’Pure madness’ in White House
Aides and allies fear U.S. president’s increasing isolation and ominous moods are ‘not going to end well’
WASHINGTON — Inside the White House, aides over the past week have described an air of anxiety and volatility — with an uncontrollable commander in chief at its centre.
These are the darkest days in at least half a year, they say, and they worry just how much farther President Donald Trump and his administration may plunge into unrest and malaise before they start to recover. As one official put it : “We haven’t bottomed out.”
Trump is now a president in transition, at times angry and increasingly isolated. He fumes in private that just about every time he looks up at a television screen, the cable news headlines are trumpeting yet another scandal.
He voices frustration that son-inlaw Jared Kushner has few on-air defenders. He revives old grudges. And he confides to friends that he is uncertain about whom to trust.
Trump’s closest West Wing confidante, Hope Hicks — the communications director who often acted as a de facto Oval Office therapist — announced her resignation last week, leaving behind a team the president views more as paid staff than surrogate family.
So concerned are those around Trump that some of the president’s oldest friends have been urging one another to be in touch — the sort of familiar contacts that often lift his spirits.
In an unorthodox presidency in which emotion, impulse and ego often drive events, Trump’s ominous moods manifested themselves last week in his zigzagging positions on gun control; his shock trade war that jolted markets and was opposed by Republican leaders and many in his own administration; and his roiling feud of playground insults with Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
Some of Trump’s advisers say the president is not all doom and gloom, however. He has been pleased with the news coverage of his role in the gun debate and lighthearted moments have leavened his days, such as a recent huddle with staff to prepare his comedic routine for the Gridiron, a Saturday night dinner with Washington officials and journalists.
Still, Trump’s friends are increasingly concerned about his well-being, worried that the president’s obsession with cable commentary and perceived slights is taking a toll on the 71-year-old.
“Pure madness,” lamented one exasperated ally.
Retired four-star Army general Barry McCaffrey said the American people — and Congress especially — should be alarmed.
“I think the president is starting to wobble in his emotional stability and this is not going to end well,” McCaffrey said. “Trump’s judgment is fundamentally flawed, and the more pressure put on him and the more isolated he becomes, I think, his ability to do harm is going to increase.”
This portrait of Trump at a moment of crisis just over a year after taking office is based on interviews with 22 White House officials, friends and advisers to the president and other administration allies, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly discuss Trump’s state of mind.
Since Trump entered presidential politics three years ago, Hicks has been his stabilizing constant, tending his moods and whims in addition to managing his image. Within the president’s orbit, many wonder whether Trump has fully absorbed the impact of Hicks’s upcoming departure.
Trump told one friend that Hicks was a great young woman, who, after three intense years, was ready to do her own thing. He told this friend that he recognized the White House was full of “tough hombres,” according to someone briefed on the conversation.
But other confidants said the president feels abandoned and alone — not angry with Hicks, but frustrated by the circumstance. Coupled with last fall’s departure of longtime bodyguard Keith Schiller, Trump will have few pure loyalists remaining.
“Losing people is too much of a story for the president,” said oil investor Dan Eberhart, a Trump supporter and a Republican National Committee fundraiser. “It just seems like it’s imploding ... Trump had momentum with tax reform, the State of the Union speech. He should try to keep that going.”
On Capitol Hill, lawmakers were left in varying states of consternation by Trump’s whipsaw on guns. He suggested publicly last Wednesday that he favoured tougher background checks and would forgo due process in taking away guns from the mentally ill, but then sent opposite signals after huddling with National Rifle Association lobbyists the next night.
Trump’s aides said his vacillation was a function of the controlled chaos the president likes to sow. Trump recently has come to favour opening his meetings to the media — “It’s like his own TV show,” said one adviser — where he often chews over outlandish ideas, plays to the assembled press and talks up bipartisan consensus, even if it never leads to actual policy.