A Very Stable Genius

by Philip Rucker

  “Then we’ll pardon them,” Trump said.

  Nielsen knew that every time she asked her agency heads within the Department of Homeland Security to fully secure the porous U.S.-Mexico border, they would complain that the only solution was for Congress to close legal loopholes. A migrant seeking asylum had to meet a fairly low bar to gain entry, stating that he or she had a credible fear of retribution or harm back home. The overwhelming majority would later be denied asylum based on their circumstances, but by the time of their hearing they had often already disappeared into the country.

  On immigration policy, there were many critics and no sponsors. Many offices had to review policy and legislative changes: the National Security Council, the Domestic Policy Council, the White House counsel’s office, the chief of staff’s office, and the policy coordinators, as well as Kushner and Stephen Miller. It was rare for an idea to survive that gauntlet, and a near miracle for anyone to actually champion it and do the work required to implement it. Kelly sometimes tried to protect Nielsen’s turf, once telling Kushner, “You should stay out of it,” because Nielsen was in charge of immigration policy.

  “The White House was so broken,” one administration official later remarked, looking back on this tense period on immigration policy. “There was no process. Ideas would come to the president in a no-process method. Half-baked ideas come in to him. God knows how. It was totally disorganized. To this day, no one is in charge at the White House. No one.”

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  In late October, with the caravan on the move, Trump badgered Nielsen almost endlessly. He suggested lining up border agents and other officers to form a sort of human wall along the portion of the southern border that lacked fencing, roughly 1,200 miles of the 1,933-mile border. A statistician at Homeland Security figured out it would take hundreds of thousands of people standing arm to arm to create a line that long. The number, a conservative estimate, was immediately discarded because it was so staggering. “We were like, this is absurd,” one aide remembered.

  Nielsen and her team, including the leaders of Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, met for a brainstorming session in downtown Washington’s Ronald Reagan Building. Sitting around a conference room, they discussed how to satisfy Trump’s increasingly difficult demands to deny entry to illegal immigrants. The officials felt as if they had already scraped the bottom of the barrel for new options. They contemplated a number of ideas, including sending U.S. marshals to the border, borrowing personnel from another department, or creating a volunteer army. They figured they had to throw some bodies at it, if only to sate Trump. National Guard units had deployed twenty-one hundred troops to the border since the spring, and some homeland security officials suggested ramping up the presence dramatically to create, as one aide put it, “a huge show of force.”

  At this moment, the border situation was relatively calm. There was no crush of migrants—the caravan was still a few weeks away from reaching the border—and the humanitarian crisis in overcrowded border stations would not unfold until several months later. One senior agency official interjected to point out that additional personnel at the border was not necessary, at least not yet. “This is ridiculous,” the official said.

  It was not, however, ridiculous to Trump. He was adamant about sending troops to the border, telling aides that the military had tens of thousands of men and women in uniform and he should be able to use them, as commander in chief, to protect the sovereignty of the United States. Advisers explained to Trump that if he sent troops to the border, they would not be allowed to function as if they were law enforcement officers. They could erect temporary fencing or fix vehicles or conduct surveillance, advisers said, but they could not use deadly force. Firing a single shot into Mexico would be considered an act of war.

  In late October, Trump decided to use his authority as commander in chief to deploy military troops to the border to guard against migrants. On October 29, the Pentagon announced that it was sending fifty-two hundred troops, as well as Black Hawk helicopters and giant spools of razor wire. This was the largest mobilization of active-duty troops along the U.S.-Mexico border in decades. The next day, Trump floated the idea of sending fifteen thousand troops to the border, an extraordinarily large number that was roughly the size of the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan.

  The move immediately inspired howls that Trump was playing politics, militarizing the border to scare voters and turn out his base in the midterm elections, which were now just a week away. But Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis vouched for the mission and said the military was providing “practical support” to homeland security operations. “We don’t do stunts in this department,” he said.

  Nevertheless, Trump made clear that his rush to put troops at the border was about taking strong action to galvanize his supporters to vote Republican in the elections. “If you don’t want America to be overrun by masses of illegal aliens and giant caravans, you better vote Republican,” Trump said on November 1 at a rally in Columbia, Missouri.

  For Trump, deploying the troops wasn’t enough. He wanted images—propaganda—distributed through the media showing the military presence. Trump sent word to the Pentagon that he wanted pictures of troops at the border. The presidential demand landed on the desk of Dana White, Mattis’s press secretary. Kevin Sweeney, a retired navy rear admiral who was serving as Mattis’s chief of staff, told White that the White House needed to see pictures of troops—and fast. White tried to explain this would be unrealistic. This was the Department of Defense, not Coca-Cola. Troops would not be moving to the border instantaneously, even after they received orders.

  “I can’t give people pictures of something that’s not happening,” White told Sweeney.

  “That’s your problem, Dana,” Sweeney said. “Just get the damn pictures.”

  The pressure wasn’t coming from Sweeney, of course. It was coming from the top. Trump had pushed the entire military apparatus to help him illustrate the show of might that he had ordered up, which could convince voters that he was protecting the nation from the dangerous “invasion” of migrants that was getting closer each day to a showdown at the border. Sweeney and every senior agency official knew the fastest way to please the president was to get the message on the station he and his fans power watched. “Get something on Fox immediately,” Sweeney told White. Trump just didn’t understand that U.S. Armed Forces don’t simply hop on a C-17 one night and start patrolling the banks of the Rio Grande the next afternoon. “No one would push you to show that except the one person who doesn’t know,” a Defense Department official said of the president.

  Mattis’s aides agreed that to satisfy Trump’s wishes they would have to get pictures of National Guard troops and asked state National Guard officials who hadn’t yet shipped out if they could snap photographs or shoot video of their reserve troops training at home. The first images they finally got—after more than twenty-four hours of hustling—were of the Texas National Guard, the first to have images of troops in drills. “People were more focused on the pictures rather than what we are allegedly doing,” the Defense Department official said of the White House. “The urgency wasn’t on the mission. It was on getting the pictures.” Trump also wanted to see military generals being interviewed on television news, preferably at the border and in a commanding role. Word came down from the White House that images of National Guard officials were not good enough.

  By November 3, the first wave of military troops had arrived at the border and photos emerged of uniformed service members installing razor-wire fencing along the Texas side of the Rio Grande. Trump remarked at a campaign rally in Montana that evening, “We have our military on the border. And I noticed all that beautiful barbed wire going up today. Barbed wire, used properly, can be a beautiful sight.”

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  Trump sought to frighten voters in the final days of midterm campaigning by using the threat of
an “invasion” of illegal immigrants to stoke fears of cop killers—or, as Trump called asylum seekers, “bad hombres.” Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader poised to become Speaker, called Trump’s fearmongering a “scare-a-thon.” This period amplified Trump’s ugliest characteristics as president. “He goes out and says crazy, horrible things, blows race whistles and sits back and watches his topic of craziness dominate cable TV for the next 24 hours,” said Mike Murphy, a Republican strategist.

  On Election Day, November 6, Democrats seized control of the House and picked up several key governorships in the Midwest and even Kansas, propelled by a rejection of Trump’s demagoguery in the nation’s suburbs, especially among women voters. But Trump’s demonization of immigrants helped Republicans expand their majority in the Senate, where the 2018 map had strongly favored Republicans with most of the competitive contests in such red states as Missouri and Texas.

  The Democratic triumph in the House was powered by a record number of women candidates. This would be the most racially and gender-diverse freshman class of representatives in congressional history, and Pelosi was set to reclaim the Speaker’s gavel she lost eight years earlier. In her election night speech, Pelosi signaled that House Democrats would use their subpoena power to investigate Trump and hold his administration accountable—as Republicans had not. “Today is about more than Democrats and Republicans,” she said. “It is about restoring the Constitution’s checks and balances to the Trump administration.”

  The next day, Trump predicted—presciently, it would turn out—“a warlike posture” should House Democrats use their new power to investigate him. “They can play that game, but we can play it better, because we have a thing called the United States Senate,” Trump said at a news conference. “I think I’m better at that game than they are, actually.” Trump refused to show any contrition or take responsibility for his party’s defeats. After the 2010 midterm elections, President Obama talked about his party’s “shellacking.” And after the 2006 midterm elections, President Bush spoke of his party’s “thumpin’.” But Trump didn’t even acknowledge the loss. Rather, he claimed “very close to complete victory.”

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  Trump did achieve a victory of another sort that day. Finally, he got rid of Sessions. As election results were still being tallied the night of November 6, Trump told advisers he was eager to ax the attorney general right away. The next day, Sessions was gone.

  Everything had seemed so normal the night before. Sessions; his wife, Mary; Rosenstein; and aides Isgur Flores and Stephen Boyd were hanging out in Boyd’s Justice Department office watching the election returns on Fox. Sessions knew he was not long for Trump World. Internalizing his own fragility, the attorney general had taken to quoting from Princess Bride to staffers as he left the office at night: “Good night, Westley. Good work. Sleep well. I’ll most likely kill you in the morning.”

  On November 7, Kelly called Sessions. The president wanted him to resign. Sessions summoned his aides to his office. “It’s happening,” the attorney general said. “Come on up.” It was surreal. Rosenstein counseled Sessions to try to leave on his own terms. “Pick a date,” Rosenstein said. “Make it two weeks [from now]. We’ll have a farewell party and an appropriate send-off. It’s humiliating for you to just walk out. You’ve been advancing his agenda here, you’ve gotten a lot done, you have a lot to be proud of, and you shouldn’t have to leave under these circumstances.”

  It was Wednesday and Sessions asked Kelly if he could have until Friday to resign, but Kelly wasn’t the decider. He checked with the president and called right back. “It has to happen today,” Kelly informed Sessions. “If it doesn’t happen right now, there will be a tweet.”

  Sessions stood behind his desk as he held up the phone, his suit jacket removed and wearing a white shirt, red tie, and glasses. He had long ago drafted a resignation letter, and Isgur Flores immediately started touching it up on her phone. The team debated what his first line should say, and Sessions decided to begin with “at your request,” making it clear he had not resigned voluntarily. In the letter, Sessions highlighted his work at the Justice Department to enforce immigration laws and prosecute gang violence. Notably, he called the rule of law, which Trump had so often tried to override or thwart, “a glorious tradition that each of us has a responsibility to safeguard.” An assistant printed a copy on Justice Department letterhead, Sessions signed the bottom, and Boyd and O’Callaghan volunteered to hand deliver it to the White House.

  When they arrived in the West Wing, a young staffer asked to take it, but O’Callaghan wasn’t about to hand the attorney general’s resignation letter to someone who looked as if he had just left college. He and Boyd asked to hand it directly to Kelly. When they came face-to-face with the chief of staff, the Justice Department officials thought he looked stressed and pained, visibly conflicted about what he had just ordered. They were surprised by how complimentary Kelly was of Sessions. “He’s done a great service to his country,” he told O’Callaghan and Boyd.

  The instant O’Callaghan and Boyd handed Kelly the letter, Boyd texted Isgur Flores. Back at the Justice Department, she had already briefed a handful of beat reporters on Sessions’s resignation and read them his letter under a strict embargo so they could prepare stories. With Boyd’s signal, Isgur Flores lifted the embargo, and the journalists published their stories and pushed out news alerts. About ninety seconds later, Trump tweeted the news. The Sessions team had long prepared for this moment, and they were not about to let the president scoop them.

  Ordinarily, the deputy attorney general would have stepped into the void left by Sessions’s sudden exit, but Trump bypassed Rosenstein. He named Whitaker acting attorney general. A Trump loyalist, Whitaker had publicly criticized the Mueller investigation as a legal commentator before joining the Justice Department as Sessions’s chief of staff. As chief, Whitaker had alienated Sessions loyalists and quickly established himself as a palace fighter, firing some officials and attempting unsuccessfully to cast off others, including Isgur Flores, the attorney general’s trusted confidante. Now Sessions’s temporary successor, Whitaker seized control of the Russia probe. Finally, Trump felt he had his hands on the wheel.

  Later that afternoon, Sessions’s staff filed into the attorney general’s conference room, where Sessions gave an impromptu farewell speech. His celebratory “walkout” from the department aired on live television. Sessions didn’t even have a chance to clean out his office. Papers were still stacked on his desk. Files were still open. His nameplate and family pictures were still displayed. The bag in which he carried classified materials was still sitting on a chair. But Sessions had gone home, relieved of duty.

  After nearly two years of cruel harassment from Trump, Sessions was loath to criticize the president, even in the confidence of friends. The president didn’t even bother to call the attorney general to demand his resignation; he made Kelly do it. Yet Sessions still admired the man he met at that Senate hearing on the United Nations all those years before. Sessions was still in awe of the passions Trump stirred with his former constituents back home in Alabama. He saw in Trump so much fight, so much moxie.

  “You know, this guy just has that dragon energy,” Sessions remarked to one of his political friends. “He can’t be tamed.”

  Twenty

  AN ORNERY DIPLOMAT

  On November 9, President Trump headed to Paris, where he was to join some of his Western counterparts for a weekend of ceremonies honoring the hundredth anniversary of the end of World War I. Instead of being excited about a historic commemoration, Trump was brooding. The size of the Democratic majority in the House kept growing as some tight races were called later in the week, making Trump an all-but-certain target of intense Democratic oversight for his next two years in office. On top of that, Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker had predictably sparked controversy in the news, both because of his lack of basic qualifications for the job and sketchy bus
iness entanglements and because of his public opposition to Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. Speculation was rife that Whitaker, a partisan loyalist, would be Trump’s hammer to whack away at the Mueller probe.

  As Trump headed to board Marine One to begin his journey to Paris, he snapped at the CNN correspondent Abby Phillip after she asked the pertinent question of the day: Did Trump want Whitaker to rein in Mueller? “What a stupid question that is,” Trump replied. “What a stupid question. But I watch you a lot. You ask a lot of stupid questions.” Trump did not answer Phillip’s question.

  Once Trump boarded Air Force One for the six-and-a-half-hour flight to France, he received a phone call from British prime minister Theresa May. Trump and May were not exactly chums. In July 2018, he famously bashed her handling of Brexit in an interview with the British tabloid The Sun just as May was hosting him for a visit. But May tried much more than other European leaders to be deferential to Trump as part of the British government’s long-view strategy of preserving the “special relationship” with the United States. May was calling Trump to congratulate him on his party’s successes in the midterm elections. Of course, it was not lost on her that the Republicans lost control of the House, but she nevertheless sought to appeal to Trump’s ego.

  It did not work. The ornery president blew up at the mannered prime minister. Trump berated May over Brexit and told her she was a lousy negotiator. He lit into her about trade deals with European countries that he considered unfair to the United States. It felt like a one-way conversation, with Trump doing most of the talking. Then, suddenly, he changed the topic and told her she must not have brought up Iran because she was ashamed of Britain’s position. In fact, she hadn’t raised Iran because it wasn’t a scheduled topic of conversation—and besides, she could hardly get a word in. No, May told Trump, she was not ashamed.