Trump the tormented king of his castle
President is in a state of rage as he finds himself doubted by his own party and overshadowed by his aides
Donald Trump spent the weekend at “the winter White House”, Mar-a-Lago, the secluded Florida castle where he is king. The sun sparkles off the glistening lawn and warms the russet clay Spanish tiles, and the steaks are cooked just how he likes them (well done). His daughter Ivanka and sonin-law Jared Kushner — celebrated as calming influences on the tempestuous President — joined him but were helpless to contain his fury.
Trump was mad — steaming, raging mad. Trump’s young presidency has existed in a perpetual state of chaos. The issue of Russia has distracted from what was meant to be his most triumphant moment: his address last week to a joint session of Congress. And now his latest unfounded accusation — that Barack Obama tapped Trump’s phones during last year’s campaign — had been denied by the former President and doubted by both allies and fellow Republicans.
When Trump ran into Christopher Ruddy on the golf course and later at dinner on Sunday, he vented to his friend. “This will be investigated,” Ruddy recalled Trump telling him. “It will all come out.”
“I haven’t seen him this angry,” said Ruddy, chief executive of media company Newsmax.
Trump enters week seven of his presidency the same as the six before it: enmeshed in controversy while struggling to make good on his campaign promises.
This account of the Administration’s tumultuous recent days is based on interviews with 17 top White House officials, members of Congress and friends of the President, many of whom requested anonymity to speak candidly.
Gnawing at Trump, according to one of his advisers, is the comparison between his early track record and that of Obama in 2009, when amid the Great Recession he enacted an economic stimulus bill and other bigticket items.
Trump, meanwhile, has been feeling besieged, believing that his presidency is being tormented in ways known and unknown by a group of Obama-aligned critics, federal bureaucrats and intelligence figures — not to mention the media, which he has called “the enemy of the American people”.
That angst over what many in the White House call the “deep state” is fermenting daily, fuelled by rumours and tidbits picked up by Trump allies within the intelligence community and by unconfirmed allegations that have been made by right-wing commentators. The “deep state” is a phrase popular on the right for describing entrenched networks hostile to Trump.
Stephen Bannon, the White House chief strategist who once ran Breitbart News, has spoken with Trump at length about his view that the “deep state” is a direct threat to his presidency.
Any lift in spirits that came from Trump’s speech to the Congress on Thursday came to a sudden end on Thursday, when it was reported that Attorney-General Jeff Sessions met the Russian ambassador despite having said under oath at his Senate confirmation hearing that he had no contact with the Russians.
The next morning, after his own actions were overshadowed by the Sessions affair, Trump exploded, according to White House officials. Trump had publicly defended his Attorney-General and said he should not recuse himself from the Russia probe, only for Sessions to announce he would recuse himself, amounting to a public rebuke of the President.
Trump summoned his senior aides into the Oval Office, where he simmered with rage, according to several White House officials. He upbraided them over Sessions’ decision to recuse himself, believing that Sessions had succumbed to pressure from the media and other critics instead of fighting with the full defences of the White House.
In a huff, Trump departed for Mara-Lago, taking with him only his daughter and Kushner, who is a White House senior adviser. His top two aides, Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and Bannon, stayed behind in Washington.
Trouble for Trump continued to spiral. He surprised his staff by firing off four tweets accusing Obama of a “Nixon/Watergate” plot to tap his Trump Tower phones in the run-up to last fall’s election. Trump cited no evidence, and Obama’s spokesman denied ordering any such wiretap.
Yesterday, he found reason to be mad again: Few Republicans were defending him on the political talk shows. Some Trump advisers and allies were especially disappointed in Senator Marco Rubio, who two days earlier had hitched a ride down to Florida with Trump on Air Force One.
Pressed by NBC’s Chuck Todd to explain Trump’s wiretapping claim, Rubio demurred. “Look, I didn’t make the allegation,” he said.
“I’m not the person that went out there and said it.”