Trump ‘furious’ after midterms
Official says staffers seem to be on way out amid shake-up
WASHINGTON — For weeks this fall, an ebullient President Donald Trump traveled relentlessly to hold raise-the-rafters campaign rallies — sometimes three a day — in states where his presence was likely to help Republicans on the ballot.
But his mood apparently has changed as he has taken measure of the electoral backlash that voters delivered Nov. 6. With the certainty that the incoming Democratic House majority will go after his tax returns and investigate his actions, and the likelihood of additional indictments by special counsel Robert Mueller, Trump has retreated into a cocoon of bitterness and resentment, multiple administration sources said.
Behind the scenes, they say, Trump has lashed out at several aides. “He’s furious,” said one administration official. “Most staffers are trying to avoid him.”
The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, painted a picture of a brooding president “trying to decide who to blame” for Republicans’ election losses, even as he publicly and implausibly continues to claim victory.
White House chief of staff John Kelly and Kirstjen Nielsen, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, who are close allies, “seem to be on their way out,” the official said, noting recent leaks on the subject. The official cau- President Donald Trump celebrates Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, during ceremony Tuesday in the White House. tioned, however, that personnel decisions are never final until Trump tweets out the news.
Meanwhile, in an extraordinary move, Melania Trump called publicly for the top deputy to national security adviser John Bolton to be dismissed.
After reports circulated Tuesday that President Trump had decided to remove Mira Ricardel from her post at the National Security Council, Stephanie Grisham, the first lady’s spokeswoman, released a statement that said: “It is the position of the Office of the First Lady that she no longer deserves the honor of serving in this White House.”
The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that the first lady’s staff and Ricardel had clashed during Mrs. Trump’s visit to Africa in October over such things as seating on the airplane and requests to use the council’s resources.
Publicly, President Trump has been increasingly absent in recent days — except on Twitter. He has canceled travel plans and dispatched Cabinet officials and aides to events in his place — including sending Vice President Mike Pence to Asia for the annual summits there in November that past presidents nearly always attended.
Jordan’s King Abdullah II was in Washington on Tuesday and met with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, but not the president.
Also Tuesday, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis announced plans to travel Wednesday near the U.S.Mexico border to visit with troops Trump ordered there last month in what is ostensibly a mission to defend against a caravan of Central American migrants moving through Mexico and still hundreds of miles from the United States. Trump had reportedly considered making that trip himself, but has decided against it.
Trump’s only public appearance Tuesday was at a short White House ceremony marking the start of the Hindu holiday Diwali at which he made brief comments and left without responding to shouted questions.
He had just returned Sunday night from a twoday trip to France to attend ceremonies marking the centennial of the armistice that ended World War I. That trip was overshadowed, in part, by Trump’s decision not to attend a wreath-laying at the AisneMarne American Cemetery, the burial place for 2,289 soldiers 60 miles northeast of Paris, due to rain.
Kelly, a former Marine Corps general, and Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, did attend to honor the American service members interred there. Trump stayed in the U.S. ambassador’s residence in Paris, making no public appearances.
Other heads of state also managed to make it to World War I cemeteries in the area for tributes to their nations’ war dead Saturday.
Trump and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin were the only world leaders to skip another commemoration, on Sunday, at the Arc de Triomphe, where about 80 heads of state walked in unison — under umbrellas in the pouring rain — down Paris’ grand Champs-Elysees boulevard. Trump arrived later by motorcade, a decision aides claimed was made for security reasons.
Nicholas Burns, former U.S. ambassador to NATO under George W. Bush, said the moment, commemorating the 100th anniversary of the end of a war in which 120,000 Americans were killed, was ripe for soaring words, which Trump failed to provide. “Not only did he barely show up, he didn’t say anything that would help Americans understand the scale of the loss, or the importance of avoiding another great war,” Burns said. “He seemed physically and emotionally apart.”
“The country deserves more energy from the president.”