President’s aides cope with chaos and boss’s foul mood
WASHINGTON — The bad news stories slammed into the White House in pitiless succession on Tuesday, leaving President Donald Trump’s battle-scarred West Wing aides staring at their flat screens in glassy-eyed shock.
The disclosure that Trump divulged classified intelligence to Russian officials that had been provided by Israel was another blow to a besieged White House staff recovering from the mishandled firing of James Comey, the FBI director.
And the day was capped by the even more stunning revelation that the president had prodded Comey to drop an investigation into Michael Flynn, his former national security adviser. That prompted a stampede of reporters from the White House briefing room into the lower press gallery of the White House, where Trump’s first-line defenders had few answers but an abundance of anxieties about their job security.
The president’s appetite for chaos, coupled with his disregard for the self-protective conventions of the presidency, has left his staff confused and squabbling. And his own mood, according to two advisers who spoke on the condition of anonymity, has become sour and dark, and he has turned against most of his aides — even his son-in-law, Jared Kushner — describing them in a fury as “incompetent,” according to one of those advisers.
As the maelstrom raged around the staff, reports swirled inside the White House that the president was about to embark on a major shake-up, probably starting with the dismissal or reassignment of Sean Spicer, the press secretary.
Trump’s rattled staff kept close tabs on a meeting early Monday in which the president summoned Spicer; the deputy press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders; and the communications director, Michael Dubke, to lecture them on the need “to get on the same page,” according to a person briefed on the meeting.
By the end of the day Tuesday, it seemed that Spicer had, for the moment, survived. People close to the president said Trump was considering the firing of several lower-level staff members, including several hired by Reince Priebus, the White House chief of staff, while weighing a plan to hand most day-to-day briefing responsibilities to Sanders.
Even as Trump reassured advisers like Spicer that their jobs were safe on Monday, he told other advisers that he knew he needed to make big changes but did not know which direction to go in, or whom to select.
In the meantime, the White House hunkered down for what staff members now realize will be an extended siege, not a oneor two-day bad news cycle.
The stress was taking its toll. Late Monday, reporters could hear senior aides shouting from behind closed doors as they discussed how to respond after Washington Post reporters informed them of an article they were writing that first reported the news about the president’s divulging of intelligence.
As they struggled to limit the fallout on Monday, Spicer and other Trump aides decided to send Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, the national security adviser, to serve as a surrogate.
They realized that selecting such a high-ranking official would in some ways validate the story, but they wanted to establish a credible witness account exonerating the president from wrongdoing — before the barrage of Twitter posts they knew would be coming from Trump on Tuesday morning.
The White House Counsel’s Office worked with the national security adviser, an Army general, on framing language, producing a clipped sound bite: “The story that came out tonight as reported is false.”
As he was working on his statement, McMaster, a former combat commander who appeared uncomfortable in a civilian suit and black-framed glasses, nearly ran into reporters staking out Spicer’s office.
“This is the last place in the world I wanted to be,” he said, perhaps in jest.
As the general approached microphones on the blacktop in front of the West Wing, one of his deputies responsible for coping with the fallout, Dina Powell, could be seen peering behind the pack of reporters to see how her boss’ statement was being received.
On Capitol Hill, there were signs that Republicans, who mostly held the line after Comey’s ouster, were growing alarmed by Trump’s White House operation and impatient for something to be done about it.
“There need to be serious changes at the White House, immediately,” said Sen. Patrick Toomey, R-Pa., who wants Trump to appoint a Democrat to head the FBI. On Tuesday, the Senate majority leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, called on Trump to operate with “less drama.”
In his comments to reporters on Monday, Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., close to some in the White House, was more explicit.
“Obviously they’re in a downward spiral right now,” he said, “and they’ve got to figure out a way to come to grips with all that’s happening.”
A dozen of Trump’s aides and associates, while echoing Trump’s defiance, privately agreed with Corker’s view. They spoke candidly, in a way they were unwilling to do just weeks ago, about the damage that the administration’s standing has suffered in recent weeks and the fatigue that was setting in after months of having to defend the president’s missteps, Twitter posts and unpredictable actions.
In private, three administration officials conceded that they could not publicly articulate their most compelling — and honest — defense of the president for divulging classified intelligence to the Russians: that Trump, a hasty and indifferent reader of his briefing materials, simply did not possess the interest or knowledge of the granular details of intelligence gathering to leak specific sources and methods of intelligence gathering that would harm U.S. allies.
McMaster all but said that publicly from the briefing room lectern.
“The president wasn’t even aware where this information came from,” McMaster said. “He wasn’t briefed on the source or method of the information either.”