Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Self-inflicted wounds may unwind wins
Chaos undermines presidency, chances to pass his agenda
WASHINGTON — The string quartet had just finished and President Donald Trump raised his arms in triumph.
“Am I doing OK?” Trump asked, turning to chuckling Republican leaders who had once shunned him but now surrounded him in the Rose Garden to celebrate the House’s passage of a health care bill. “I’m president! Hey, I’m president. Can you believe it?”
That was just over a week ago, and, though the path ahead in the Senate for the bill seemed difficult, administration officials and supporters could say that, after several false starts, they were moving forward on their legislative agenda.
Trump changed that in a hurry.
His decision to fire FBI Director James Comey unfolded the way a lot of his actions have — apparently impulsive, subject to minimal review by aides, surrounded by misleading statements.
Many Democrats suggested that the firing presaged a full-scale effort by the administration to scotch the investigation into possible ties between Trump associates and Russian agents who sought to influence the 2016 election.
But the firing seems less part of a carefully considered plot and more the rash decision of a president who steadily grew more angry at the FBI director who was unwilling to publicly exonerate him.
The firing focused new attention on the investigation, and raised new issues and suggestions of presidential interference.
Besides potential legal problems for Trump and his associates stemming from the investigation, the crisis set off by Comey’s sacking threatens long-term damage to Trump’s presidency: further undermining the White House’s credibility across the board, imperiling the president’s legislative agenda and stunting his ability to attract qualified professionals to serve in an administration already behind in filling top positions.
“This was the worst handled replacement of a public figure in my lifetime,” said Judd Gregg, a former Republican senator from New Hampshire. “There’s a way you do things and this was not it. And the fact there’s no one around Trump that had the gravitas to tell him is startling.”
After that Rose Garden celebration, Trump might have savored the mood a bit longer. He spent the weekend at his club in Bedminster, N.J. It rained. So, cooped up with only barebones staff in New Jersey, Trump turned to his favorite vice: cable television. And he reportedly began stewing.
There were reports about the health care bill victory and of healthy jobs numbers. Yet Trump could not escape the other big topic: the Russia investigation.
His exasperation built as the week began. Back at the White House on Monday, with three journalists from Time magazine over for dinner, Trump showed them the Tivo in his private study near the Oval Office. He no longer watched sports, he told them — “I’m now consumed by news.”
He scrolled to a recording of recent congressional testimony by Sally Yates, the former acting attorney general whom Trump had fired in late January, and James Clapper, President Barack Obama’s director of national intelligence.
“Watch them start to choke like dogs,” Trump said.
But it was Comey’s testimony from the same week that rankled him. Hours before the Time group’s arrival, Trump had summoned Attorney General Jeff Sessions and his deputy, Rod Rosenstein, into the Oval Office. He ordered Rosenstein, less than two weeks on the job and responsible for overseeing Comey’s FBI probe, to write up his concerns about Comey’s leadership. When Trump received it the next day, he quickly fired the director.
Aides, along with Vice President Mike Pence, over two days combatively insisted the Russia investigation had nothing to do with Comey’s firing. Then Trump contradicted them in a Thursday interview with NBC News.
“I decided to just do it,” he said. “I said to myself — I said, ‘You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story. It’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should’ve won.’ ”
Even Trump’s friends were stunned, and veterans of past White Houses in both parties were openly incredulous.
“It is bad if you are working in the White House, and you have to watch TV to know what the president really thinks and really does,” said Joe Lockhart, a press secretary to President Bill Clinton.
Trump has all but squandered his honeymoon, the post-inaugural months when presidents enjoy maximum leverage in Congress and with the public.
Veterans of prior administrations say Trump needs a more experienced team of advisers — and people who can stand up to him and warn against rash decisions — if he has hopes of rebounding.
As for Republicans, longtime party strategist Rick Tyler said Trump is threatening the political future of his allies in Congress.
If his popularity in polls keeps sliding, Trump will lose leverage to pass legislation the party has promised voters for years, Tyler said.
“This is not how you win legislative victories,” Tyler said. “This is how you win ratings for reality shows.”