferment, even though to the outside world it conveyed an image of dysfunction and disorganisation.
It all came to a head in a glorious Tarantino style bloodbath in the summer of 2017, with Priebus having only been in post for six months. The catalyst for the fast-moving events which followed was the President’s appointment of a New York friend of his, Anthony Scaramucci, as White House director of communications. Scaramucci – or the Mooch as he enjoyed being called – was a fast talking, aviator sunglass wearing, slicked back hair pantomime villain if ever there was one. He looked as though he had strayed from the set of Goodfellas or The Sopranos. He had been a Trump fundraiser, having come from the world of finance, but he had a score or two to settle when he alighted off the Acela train at Washington’s Union Station.
Trump had intended to appoint him to a senior White House post when he formed the administration. But he was blocked – by someone telling the President that Scaramucci’s sale of his fund SkyBridge Capital to a Chinese buyer was, well, a bit dodgy and could turn out to be problematic. The person who had dripped this poison into the President’s ear was none other than Reince Priebus.
Priebus was not alone in being alarmed at the President’s choice of new communications director; so too was the press secretary, Sean Spicer. Like Priebus, Spicer had come from Republican Party HQ. And Spicer was one of Priebus’s last remaining allies in the White House. It was too much for Spicer to have to answer to the Mooch, who had zero professional experience in the communications field, save his own appearances on TV as a Trump surrogate. Spicer made it clear he would quit if Scaramucci was appointed.
But as if to bear out Spicer’s concerns about the Mooch not being a seasoned media professional, the new communications director made the mistake of calling a well-known Washington journalist, the New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza, to demand the names of his White House sources for a story he’d just written about a dinner that the President had been hosting. Scaramucci was on a mission to track down and evict the leakers from within 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. A noble enough ambition. But no journalist is going to reveal the names of his contacts when to do so would result in their contacts’ certain firing, and the journalist’s own integrity disintegrating. Aside from the ethics of a duty to protect your sources, why would you do something that would end up in you having no sources to talk to? The new comms chief made one other egregious error of judgement in this conversation: he failed to say it was ‘off the record’. Oops.
Oh, how their exchange, which Lizza had recorded, enlivened a steamy Washington summer’s day. Scaramucci is a wonderful, entertaining communicator. He couldn’t be boring and dull if he tried. And therein lay the problem. He said of the chief of staff – the man he would now answer to in the chain of command – that he had leaked information to hurt him and called him a ‘cock-blocker’ (there’s an image). But he wasn’t done. He’s ‘a fucking paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac’, the Mooch unloaded to the astonished New Yorker journalist. I mean, how do you spin your way out of that one? ‘When I said fucking paranoid schizophrenic, I shouldn’t have used the word fucking …’ No, there was no easy way around any of this.
Just to give some context, Priebus wasn’t the only target of the Mooch’s colourful invective. Bannon copped a load too. ‘I’m not Steve Bannon, I’m not trying to suck my own cock. I’m not trying to build my own brand off the fucking strength of the President. I’m here to serve the country,’ Scaramucci went on. When this emerged, what was immediately apparent was the unsustainability of these disparate characters working together under one roof. Someone would h
ave to go. As it turned out everyone went.
First out the door was the press secretary, Sean Spicer. True to his word, he quit soon after Scaramucci was appointed. Next to go, a week later, would be the chief of staff – extraordinary that when faced with a choice, the President sided with the man who called Priebus a paranoid schizophrenic, rather than his long-suffering chief of staff.
On the way back from New York, where he’d given a speech to police officers, the President decided enough was enough. And, so, sitting in his office suite aboard Air Force One, Trump stunned people aboard and the rest of America with this tweet: ‘I am pleased to inform you that I have just named General/Secretary John F. Kelly as White House Chief of Staff. He is a Great American …’ And then this: ‘… and a Great Leader. John has also done a spectacular job at Homeland Security. He has been a true star of my Administration.’
For a few minutes there was simply no mention of Priebus. It was as though he had been erased from the history books as if the victim of some latter-day Stalinist purge. Reince who? But then came a rather desultory tweet from the President: ‘I would like to thank Reince Priebus for his service and dedication to his country. We accomplished a lot together and I am proud of him!’ It didn’t exactly glow with warmth or appreciation. And that was that.
