Finally, on January 26, Yates asked Don McGahn if she could meet with him in his West Wing office that day. She laid out the intercept and explained that Flynn had lied to Pence and that FBI agents had interviewed him about his Kislyak communications. McGahn listened, then asked some questions. Mostly he wanted to know why one person lying to another in the White House worried the Justice Department. Yates explained that Flynn was compromised because the Russians knew the truth and could use the fact of the national security adviser’s lie to manipulate him.
When Yates departed, McGahn went to Reince Priebus’s office and found the chief of staff and Bannon there. “Did Flynn tell you guys that the FBI was here talking to him earlier in the week?” he asked.
Priebus and Bannon looked at each other with surprise, then back at McGahn.
“What are you fucking talking about?” Bannon said.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Priebus said. “Is this some kind of joke?”
“Well, the FBI was here in that office on Tuesday,” McGahn said, referring to the national security adviser’s suite down the hall.
“We haven’t even been here a week,” Bannon said.
McGahn then went to the Oval Office to alert Trump. The president was largely nonplussed. Flynn hadn’t told the senior Trump leadership team that he had been interviewed by the FBI about his calls with the Russian ambassador, but Trump expressed no concern about Flynn’s lying to Pence. Rather, he was bothered that Yates was questioning Flynn’s motives—and by extension Trump’s personnel decisions. The president said something to the effect of “We’ve only been here for four days, and they’re already questioning our guy?”
On January 27, without consulting his Justice Department or fully briefing his homeland security secretary, Trump issued a travel ban barring citizens and refugees from seven majority-Muslim countries from entering the United States. Chaos reigned at large international airports, and immigration lawyers filed emergency petitions asking federal courts to intervene to halt enforcement of the ban, arguing that it was unconstitutional.
The ban was drafted in secret by Bannon and Stephen Miller, Trump’s thirty-one-year-old senior policy adviser and a hard-line opponent of illegal immigration. They didn’t consult McGahn or Yates about its legal framework. Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly, whose department had to enforce the ban, never got to see the final version until after Trump delivered his executive order. Kelly was on a plane when the ban went into effect, which meant his deputy had to arrange an emergency conference call to explain to top department officials how it would be enforced, and didn’t have a copy of the document itself. Customs and Border Protection agents, wholly confused by the order’s language, inconsistently enforced a part of the ban that was later found to be illegal: barring people who had green cards from returning to their homes in the United States. Even Trump’s allies acknowledged the unmitigated disaster.
At the White House, staffers working through the weekend were shocked by the footage of dark-skinned people being rounded up in foreign airports and escorted away from the boarding line for planes bound for the United States. The saga played out on television screens hanging throughout the building. “It was like running a meeting in a Buffalo Wild Wings. There are TV screens everywhere,” one senior administration official recalled. “Nobody really seemed to realize that the government roundup was being done by people who are in the administration, this administration. People are rubbing their heads and going, ‘Huh? Why is this happening?’”
Trump’s aides blamed each other for the chaos. Some argued that Priebus and his deputies should have better coordinated with various departments and taken charge more robustly of public relations. Others placed the responsibility squarely on Miller.
Amid the mayhem, some of Trump’s new appointees donned black tie and evening gowns to attend the Alfalfa Club dinner, an annual gathering of business and political elites. It was a Saturday night, January 28, and the Trumpers mixed with the likes of Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and Jeff Bezos, to name a few. As French ambassador Gérard Araud watched the masters of the universe line up to shake hands with Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s omnipresent campaign manager turned White House counselor, he whispered to her, “That’s the sweet fragrance of power.”
But these elites were never to be trusted by Trump. Miller shared this mind-set and would later explain to Araud over dinner at the ambassador’s residence that the president had been elected for the explicit purpose of creating unease for the establishment. “This president is revolutionary, so he has to break China,” Miller said. “The scope and scale of change we’re seeking to implement by definition will involve disruption.” He added, “If we follow the normal procedures, we work into the hands of our enemies.”
By Monday, January 30, Flynn and White House aides wanted to hear his intercepted call with Kislyak. Yates called McGahn to tell him White House lawyers could come over to listen to the tape in one of their sensitive compartmented information facilities. Separately, Yates issued a memo instructing Justice Department employees not to defend the travel ban because she had concerns it was unconstitutional. Trump and his allies considered this an abuse of her office and fired Yates that afternoon. The White House said Yates had “betrayed the Department of Justice by refusing to enforce a legal order designed to protect the citizens of the United States.” The Flynn investigation continued without Yates.
* * *
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On February 2, The Washington Post reported a cantankerous phone call the president had had five days earlier with Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull. Trump badgered Turnbull over an existing refugee agreement and accused him of seeking to export “the next Boston bombers.” Trump fumed, “This is the worst deal ever.” The Associated Press reported on the same day that Trump had a similarly blunt conversation with Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto in which he threatened to deploy U.S. troops to stop “bad hombres down there.”
Trump was furious. He demanded that his aides root out the sources for the leaks and suggested that reporters needed to go to jail. Trump hated all leaks and made no distinction between West Wing infighting and sensitive national security decisions. Despite repeated efforts by his lawyers to explain, Trump did not understand that leaks of unflattering details of his constant television watching or limited understanding of government were not punishable crimes.
By February 7, a team of Washington Post reporters had confirmed that Flynn had indeed discussed sanctions in his December 29 call with Kislyak. With that story, Pence learned Flynn had lied to him. Neither Trump nor McGahn had felt it important to alert him earlier. Flynn continued in his job, flying that weekend with Trump to Florida for a summit with Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe at Mar-a-Lago.
On February 13, with everyone back at the White House, the Trump team debated Flynn’s fate. Pence said he was willing to let bygones be bygones and wouldn’t oppose Flynn staying on. But Priebus, still smarting from having repeated Flynn’s lie early on, insisted he had to go. Flynn told Trump that he would go quietly, no whining. He submitted his resignation late that night, and Trump accepted. Flynn’s lie was not the only reason for his dismissal. Trump had had growing doubts about Flynn’s fitness for the job and had found Flynn’s briefings discursive and lacking precision.
The day after Flynn’s ouster was Valentine’s Day. Chris Christie and his wife, Mary Pat, traveled to Washington to have lunch with Trump. Jared Kushner joined them.
“I fired Flynn, so the whole Russia thing is over,” Trump said, referring to the FBI’s ongoing investigation of Russia’s election interference.
“Mr. President, we’re going to be sitting here a year from now talking about Russia,” Christie said.
Kushner said that was crazy, because there was nothing to any of the Russia nonsense. Christie replied that he’s the only one among them who had both conducted federal investigations, when he was U.S. attorney in New Jersey, and been the subject of one, th
e Bridgegate scandal.
“There’s absolutely no way you can make this shorter, but there’s lots of ways you can make it longer, so keep quiet, listen to your lawyers, and that’s the way it will go the shortest,” Christie told the president.
At that very moment, Spicer was holding his press briefing, and it played on the television in Trump’s private dining room. The president, Christie, and Kushner watched as Spicer threw Flynn under the bus. He told reporters that Trump asked for Flynn’s resignation on account of an “evolving and eroding level of trust as a result of this situation and a series of other questionable instances.”
As Spicer kept parrying questions, Kushner’s phone rang.
“It’s Flynn! It’s Flynn!” Kushner mouthed to Trump and Christie.
Flynn was pissed. He had thought if he left quietly he would not be disparaged.
“Make nice,” Trump instructed Kushner. “Make nice.”
Kushner told Flynn, “You know the president respects you. The president cares about you. I’ll get the president to send out a positive tweet about you later.”
The call ended. “We should try to help him out. He’s a good guy,” Kushner said to Trump and Christie.
“Bad people are like gum on the bottom of your shoe,” Christie replied. “Very hard to make them go away.”
Trump had some sympathy for Flynn. The two men had developed a genuine friendship as they hopscotched the battleground states together. That afternoon in the Oval Office, as a homeland security meeting wrapped up, Trump asked the FBI director to stay behind so they could speak alone. Trump told Comey that he did not believe Flynn had done anything wrong but explained that he still had to let him go. Then he pleaded for leniency, evincing no hesitation as he sought to use his power to let a loyalist off the hook. “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go,” Trump told Comey, according to the FBI director’s contemporaneous notes. “He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.”
* * *
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Spicer had been holding the dual roles of press secretary and communications director and was drowning—and not only because of Melissa McCarthy’s devastating portrayal of him on Saturday Night Live. A stout five feet six inches, Spicer did not have “the look” that Trump envisioned representing him on television, nor did the former Republican National Committee spokesman have the renegade pedigree that would have made him a natural representative of the “Make America Great Again” insurgency. Trump dissed Spicer’s briefing performances behind his back. “Sean can’t even complete a sentence,” Trump told other aides. “We’ve got a spokesperson who can’t speak.”
Spicer needed help, so he reached out to Michael Dubke, a veteran operative who ran a public relations firm, and asked him to interview for the communications director job. On February 10, Dubke came to the White House to meet with Spicer. The Flynn story was still hot. Spicer was too busy to talk with Dubke, so for hours the job candidate hung around outside his office, next to the copy machine in the “upper press” area. Nobody paid much attention to Dubke except for the NBC correspondent Peter Alexander.
“So who are you?” Alexander asked.
Not wanting to blow his cover, Dubke said, “I’m a friend of Sean’s . . . and just wanted to see how things work around here.”
Finally, Spicer brought Dubke in. They talked for maybe twenty minutes about the job, and Spicer asked Dubke to come back Saturday to meet with Priebus. This time the three men talked for forty-five minutes, and Priebus asked Dubke if he had anything on social media trashing Trump. Dubke was a low-profile operative who mostly kept his opinions to himself. “No, you won’t find anything from me,” he assured Priebus.
On February 16, Dubke came back for an Oval Office interview with Trump. He was just a few minutes into telling the president about the company he founded and his philosophy on branding when Trump had an idea. “What do you think about a press conference?” he asked.
“Well, I would decide what the three messages are that you want to talk about, and I’d bring the expert in from each of the agencies, have this conversation,” Dubke said.
“No, no, no, no, no,” Trump said. “Today. What if we do it today?”
Dubke thought he was joking. Trump was serious. Spicer turned tail out of the Oval to start setting things into motion. In any normal government, this kind of knee-jerk decision would be madness. But in the Trump White House, this was just another Thursday.
“Sean!” Trump yells out to Spicer. “We’ve got to get the East Room ready.”
Within minutes, White House tours were canceled for the remainder of the day to clear the residence. A lectern and camera risers were assembled within three hours. Soon, administration policy experts filed into the Oval Office to brief Trump, and Dubke hovered on the edge of the room, his visitor badge dangling from his neck.
“I’m Mike Pence,” the vice president said, introducing himself.
“Yes, sir, I know who you are. I’m Mike Dubke,” he said.
“So what’s going on?” Pence asked.
“Well, I think they’re preparing for a press conference right now,” Dubke said.
“What’s your role here?” Pence inquired.
“Well,” Dubke said, “this was my interview for communications director.”
Pence laughed, a momentary acknowledgment of the absurdity.
“How’s that going?” he asked Dubke.
There was no thematic purpose for Trump’s press conference. The president simply wanted to have one. Trump stepped out to his lectern and for one hour and seventeen minutes delivered to a live television audience a fiery, stream-of-consciousness screed.
“I turn on the TV, open the newspapers, and I see stories of chaos—chaos,” Trump said. “Yet it is the exact opposite. This administration is running like a fine-tuned machine.”
This was the twenty-seventh full day of his presidency, and Trump was unscripted. The president denied dysfunction in an administration plainly defined by it. The next day, Dubke was officially hired, but as he began work as communications director, he knew he could not direct Trump. The ineptitude came from the very top. Trump cared more about putting on a show than about the more mundane task of governing. There would be no restraining the grievances Trump felt nor curbing the chaos he created. They could only be managed.
* * *
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On February 23, two highly regarded cabinet members, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Kelly, ran into the Trump buzz saw when they traveled to Mexico City seeking to fix a problem their boss had created. Tillerson, sixty-four, a former chief executive of ExxonMobil, and Kelly, sixty-six, a retired four-star Marine Corps general, were both men of substance and gravitas. They saw their jobs as capstones on their already decorated careers and had agreed to join the administration out of a patriotic call to duty to help a neophyte president navigate a complicated world. Yet their experience and knowledge mattered little in Trump’s cabinet.
Tillerson and Kelly had been trying to smooth over the hurt, defensive feelings of America’s long-standing ally after Trump threatened huge tariffs on Mexican goods if the country did not agree to pay for construction of the border wall, his signature campaign promise. A planned meeting in Washington between Trump and Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto was hastily called off on January 26.
Compounding the challenges Tillerson and Kelly confronted was the fact that Kushner was operating as an interlocutor with Mexico outside the boundaries of the State Department or the National Security Council. This arrangement not only smacked of nepotism but also undermined lines of authority, creating confusion for other officials in the government as well as for foreign diplomats. Mexican foreign minister Luis Videgaray, however, cultivated a friendship with Kushner during the campaign, and in the fraught early months of Trump’s presidency Videgaray would lean on Kushner as a troubleshooter.
In Mexico City on February 26, as Tillerson and Kelly believed they had
reached a kumbaya moment in face-to-face meetings with their counterparts, Trump let the world know who was in charge. In what had become a startling new trend in the White House, the president let the cameras roll as he spoke off the cuff in meetings. At his 10:30 a.m. meeting with two dozen U.S. manufacturing executives in the State Dining Room, Trump applauded his administration’s decision to launch a “military operation” to deport criminals who had snuck illegally into the country and Kelly’s work to stop “really bad dudes” from crossing the border. “All of a sudden, for the first time, we’re getting gang members out, we’re getting drug lords out, we’re getting really bad dudes out of this country—and at a rate that nobody’s ever seen before,” Trump said. “And it’s a military operation.”
Though the White House and Kelly’s office had both denied they would deploy the military, nobody was entirely sure what the fledgling administration might ultimately do. After all, the travel ban had been launched without any warning. The president’s remarks became breaking news bulletins.
At this very moment, Tillerson and Kelly were at their hotel preparing to leave by motorcade for the official meetings with their Mexican hosts. Tillerson, who had been alerted to the news in Washington by his staff, ran into Kelly in the hotel hallway. “You’re never going to believe what the president just did,” Tillerson said. “He said he’s sending troops to the border.” They both knew the disaster rolling over them. The Mexican leaders were sure to be infuriated. Kelly closed his eyes and cursed. “Oh, fuck,” he said. Trump had just cut them off at the knees for the sake of the show, to look tough on television.
Tillerson and Kelly had about an hour before they were scheduled to give a joint press conference with Videgaray and Mexican interior secretary Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong. When they arrived at the ministry for their meetings, the Americans found the Mexicans stunned. Videgaray asked, “Was this a setup? Were Tillerson and Kelly in on this joke?” “Videgaray was saying, ‘What the hell? What are we going to do now?’” said one U.S. official present for the meetings. “It was very hard for them to believe this was not planned.”
A Very Stable Genius Page 4
