President starts day with calls on Russia

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has a new morning ritual. Around 6:30 a.m. on many days — before all the network news shows have come on the air — he gets on the phone with a member of his outside legal team to chew over all things Russia.

The calls — detailed by three senior White House officials — are part strategy consultation and part presidential venting session, during which Trump’s lawyers and public-relations gurus take turns reviewing the latest headlines with him. They also devise their plan for battling his avowed enemies: the special counsel leading the Russia investigation; the “fake news” media chronicling it; and, in some instances, the president’s own Justice Department overseeing the probe.

His advisers have encouraged the calls — which the early-to-rise Trump takes from his private quarters in the White House residence — in the hope that he can compartmentalize the widening Russia investigation. By the time the president arrives for work in the Oval Office, the thinking goes, he will no longer be consumed by the Russia probe.

It rarely works, however. Asked whether the tactic was effective, one top White House adviser paused for several seconds and then just laughed.

The White House is laboring to prevent the Russia matter from overtaking its broader agenda, diligently rolling out a series of theme weeks, focusing on topics including infrastructure and workforce development. West Wing aides are working to keep the president on schedule, trotting him around the country in front of the supportive crowds that energize him. And Trump is planning several big announcements on trade in the coming weeks, before jetting off to Poland and Germany in early July.

Senior officials also have been devising an overhaul of the White House communications operation to better meet the offensive and defensive demands of the president they serve, as well as the 24-hour cycle of tweet-size news.

“As his detractors suffer from this never-ending ‘Russian concussion,’ the president has been tending to business as usual — bilateral meetings, progress on health care, tax and infrastructure reform, and job creation,” said Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president. “Conjecture about the mood and momentum of the West Wing is inaccurate and overwrought. The pace is breakneck, the trajectory upward.”