Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Trump ‘makes everything harder’
President’s focus on fighting back holds him back
WASHINGTON — Asked for the first time publicly to address the dismissal of Michael Flynn, his national security adviser, President Donald Trump was clear Wednesday in his frustration.
But the president’s target was not Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general, nor his conduct.
“General Flynn is a wonderful man,” he said at a joint news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “I think he’s been treated very, very unfairly by the media.”
Trump’s answer — in which he also blamed intelligence officials for “illegally” leaking information that prompted Flynn’s ouster — marked the most prominent example so far of his reluctance to publicly shoulder responsibility for missteps at the White House.
Nearly a month into his first term, Trump’s instinct seems to be to instead return to the role he’s more comfortable in: fighting back against treatment he views as unfair to him or others close to him. And rather than putting controversy to rest, his approach generated more turmoil.
After Trump pointed his finger at the media and the intelligence and law enforcement communities, press secretary Sean Spicer endured a barrage of questions from reporters not just about Flynn’s dismissal, but a New York Times report that Trump campaign officials were in direct contact with Russian intelligence officials, long denied by Trump aides.
Spicer echoed Trump’s stated concern over leaks to reporters, which the president called “a criminal act.”
“The idea that there’s been zero attention paid to an issue of that sensitivity should be concerning and alarming,” Spicer added.
Trump also skirted accountability by taking questions at the news conference, and two others in the past week, mostly from reporters at conservativeleaning outlets who tended to skip queries about the most glaring problems facing him.
The White House’s focus on attacking the media did little to quell questions about whether Trump moved to fire Flynn only once it became clear that evidence would be made public that Trump knew for weeks that Flynn misrepresented himself to other top administration officials, including Vice President Mike Pence, about his discussions in December with the Russian ambassador over impending U.S. sanctions.
The strategy further confounded even fellow Republicans.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., offered rare public criticism of the president, telling the Weekly Standard that Trump’s approval ratings would be “10 to 15 points higher if he allowed himself to stay on message.”
Any president, by the nature of the office, is the “most criticized person in the world,” McConnell said, advising him not to respond to all criticism or he risks generating a “multi-day story.”
“What he’s saying makes everything harder,” he said.
As Trump avoided answering personally for the Flynn case, calls grew for a more expansive congressional inquiry. The top Democrats on six key committees wrote to the White House counsel seeking further information on its internal probe of Flynn.
They noted that Trump had personally “remained silent in the face of increasingly vocal calls for more information,” and questioned whether the president would have dismissed Flynn had additional information not been made public through the press.
“He was OK with Flynn being dishonest. He was OK with the vice president misrepresenting the truth to the country . ... I suppose what bothers him is being forced to act,” Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, told MSNBC.
Asked whether he could point to a president whose tenure started with similar unrest, longtime GOP strategist Ed Rollins went back more than a century.
“You may have to go back to our 16th president, who had nine states leave the union” in his first 14 months in office, he said of Abraham Lincoln.
Trump’s attempts to shield himself from the deepening controversy were all the more striking because he flouted White House attempts to portray him as in command.
Spicer maintained Wednesday that the president was “decisive” in dismissing Flynn for misrepresenting his conversations with the Russian diplomat.
Later Wednesday, however, after Spicer said Trump would address Andy Puzder’s withdrawal as labor secretary nominee, he had to backtrack when an aide told him Trump would not be issuing a statement.
Rollins attributed some of the administration’s troubles to a problem that has dogged many presidencies early on, but seems especially pronounced in Trump’s case.
“Historically, when a campaign ends on Election Day you shift to a policy side. This president chose not to do that,” he said. “Obviously you’re going to be more effective as a team over time. This is the fourth week of a term that lasts 212 weeks. So there’s plenty of time.”