Trump’s remarks stun team
WASHINGTON — As Treasury Department aides filtered in for a routine meeting Wednesday, there was one main issue to be discussed: Secretary Steven Mnuchin does not stand with Donald Trump on the topic of neo-Nazis.
Mnuchin, like other officials, had no idea the president would inflame the Charlottesville controversy on Tuesday by equating white supremacists to counter-protesters, the staff was told, according to two people familiar with the meeting. He stood beside Trump at the president’s news conference in New York, the one that devolved into a shouting match with reporters over race, but not with the intent of endorsing his remarks on the issue.
The team was encouraged to look beyond the chaos of the past several days and instead focus on advancing Trump’s economic agenda, the two people said.
It was the morning after a long night for many in the Trump administration, still reeling from his statement that there was “blame on both sides” for violence in Virginia that left a woman dead after a rally by Hitler-saluting neoNazis and the Ku Klux Klan.
Even in a White House battered by controversy, it felt to many like a new low. Officials shared their anguish in phone calls and texts, furtive exchanges that boiled down to a single question over and over — how much more can I take? — according to more than a half-dozen presidential aides and others familiar with the conversations.
One applicant — who’s in the late stages of vetting for a senior job in a federal agency — now says he is reconsidering going to work for the administration.
One senior official who was particularly upset over the president’s comments: his top economic adviser, Gary Cohn, according to two people familiar with his thinking.
The anguish was apparent when Cohn, who also stood with the president at the freewheeling session in the lobby of Trump Tower, faced reporters’ questions after Trump had departed. Asked whether he agreed with the president’s statement, Cohn responded by saying he shared Trump’s view “that infrastructure is really important to America.”
Still, Cohn does not have any plans to depart the administration, according to two individuals.
In fact, no one in the administration has resigned or publicly criticized Trump’s statement, even though several senior officials who are Jewish — including Cohn, Mnuchin, Trump’s daughter Ivanka and his son-in-law Jared Kushner — were said to be especially upset.
A theme emerged, amid the reasons to stay on: we’re here for the cause, not the man. Many had been drawn to Trump for that rarest of chances: to bring conservative change to Washington, ushering in tax cuts and regulatory rollbacks. And they knew it would be harder to shape policies from the outside.
Cohn, for example, is seeking a legacy-defining overhaul of the tax code.
Some aides also said they can stick it out because they don’t think Trump is a bigot and have concluded that he was lashing out at unfair media treatment and runaway political correctness.
So White House aides gamely tried to stick to the business at hand, with discussions focused on planning upcoming events on the president’s calendar, including a meeting Friday at Camp David, where the president plans to discuss Afghanistan policy, and a trip to the Western U.S. next week that includes a political rally in Phoenix. Top aide Stephen Miller held a call with administration allies to discuss efforts to target socalled sanctuary cities.
Still, the president’s remarks left a beleaguered White House staff particularly demoralized.
Staffers had been buoyed by the recent appointment of John Kelly as chief of staff and were optimistic that the retired Marine Corps general would be able to impose military discipline on a chaotic West Wing. They’d also been excited by what looked to be a mostly quiet two-week vacation for the president while workers renovated the West Wing.
All that was punctured by the events in Charlottesville and the president’s defiant insistence that there was merit in denouncing “alt-left” protests while defending some attendees of the largely white nationalist rally as “very fine people” who were demonstrating “quietly.”
As the president jousted with reporters at Trump Tower on Tuesday, Kelly stood stone-faced, staring at the ground with his arms crossed. Shortly after, sources told CNN that Kelly was frustrated with how the day played out.
Kushner and Ivanka Trump also made their displeasure known, with two people familiar with their sentiments telling The New York Times that they urged the president to moderate his stance. The couple was vacationing in Vermont as the controversy unfolded.
But the anonymously sourced hand-wringing by White House officials met swift ridicule online, with critics of the administration quick to point out that Trump aides want credit for soul-searching without publicly rebuking the president or risking their own priorities and careers.
Interviews with 17 West Wing aides, informal advisers, Republican lawmakers and Trump confidants, many speaking anonymously, revealed that Kelly has so far largely improved staff morale with his sense of order. Nonetheless, Trump has shown signs of chafing. One person close to the president described him as a “caged animal” under Kelly, saying he is always going to respond negatively to attempts to corral him or keep him on a script.
Late last week in Bedminster, Kelly gathered at Trump’s clubhouse restaurant for a relaxed, social dinner with the senior staff. The group included Ivanka Trump; son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner; White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders; and others. The president also came by, staying for the full meal.
As they reminisced about the campaign and told jokes, Kelly offered up a quip. “The best job I ever had was as a sergeant in the Marine Corps,” he said with a laugh, “and after one week on this job, I believe the best job I ever had is as a sergeant in the Marine Corps.”