A presidential test for Trump
Challenging week marked by Syria crisis, foreign leaders’ visits, White House spats
PALM BEACH, Fla. — After 10 weeks of pinballing through political and domestic fiascoes largely of his own making, President Donald Trump last week faced the kinds of wrenching external challenges no White House occupant can avoid for long.
“No child of God should ever suffer such horror,” Trump said Thursday night after he ordered a cruise missile strike on a Syrian airfield in response to a chemical weapons attack that killed dozens of civilians, including children, and left dozens more writhing in pain.
This was the week a reality TV presidency faced cold reality.
The Syrian crisis combined with escalating U.S. concerns about North Korea’s ballistic missile tests and nuclear capability, even as Trump held back-to-back summits with three visiting foreign leaders, including China’s president.
Those urgent demands consumed much of Trump’s attention even as other White House problems continued to simmer.
A new push to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act was on life support in Congress, the scandal over alleged Russian meddling in the election claimed another GOP scalp (Rep. Devin Nunes), and Trump’s White House again descended into a cacophony of West Wing intrigue and infighting. But Trump notched a historic win with the Senate confirmation of conservative jurist Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, ensuring that a Trump legacy is ensured.
Trump had vowed in his campaign last year to “drain the swamp” of the forces that run Washington. But in his most consequential week in office so far, Trump relied on familiar pillars of the establishment: the generals who now run his national security team, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who engineered the Gorsuch confirmation.
McConnell, the ultimate of inside players, downplayed his role in Trump’s success.
“We’re just in the first quarter of the year,” he said. “There’s much left to be done.”
And while Trump ran on anti-globalist threats aimed at China, he relied on Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to take a key role at his summit in Florida with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
While no mishaps marred his talks with Xi, Trump also made no apparent breakthroughs on trade or North Korea, the White House priorities.
The evolution of Trump’s national security team, meanwhile, underscores the rapid change in the spheres of influence that surround him.
“A year ago if you asked me who are the three most important people in national security, I would have said they’re Mike Flynn, Jeff Sessions and Rudy Giuliani,” said James Carafano, a Heritage Foundation analyst who advised the Trump campaign and transition teams.
Flynn was ousted as national security adviser in February for misleading the White House about his conversations with the Russian ambassador. Sessions, the attorney general, had to recuse himself from the Justice Department probe into alleged Russian meddling for failing to acknowledge his meetings with the same ambassador. Giuliani, former mayor of New York, fell out of favor and was not chosen for a top job.
“So the core of his national security (team) has shifted completely to three people he didn’t even know a year ago,” Carafano said, referring to Tillerson, national security adviser H.R. McMaster and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis.
Adding to the upheaval, the White House last week removed Steve Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist, from membership in the National Security Council, and reinserted the director of national intelligence and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Whether Bannon was demoted is disputed, but there’s no doubt about the impact: an unconventional White House was reverting to a more familiar hierarchy and norm, at least for matters of war and peace.
That much was clear in Trump’s decision Thursday to launch 59 cruise missiles at an airfield in Syria, the first deliberate U.S. attack on a Syrian facility, in response to the chemical weapons attack Tuesday.
Trump had just finished huddling with McMaster and other key aides aboard Air Force One, when he walked back to talk to reporters. The missiles would fly that night, in the most significant military action of his young presidency.
Trump acknowledged his staff had been “shaken up,” a rare nod to the White House turmoil. Then he turned to characteristic hyperbole.
“We’ve had one of the most successful 13 weeks in the history of presidents,” he said, although it’s only been 11 weeks and historians might challenge that assessment.
Yet the suffering in Syria had clearly left him shaken.
“I think what happened in Syria is a disgrace to humanity,” he said, without tipping his hand to the attack he had ordered.
During the campaign, Trump railed at the Obama and Bush administrations for their foreign interventions and nation-building efforts. He saw the world through an isolationist lens, keeping the military in reserve only for emergencies.
But it was never clear if his ideology was fixed, or evolving. The answer came at a Rose Garden news conference Wednesday when Trump touted his flexibility on foreign affairs.
“I do change and I am flexible, and I’m proud of that flexibility,” he said. “And I will tell you, that attack on children yesterday had a big impact on me.”
The abrupt shift doesn’t surprise those who have studied the White House.
“Presidents come into office and the reality of the Oval Office hits and they make decisions based on being the president of the United States, not a candidate for the presidency of the United States,” said Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska. “It happens to every single president.”
The airstrike in Syria may complicate national security challenges with Russia, Iran and elsewhere in the Middle East. But skeptics say they feel more confident in Trump’s ability to address foreign policy crises after last week.
“I’ve always said that he had a very strong team around him, but I’ve also said, during this period of time, will the president listen to them?” Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., told MSNBC. “I think that question was answered (Thursday) night.”
Still, three weeks from his first 100 days in office, Trump faces other major hurdles. Congress must vote on a spending package by month’s end to keep the government running.
And congressional and FBI investigations into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 elections and potential connections to Trump’s campaign team won’t be dismissed easily.