For the first several months of his job as chief of staff, it seemed that Kelly sat in the Oval Office almost all day, in every meeting. He didn’t say much, acting more as an observer and monitor. He tried to make sure that the door was closed between the Oval Office and the little outer office where Madeleine Westerhout sat. She was 27, a former RNC aide, and looked like Hope Hicks with her long brown hair and big smile. The stated reason was to provide more privacy and security. Kelly also wanted to keep people from wandering in and out as they had done regularly in the past.
“No, no, leave it open,” the president would say. “I need to be able to see Madeleine so that I can call out to her.”
* * *
Rear Admiral Ronny Jackson, the president’s White House physician, stopped by to see the president most days, certainly several times a week.
“How are you doing today, Mr. President?” he would say, sticking his head out of his office as the president passed by. It would usually be a 30-second checkin, often about something like a nasal spray.
Several times Dr. Jackson visited Kelly. “The president’s been under a lot of stress recently,” Jackson said at one point. “We may need to figure out some way to dial things back, or to ease up on his schedule.”
Another time, Jackson was more specific. “Seems like the president’s under more stress than usual. We may just want to try to cut back on the schedule tomorrow.”
Kelly’s solution was to give the president more “Executive Time.” Trump normally set his own schedule on when to start the day and often had flexibility when he returned to the residence.
Kelly tried to respond to Jackson. Which meetings were essential? Could they give Trump an extra half hour or an hour in the mornings or clear his schedule an hour earlier in the evenings? They tried. But the nonstop presidency did not abate and Trump often got everyone, himself included, spun up.
* * *
Trump assembled a group in the residence to discuss steel tariffs. Ross, Navarro, Lighthizer, Cohn, McMaster and Porter attended. Trump said he was tired of the debate and wanted to sign a decision memo to implement 25 percent steel tariffs across the board, with no exemptions for any country.
They had the usual Groundhog Day round of arguments, until Mnuchin said that tax reform had to be the number-one priority. A Republican-held House, Senate and White House was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to pass tax reform, he said. It had not been done since Reagan’s presidency more than 30 years earlier.
Mnuchin warned that many of the Republican senators he would need for tax reform were free traders and strongly opposed steel tariffs.
Mr. President, you could lose them, he said.
Cohn seconded this, and Porter agreed. McMaster, who had been arguing on national security grounds that steel tariffs would severely damage relations with key allies, agreed about taxes and Republican senators.
“Yeah, you’re right,” Trump finally said. “As important as this is, we can’t jeopardize the tax bill for this. So we’ll hold off. But as soon as we’re done with taxes, we’re going to move to trade. And one of the first things that we need to do is put these steel tariffs on.”
* * *
With Bannon out of the White House, Trump and Sessions came up with another solution for immigration on September 5. Trump announced the end of the Obama-era DACA program. He labeled it an “amnesty-first approach” and said Congress should find a replacement in six months.
Two days later he tried to calm everyone down. On September 7, Trump tweeted: “For all those (DACA) that are concerned about your status during the 6 month period, you have nothing to worry about — No action!”
Bannon, who still had access to Trump, called to remind him of the importance of hard-line anti-immigration.
“Do you understand this almost destroyed the Republican Party in the summer of 2013?” Bannon recalled asking the president. “This is the central reason you’re president. The one thing that can destroy the Republican Party. It’s been haunting us, this amnesty issue.”
Stephen Miller passed word from the White House to Bannon that this whole debate was now about chain migration. He calculated that the current policy would add 50 million new immigrants in 20 years if it continued.
Miller told Bannon, “The Democrats will never give up on chain migration. It’s changed the country. Chain migration is everything. That’s how they get the family unification.”
Miller turned out to be correct. Trump might continue to talk as if he would compromise, but there was no deal with Democrats.
* * *
“I don’t have any good lawyers,” Trump said one day in the Oval Office. “I have terrible lawyers.” He singled out White House Counsel Don McGahn. “I’ve got a bunch of lawyers who are not aggressive, who are weak, who don’t have my best interests in mind, who aren’t loyal. It’s just a disaster. I can’t find a good lawyer.” He included the personal lawyers he had handling the Mueller investigation.
Porter went to Kelly’s office to give him a heads-up. It was just the two of them. “I’ve seen this movie before,” Porter said. “I’m concerned, because there have been some times in the past, including especially after the appointment of the special counsel—the Comey, Mueller period—where the president got so consumed and distracted that it was a challenge to continue to do the work and make the decisions—effectively to be president. And to give the direction that the rest of us needed to be able to carry on the work of the government.
“Thankfully we got through it. I’m concerned that there are going to be those kinds of flare-ups again, especially as the investigation takes its course. As things come to a head. I don’t know what the catalyst is going to be.”
It could even be something from the Senate and House Russia investigations. “Or who knows what. But we need to be cognizant of this. If we don’t do a better job of partitioning things, of giving him time and space to deal with some of the Mueller stuff where the president could get his head in a better place, then it is going to infect the rest of the White House.” Trump needed time “to vent and sort of emotionally stabilize himself.”
Porter urged Kelly to give this some thought, “so that you can be prepared, so that we can continue to function and this doesn’t lead to an incapacitation of the entire West Wing for days if not weeks, like it kind of did in the past.”
Kelly nodded. “Yeah, I’ve seen little bits and pieces of that. And I can imagine it being that bad.”
“We barely got by the last time it happened,” Porter said. “It could be even worse than before. So we need to start to game out a plan for how we handle that.”
Kelly agreed that made sense. “Let’s try,” he said. But neither had an immediate idea.
* * *
I. See Prologue, page xvii–xxii.
CHAPTER
33
It was not just the distraction of a wide-ranging Mueller investigation hanging over his head, but the constant media coverage that Trump had colluded with the Russians and/or obstructed justice, a real feeding frenzy—vicious, uncivil. The result, Porter said, “In some moments it was almost incapacity of the president to be president.”
McMaster noticed it. Trump normally wouldn’t listen long or very carefully to his national security adviser but it had gotten much worse, McMaster told Porter. “It’s like I can’t even get his attention.”
“Don’t take it personally,” Porter advised. “He’s clearly distracted. He’s been like that all day. Because he’s focused on this news about Russia.”
Gary Cohn told Porter, “It’s pointless to even talk to him today.”