A Very Stable Genius

by Philip Rucker

  On July 25, the court convened again and ordered that Brunson be released. Top advisers to Trump, as well as outside Christian advocates who had long been pushing for the pastor’s release, prepared that Wednesday night to celebrate Brunson’s homecoming. But what happened next surprised Americans familiar with the negotiations: Brunson was released from prison but on the morning of July 26 was taken by national police to his Turkish home and placed under house arrest. Through back channels, the United States learned Brunson would be detained in Turkey. Pompeo wrote on Twitter that the court’s decision was “welcome” but “it is not enough. We have seen no credible evidence against Mr. Brunson, and call on Turkish authorities to resolve his case immediately in a transparent and fair manner.”

  On July 26, Trump called Erdogan and was livid. The call was short, with Trump doing most of the talking and not getting the answers he wanted. Trump then took to Twitter to announce his displeasure. The United States “will impose large sanctions” on Turkey, he wrote. “This innocent man of faith should be released immediately.” Hours later, a senior Turkish official issued a statement calling reports of Trump’s making a deal with Erdogan at NATO for a prisoner exchange between the United States and Turkey “completely baseless.” According to the Turks, whatever deal Trump believed he had miraculously sealed with Erdogan was one of his own imagination. Trump took this as a personal affront. He had long admired Erdogan, attracted to him because of his ruthless rule in Turkey and the ease with which he dispatched political rivals. Ever preoccupied with optics, Trump told advisers he admired the deep and commanding sound of Erdogan’s voice.

  “It’s un-fucking-believable,” one of Trump’s senior advisers recalled. “I can’t describe it. When he’s on that speakerphone, it is like you’re hearing Hitler at a Nuremberg rally. You’ve heard Hitler’s voice and it’s just different. There’s something about it that’s powerful and chilling. You feel like you’re maybe hearing Satan talking or whatever. When Erdogan talks, it’s so powerful it’s disturbing. It’s just like this booming voice, and said in a cadence.”

  On August 16, during a cabinet meeting, Trump brought up the “terrible” Turks. “Turkey, they have not proven to be a good friend,” he said. “They have a great Christian pastor there. He’s a very innocent man.” That is when Trump publicly acknowledged for the first time his role in the Israeli prisoner trade. “We got somebody out for him,” he said, referring to Erdogan. “He needed help getting somebody out of someplace; they came out.”

  “They want to hold our wonderful pastor,” Trump added. “Not fair. Not right.”

  Brunson would stay in Turkey for another two months, until he was finally released when a judge lifted the travel ban on the pastor, giving him a window to quickly grab his belongings, race to the airport, and flee the country. Facing unrelenting economic pressure and the added threat of U.S. sanctions, Erdogan gave up the fight with Trump.

  On October 13, Brunson’s first stop upon returning to the United States was the White House, where he rested his hand on Trump’s shoulder, knelt in prayer, and thanked the president. Trump claimed a diplomatic coup for his administration. It took longer and was messier than the president anticipated, but the pastor was nevertheless free.

  * * *

  —

  On August 15, Trump seized an opportunity to retaliate against the national security professionals who had publicly condemned his handling of Russia’s election interference or questioned his fitness to be president. Chief among them was John Brennan, the former CIA director who had delivered an intelligence briefing to Trump about the Russian operation back in January 2017 and had since become an outspoken critic of the president, both on social media and in his role as an NBC News analyst.

  Sarah Sanders made a striking announcement at her August 15 press briefing: Brennan’s security clearance was being revoked. Reading a statement she attributed to Trump, Sanders said Brennan posed a risk to national security by “his erratic conduct and behavior.” She accused the former CIA director of making “a series of unfounded and outrageous allegations—wild outbursts on the Internet and television—about this administration.” Ironically, these were the same charges many if not most national security professionals would level against Trump. Brennan, sixty-two, had devoted twenty-five years of his career to the CIA. He worked as a Near East and South Asia analyst, a CIA station chief in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and a director of the National Counterterrorism Center. He served under President Clinton, President George W. Bush, and then in the Obama administration, where he was homeland security adviser and later CIA director. Trump was also considering revoking the security clearances of other national security officials, each of whom the president considered a personal enemy: former director of national intelligence James Clapper; former FBI director James Comey; former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe; former acting attorney general Sally Yates; former CIA director Michael Hayden; and former national security adviser Susan Rice; as well as two recently departed FBI officials, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, and one current Justice Department official, Bruce Ohr.

  To many professionals in the national security community, this extraordinary action crossed a red line. Among those shocked was William McRaven, who had earned the title “Bull Frog” among special operators for being one of the longest serving in that elite corps. The former navy admiral had been a commander of the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command and led the 2011 raid on a Pakistani compound that killed Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda terrorist mastermind of 9/11.

  McRaven had considered Brennan a trusted friend and critical partner in that unique mission. Earlier in 2018, McRaven and Brennan had been together in Austin at the University of Texas, where McRaven was finishing his work as university chancellor. They headlined a panel discussing the importance of leadership and praising each other’s steady support in the years-long search for bin Laden’s hideout and the tense assault on his compound.

  McRaven was enjoying his semiretirement, visiting a friend in the Colorado mountains, when he heard the news that Trump was revoking Brennan’s security clearance. The next day, August 16, he had plans to go fly-fishing in a beautiful river valley but felt an urge—a duty, even—to speak out in Brennan’s defense. McRaven had spotty cell reception and no wireless connection, so sending an email was not an option. He asked his host if he could use the landline at his home. First he gathered his thoughts and scribbled a few phrases on a piece of paper. Then he called the cell phone of a reporter he knew and trusted.

  As a child growing up in San Antonio, McRaven had been in the same fifth-grade class as Karen Tumulty, who had become a distinguished political correspondent at The Washington Post and had recently moved to the opinions section as a columnist. McRaven figured he would give her an on-the-record quote she could share with whichever Post colleague was writing about the Brennan controversy. Tumulty was heading to a doctor’s appointment when the admiral dialed. She didn’t recognize the Colorado number and let the call go to voice mail. Not sure when he’d be able to call her back later, McRaven decided to speak aloud into the voice-mail message, saying what he would tell Trump directly if he had the chance.

  “Here is what I’ve come up with,” he said. “Do whatever you want to with it, Karen.”

  Then he dictated his comment, verbatim:

  Former CIA Director John Brennan, whose security clearance you revoked on Wednesday, is one of the finest public servants I have ever known. Few Americans have done more to protect this country than John. He is a man of unparalleled integrity, whose honesty and character have never been in question, except by those who don’t know him.

  Therefore, I would consider it an honor if you would revoke my security clearance as well, so I can add my name to the list of men and women who have spoken up against your presidency.

  Like most Americans, I had hoped that when you became president, you would rise to the occasion and become the leader this great nation needs.

  A good leader t
ries to embody the best qualities of his or her organization. A good leader sets the example for others to follow. A good leader always puts the welfare of others before himself or herself.

  Your leadership, however, has shown little of these qualities. Through your actions, you have embarrassed us in the eyes of our children, humiliated us on the world stage and, worst of all, divided us as a nation.

  If you think for a moment that your McCarthy-era tactics will suppress the voices of criticism, you are sadly mistaken. The criticism will continue until you become the leader we prayed you would be.

  Waiting in the reception area to see her doctor, Tumulty played the mystery caller’s voice mail. She was stunned by what she heard. She called McRaven back but only talked briefly to him because he was finally heading out to fish. She told him she felt sure the Post would publish some of his reaction, and McRaven said he’d be out of pocket for a while but trusted her to handle it. They hung up.

  As Tumulty sat in the waiting room transcribing McRaven’s voice-mail recording, she felt certain it deserved more than a few quotes in a news story. A national military hero had called the president a national embarrassment and a poor role model for America’s children. He even compared Trump to Joseph McCarthy. She consulted with her editors, and they agreed they should publish McRaven’s impromptu speech word for word as an opinion piece.

  McRaven’s essay went viral. It drew notice deep in the bowels of the country’s national security apparatus, where public servants working many rungs below McRaven had been silently disgusted watching Trump disrespect them and their brethren. They took private comfort reading McRaven’s words. As one of those low-level cogs described it, finally somebody revered, a boldfaced name, was declaring, in essence, “No more.”

  Before Trump, this government aide had always felt the presidency had a kind of magic. No matter which party the president came from, he bore the weight of history on his shoulders, with the seriousness it deserved. But not anymore. “He’s ruined that magic,” this aide said of Trump. “The disdain he shows for our country’s foundation and its principles. The disregard he has for right and wrong. Your fist clenches. Your teeth grate. The hair goes up on the back of your neck. I have to remind myself I said an oath to a document in the National Archives. I swore to the Constitution. I didn’t swear an oath to this jackass.”

  As this aide saw it, there has been a silent understanding within the national security community that diplomatic, military, and intelligence officers were doing the right thing, quietly risking their lives to protect the American way of life. This aide saw Trump’s move against Brennan as one of the first steps of undercutting America’s democratic system of government and the belief system upon which it was founded. According to the aide, it was the president declaring, “It’s not okay to disagree with me. I can remove you from this work and your career.

  “If he wanted to, how far could he push this?” this aide asked. “Look back. Did people in the 1930s in Germany know when the government started to turn on them? Most Americans are more worried about who is going to win on America’s Got Talent and what the traffic is going to be like on I-95. They aren’t watching this closely.

  “I like to believe [Trump] is too self-engrossed, too incompetent and disorganized to get us to 1930,” this aide added. “But he has moved the bar. And another president that comes after him can move it a little farther. The time is coming. Our nation will be tested. Every nation is. Rome fell, remember. He is opening up vulnerabilities for this to happen. That is my fear.”

  * * *

  —

  On August 21, in a courtroom in lower Manhattan, Michael Cohen was set to appear that afternoon as part of a plea agreement with federal prosecutors related to the hush-money payments he made to women claiming to have had affairs with Trump. More than 250 miles south, in a federal courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia, a jury was deliberating on charges against Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman.

  Just after four o’clock in the afternoon, Cohen pleaded guilty to eight felony counts and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors in New York. He testified that he had made these criminal payments “in coordination and at the direction of” Trump.

  At nearly the same time, the jury in Alexandria reached a verdict in the Manafort case. Manafort was also found guilty of, coincidentally, eight counts: five counts of tax fraud, two counts of bank fraud, and one count of failure to disclose a foreign bank account. The judge declared a mistrial on the remaining ten charges.

  The news broke as the president traveled to West Virginia for a rally, where he used his bully pulpit to repeatedly denounce the Mueller investigation as a “witch hunt.” The president cried out, his voice rising, “Where is the collusion? Where is the collusion?”

  Unbeknownst to his throngs of supporters or the journalists covering the day’s events, Trump had used this day to try to win the Nobel Peace Prize. He worked the phones, seeking a recommendation for the prize. His main target was Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, who had proven to be the most obsequious of his major-nation counterparts, but he called other Asian heads of state, too. As Trump lobbied foreign counterparts, his pitch went along the lines of “It’s time. Obama got it without doing anything. I brought peace to North Korea. I need to win the Nobel.” Winning a Nobel had been a fixation of Trump’s, in large part because Obama was awarded one in 2009, less than one year into his presidency.

  Trump’s hunger for recognition extended to other prizes, too. Oftentimes when he heard about somebody receiving a lifetime achievement award from a think tank, for instance, Trump would complain to aides and argue that he deserved it more. At one point in late 2017, he even suggested that he might award himself the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which President Harry S. Truman established as the nation’s highest civilian award. As Trump reviewed the biographies of potential candidates for the Presidential Medal of Freedom, he remarked to aides, “Well, I’ve probably done even more. Maybe I should be the one getting this.”

  * * *

  —

  On August 27, Trump wanted to turn a personal phone call with Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto celebrating a new U.S.-Mexico trade deal into a live news conference. This was just another whim from the president, who called himself a game-day player. Aides had to rush to satisfy him. With the press pool whisked into the Oval Office and gathered around the Resolute Desk, Trump pushed the button on his phone to greet Peña Nieto.

  “Enrique?” Trump said.

  There was no response. Silence. The line was dead. Trump was impatient. “You can hook him up,” he called out to aides. “You tell me when. This is a big deal. A lot of people are waiting.”

  Trump tried again.

  “Hellooo?” he said. “Do you want to put that on this phone please? Hellooo?”

  Finally, an aide picked up the handheld receiver and patched Peña Nieto through to Trump. The two presidents carried on with a conversation. It turned out Peña Nieto had been properly connected on the other line. The problem was that Trump wasn’t used to picking up the handset to ensure that the other side could hear him.

  John Kelly and Sanders had green-lighted Trump’s idea to conduct his call with Peña Nieto live, with television cameras running, with only twenty minutes’ notice. White House communications officials did not have time to do a pretest to make sure the phone lines would connect properly. “Buy two minutes to get it right,” one top aide said later. “Mexico is not going to hang up the fucking phone. Nobody—nobody—is going to hang up on the president of the United States.”

  Trump and his aides had debated whether to tell the Mexicans that Peña Nieto’s voice would be played on speakerphone live on TV. Ultimately, they concluded that they had to. The White House would later tell reporters that they coordinated the call in advance with the Mexican government. That was taking major license with the word “coordinated.” The White House gave the Mexican president’s office only about 120 seconds’ notice of what Trump
was planning to do. That lack of advance preparation was clear in Peña Nieto’s halting language. To celebrate the deal, Peña Nieto offered a tequila toast.

  * * *

  —

  Trump loathed John McCain. Even as the Arizona senator was dying of brain cancer at his Sedona ranch, Trump attacked him at his rallies over his decisive 2017 vote against the GOP’s proposed health-care overhaul. After McCain passed away on August 25, 2018, at the age of eighty-one, Trump stubbornly rejected his aides’ suggestion to issue a statement about his death. The White House briefly flew the American flag at full staff, even though Washington protocol dictated that it remain at half-staff until the senator was laid to rest.

  On September 1, McCain’s memorial service at Washington National Cathedral served not only as a memorial for an American hero but also as a stinging rebuke of Trump and Trumpism. The cathedral rang with paeans to bipartisanship, compromise, and civility in a melancholy last hurrah for all that now seemed lost. One by one, mourners celebrated elements of McCain’s epic life—basic decency and morality; common values that transcended ideology, class, or race; service to nation over self—that Trump most starkly lacked.

  Meghan McCain, the late senator’s thirty-three-year-old daughter, delivered the rawest repudiation: “We gather here to mourn the passing of American greatness. The real thing, not cheap rhetoric from men who will never come near the sacrifice he gave so willingly, nor the opportunistic appropriation of those who lived lives of comfort and privilege while he suffered and served.”