Chaos theory in Oval Office takes toll
WASHINGTON — For 13 months in the Oval Office, and in an unorthodox business career before that, US President Donald Trump has thrived on chaos, using it as an organizing principle and even a management tool. Now the costs of that chaos are becoming starkly clear in the demoralized staff and policy disarray of a wayward White House.
The dysfunction was on vivid display Thursday in the president’s introduction of tariffs on steel and aluminum imports.
The previous day, Trump’s chief economic adviser, Gary Cohn, warned the chief of staff, John Kelly, that he might resign if the president went ahead with the plan, according to people briefed on the discussion.
Cohn, a former Goldman Sachs president, had lobbied fiercely against the measures.
His threat to leave came during a tumultuous week in which Trump suffered the departure of his closest aide, Hope Hicks, and the effective demotion of his senior adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who was stripped of his top-secret security clearance.
Trump was forced to deny, through an aide, that he was about to fire his national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster.
Kelly summed up the prevailing mood in the West Wing.
“God punished me,” he joked of his move from the Department of the Homeland Security to the White House during a discussion to mark the department’s 15th anniversary.
When White House aides arrived at work Thursday, they had no clear idea of what Trump would say about trade.
He had summoned steel and aluminum executives to a meeting, but when the White House said only that he would listen to their concerns, it seemed to signal that Cohn had held off the tariffs.
Yet at the end of a photo session, when a reporter asked Trump about the measures, he confirmed that the United States would announce next week that it is imposing long-term tariffs of 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum.
The White House has not even completed a legal review of the measures.
Trump’s off-the-cuff opening of a trade war rattled the stock market, enraged Republicans and left Cohn’s future in doubt.
Cohn, who almost left in 2017 after Trump’s response to a white nationalist march in Charlottesville, Virginia, indicated he was waiting to see whether Trump goes through with the tariffs, people familiar with his thinking said.
The chaotic rollout also reflected the departure of another White House official, Rob Porter, who as the staff secretary had a key role in keeping the paper flowing in the West Wing and who had backed Cohn in his freetrade views.
Porter was forced out in February after facing accusations of spousal abuse.
It was the second day in a row that Trump blindsided Republicans and his own aides.
On Wednesday, in another televised session at the White House, he embraced the stricter gun control measures backed by Democrats and urged lawmakers to revive gun-safety regulations that are opposed by the National Rifle Association and most of his party.
“I always said that it was going to take a while for Donald Trump to adjust as president,” said Christopher Ruddy, the chief executive of Newsmax Media and an old friend of the president.
In business, he said, Trump relied on a small circle of colleagues and a management style that amounted to “trial and error — the strongest survived, the weak died.”
Ruddy insisted that Trump was finding his groove in the Oval Office. But his subordinates are faring less well.
With an erratic boss and little in the way of a coherent legislative agenda, they are consumed by infighting, fears of their legal exposure and an ambient sense that the White House is spinning out of control.
Trump is isolated and angry, as well, according to other friends and aides, as he carries on a bitter feud with his attorney general and watches members of his family clash with a chief of staff he recruited to restore a semblance of order — all against the darkening shadow of an investigation of his ties to Russia.