‘TIRED OF THE WAIT GAME’
With White House stabilizers gone, Trump more comfortable calling the shots
PALM BEACH, Fla. — President Donald Trump began the past workweek cutting into steaks at the White House residence on Monday night with his political soldiers, including former advisers Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie, strategist Brad Parscale, and son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner.
He ended it dining on the gilded patio of his Mar-a-Lago estate with eccentric boxing promoter Don King, who said he vented to the president about the Stormy Daniels saga. “It’s just utterly ridiculous,” King said he told a nodding Trump on Thursday evening as the president began his holiday weekend in Palm Beach, Fla.
Nowhere to be seen was John Kelly, the beleaguered White House chief of staff and overall disciplinarian — nor were the handful of advisers regarded as moderating forces eager to restrain the president from acting impulsively, who have resigned or been fired.
Fourteen months into the job, Trump is increasingly defiant and singularly directing his administration with the same rapid and brutal style he honed leading his real estate and branding empire.
Trump is making hasty decisions that jolt markets and shock leaders and experts — including those on his own staff. Some confidants expressed concern about the situation, while others, unworried, characterized him as unleashed.
The president is replacing aides who have tended toward caution and consensus with figures far more likely to encourage his more rash instincts and act upon them, and he is frequently soliciting advice from loyalists outside the government. As he shakes up his administration, Trump is prioritizing personal chemistry above all else, as evidenced by his controversial selection of Navy Rear Adm. Ronny Jackson, the White House physician, to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs.
“The president is in an action mood and doesn’t want to slowroll things, from trade to the border to staffing changes,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said. “He wants to make things that he’s been discussing for a while happen. He’s tired of the wait game.”
This dynamic — detailed in interviews with 23 senior White House officials and outside advisers, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to offer candid assessments — is evident in multiple realms.
On policy, Trump is making sudden decisions without much staff consultation, wagering that they will pay dividends — including accepting North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s invitation for a faceto-face meeting and threatening to veto before ultimately signing the government spending bill.
On the stump, Trump is an improvisational showman. He swooped into working-class Ohio on Thursday to pitch his infrastructure plan but diverged from his script to deliver surprise commentary on a medley of issues. He threatened to delay a newly renegotiated trade deal with South Korea and announced that the United States may soon withdraw troops from Syria.
All the while, Trump is trying to keep in touch with the cultural zeitgeist. Trump phoned Roseanne Barr to congratulate her on the success of ABC’s “Roseanne” revival. “Look at Roseanne!” Trump bellowed in Ohio. “Look at her ratings!”
Rudolph Giuliani, a former New York mayor and longtime Trump friend, said the president is entering a new phase: “It took time for the president to discover how far he could move things and find the pieces that fit. Now he sees he has an open field.”
A quartet of senior West Wing aides who spent several hours a day with the president and were considered stabilizing forces are gone. Hope Hicks’s last day as communications director was Thursday. Gary Cohn was replaced as chief economic adviser by Kudlow. H.R. McMaster was dismissed as national security adviser. And Rob Porter departed as staff secretary amid allegations of spousal abuse.
Other than Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, the lone remaining enforcer is Kelly. But his power as chief of staff has been diminished. Officials said the days of Kelly hovering in the Oval Office morning to night and screening the president’s calls are over. Trump is largely circumventing Kelly’s strict protocols.
Allies said Trump is reverting to the way he led the Trump Organization from his 26th-floor office suite at Trump Tower in Manhattan. Back then, Trump controlled his orbit himself from behind his cluttered desk, relying on assistant Rhona Graff to field calls.
“It was the direction (Trump) was always bound to take,” said Michael Caputo, a former Trump campaign official. “The phone book at the White House was filled by complete strangers. … But now he knows how the White House operates, and he’ll operate it himself.”