Presidential apprentice
When the time came to conclude his first news conference as president-elect, Donald Trump slipped back into an old role.
Discussing his plan to cede management of his business to his oldest sons while retaining ownership, he pledged to hold his boys to the same standards as contestants faced on his reality television show, The Apprentice.
“I hope at the end of eight years, I’ll come back and say, ‘Oh, you did a good job,’” said Mr. Trump, who at the age of 70 is the oldest man to ever be elected to the White House.
“Otherwise, if they do a bad job, I’ll say: ‘ You’re fired.’”
Mr. Trump’s pose was indicative. Since his unexpected victory on Nov. 8, he has presided over a presidential transition packing all the thrills, chills and spills of the entertainment genre in which he once starred.
In recent days, Mr. Trump has waged civil war with US intelligence agencies that say Russian hackers tried to help him win the presidency. He has defied calls from ethics experts who have urged him to sell his businesses to avoid conflicts of interest or violations of a constitutional prohibition against receiving favors from foreign governments. He has confounded congressional leaders in his Republican party by calling for quick implementation of a health insurance plan to replace Obamacare.
The contrast with earlier transitions has been stark.
While most previous presidents were willing to keep a low profile and rest up after the long campaign, Mr. Trump has been letting it all hang out — online and off. He has expressed respect for the actions of Russian President Vladimir Putin and scorn for the acting of Academy Awardwinner Meryl Streep. He has accused pharmaceutical companies of “getting away with murder” in drug pricing. He has called the BuzzFeed Web site “a failing pile of garbage” and CNN “terrible” and “fake news.”
“This is not business as usual by any stretch of the imagination — and especially when it comes to the press,” says Anita McBride, a veteran of the past three Republican administrations who believes Mr. Trump is giving the people who elected him what they want.
“We needed a little bit of shaking up. They’re willing to blow it up.”
The stage has been set for a presidential inauguration on Jan. 20 like no other. While Mr. Trump’s supporters have been energized in recent weeks by his efforts to bring manufacturing jobs back to the US, he faces unusual controversy for an incoming president. A Quinnipiac poll earlier this month found only 37% of Americans rated him favorably, compared with 55% for the outgoing president, Barack Obama.
“There are all sorts of dark clouds hanging over Donald Trump,” says Douglas Brinkley, the presidential historian.
“I think he still has business conflicts of interest issues. I think all the problems with Russia are going to be a sword dangling over him. There is still a feeling out there that there’s something illegitimate about his presidency.”
Hanging in the balance is the outlook for Mr. Trump’s first 100 days in office.
Although US presidents serve four-year terms, they face intense pressure at the start of their administrations to employ their political capital and mobilize their allies in the Congress or lose influence, particularly in domestic affairs, where Mr. Trump is now hoping to move his nominees through the Senate confirmation process, revamp the health care system and secure tax cuts aimed at spurring growth.
Mr. Trump is a famously impatient man, and part of his appeal stems from the belief among his supporters that his straightahead style will quickly change the ways of Washington and the wider world.
With Republicans in control of both houses of Congress and the White House, Paul Ryan, speaker of the House of Representatives, has reinforced such expectations, vowing that “unified Republican government” will “produce real progress for the American people.”
“Donald Trump sees speed as his friend right now,” Mr. Brinkley says.
“Usually you see speed when the nation tends to be in terrible crisis like Franklin Roosevelt in the Great Depression. Right now, the vitals of the American economy are in pretty good shape and we’re not in a true world war. To me, it’s that he’s trying to preserve his persona. Trump is a momentum maven and he doesn’t want to lose the momentum out of the victory.”
Perhaps the biggest immediate obstacle facing Mr. Trump in Congress involves his longstanding divergence from Republican orthodoxy on Russia.
Unlike many other leaders of his party, Mr. Trump sees admirable qualities in Mr. Putin and supports closer ties with the Kremlin in the hope of forging a united front against ISIS.
“If Putin likes Donald Trump, I consider that an asset, not a liability,” he said on Wednesday.
Mr. Trump initially reacted with skepticism when US intelligence agencies concluded that Mr. Putin had ordered a campaign to discredit Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and elect Mr. Trump as president. The effort included the distribution of e- mails obtained by hacking into computers at the Democratic National Committee (DNC).
After being briefed by intelligence chiefs, Mr. Trump said at his news conference that he had come to “think it was Russia” that conducted the DNC hack.
But by that time, his relations with the intelligence community had soured again. CNN stirred the pot by reporting that Mr. Trump’s briefing had included information about an unsubstantiated dossier — funded by US political opponents and compiled by a retired British intelligence agent — that alleged the Kremlin was holding compromising materials on Mr. Trump. His anger was further inflamed when BuzzFeed published the salacious details online.
The opposition research had been shared before the election with news outlets, including the Financial Times, which has been unable to verify the claims. Mr. Trump called the allegations “crap” and compiled by “sick people” and said it was “disgraceful that the intelligence agencies allowed any information that turned out to be so false and fake out there.”
He added, “That’s something that Nazi Germany would have done and did do.”
Concerns about Russia also led to a rugged grilling at a Senate confirmation hearing for Rex Tillerson, the former ExxonMobil chief executive picked by Mr. Trump to be his secretary of state.
Anger flared after Marco Rubio, the Republican Florida senator, presented a list of slain political opponents of Mr. Putin and asked whether the Russian leader should be considered a war criminal.
Mr. Tillerson said he would need to see classified information to decide, prompting Mr. Rubio to say: “None of this is classified, Mr. Tillerson. These people are dead.”
Mr. Trump’s plan for his business assets met, if anything, an even icier response in Washington. To avoid the appearance of impropriety — because presidents are exempt from conflict of interest laws — Mr. Trump said he would hand over control of his companies to his oldest sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, with the proviso that the two, who are also members of his transition team, are “not going to discuss it with me.”
Ethics experts turned their thumbs down. Walter Shaub, head of the US Office of Government Ethics, which advises officials on their legal responsibilities, reiterated his call for Mr. Trump to sell his business holdings, as his Cabinet members, who are subject to conflict of interest rules, are required to do.
Legal scholars also said Mr. Trump needed to do more to comply with the so- called “emoluments clause” of the US constitution, which in essence forbids a president from receiving anything of value from “any king, prince or foreign state.”
Mr. Trump’s response has been to say that he will donate hotel profits derived from foreign governments to the US Treasury. But that only begs the question of what he would do if his businesses around the world receive other forms of foreign- government favors.
“Mr. Trump’s ill-advised course will precipitate scandal and corruption,” says Norman Eisen, Mr. Obama’s former ethics adviser.
There is already evidence on Capitol Hill that Mr. Trump may be moving too fast for his own good — particularly when it comes to fulfilling his campaign promise to “repeal and replace” Mr. Obama’s Affordable Care Act, which extended health insurance coverage to an estimated 20 million people.
Doing away with Obamacare is tricky because it could leave millions of Americans without medical insurance. Late last year, senior House Republican aides said they wanted to set a repeal date that would give them two to four years to devise a replacement.
But Mr. Trump upended that by saying last week that once his nominee for health secretary was confirmed he would submit a new health insurance plan “essentially simultaneously.” Republicans have not coalesced around a replacement and health care experts said the president-elect’s timeline was simply not feasible. Mr. Ryan on Thursday scrambled to maintain a veneer of unity by declaring that the Trump team and Republicans are “in complete sync.”
Other Republicans did not conceal their misgivings. Having watched Mr. Obama get bogged down by Obamacare, they understood the risks.
“We’re loading a gun here,” said Tom MacArthur, a Republican member of the House from New Jersey.
“I want to know where it’s pointed before we start the process.”