Fear: Trump in the White House(111)
Ross and Navarro had arranged for the main U.S. steel executives to come to the White House the next day.
When Cohn got word of the plan, he called Kelly around 10 p.m.
“I don’t know anything about a meeting,” Kelly said. “There’s no meeting.”
“Oh, there’s a meeting.”
“What are you talking about, Gary?”
Cohn tried to kill the meeting, and for a while he thought he had succeeded. But then it was back on.
More than a dozen executives showed up the next day. At a meeting in the Cabinet Room, Trump announced that he had decided to impose a 25 percent tariff on foreign-made steel and 10 percent on aluminum.
“You will have protection for the first time in a long while,” Trump told the executives. “And you’re going to regrow your industries,” he said, even though all the data Cohn had gathered showed it was not practical or even possible.
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Cohn believed if they had completed the work on the intellectual property case against China, they would have had the allies on board for a blockbuster trade case. It would have been most of the world against China. Their economic rival would be isolated. Steel tariffs upended all of that.
Cohn concluded that Trump just loved to pit people against each other. The president had never been in a business where he had to do long-term strategic thinking. He went to see Trump to explain that he was resigning.
“If this is the way you’re going to run the place,” Cohn said, he was going to leave. “I can deal with losing a battle in the White House as long as we follow proper protocol and procedure. But when two guys get to walk in your office at 6:30 at night and schedule a meeting that the chief of staff and no one knows about, I can’t work in that environment.”
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Cohn knew the importance of Hope Hicks, who had been elevated to White House communications director. Cohn often asked her to join him when he was heading into a tough conversation with Trump, saying, “Hope, come on in with me.” He found Hicks softened the president and that Trump treated Cohn differently when she was there.
On Tuesday, March 6, he went to see Hicks. They crafted a statement for the president to issue with Cohn’s resignation.
“Gary has been my chief economic adviser and did a superb job in driving our agenda, helping to deliver historic tax cuts and reforms and unleashing the American economy once again. He is a rare talent, and I thank him for his dedicated service to the American people.”
They fiddled with the language, then took a printed copy into the Oval Office. They took seats at the Resolute Desk.
“Mr. President,” Cohn said, “today’s probably the right day for me to put out my resignation.”
“Gary’s been so great,” Hicks said, soothing the moment. “We’re going to miss him so much. This is a shame. We’ve got to find a way to bring him back.”
“Of course,” the president said, “we’re going to bring him back.”
It was a false show to the end. Cohn realized again what he had said before to others about the president: “He’s a professional liar.”
“I’ve got a quote here that I’ve okayed with Gary,” Hicks said. “I want you to okay it.”
Trump took the piece of paper and tweaked a word, but otherwise let the statement stand.
“It’s a huge loss,” Trump said. “But we’ll be fine. And he’s coming back.”
“Gary Cohn to Resign as Trump Adviser After Dispute Over Tariffs,” Bloomberg reported. “Gary Cohn Resigns Amid Differences with Trump on Trade,” said The Washington Post. “Gary Cohn Resigns, Apparently Over Tariffs,” read The Atlantic. “Gary Cohn Resigns as White House Economic Adviser After Losing Tariffs Fight,” said The Wall Street Journal.
Later, after he resigned, Cohn worried about instability in the economy that would come from tariffs and the impact on the consumer. The U.S. is a consumer-driven economy. And if the consumer is unsure of what the economy will look like and what their disposable income will look like, that will be seen very quickly in the economy and in the stock market.
Trump’s action and mounting threats on tariffs were jarring. Cohn thought that Trump had to know. “But he’s not man enough to admit it. He’s never been wrong yet. He’s 71. He’s not going to admit he’s wrong, ever.”
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Tom Bossert, the president’s adviser for homeland security, cyber security and counterterrorism, went to the Oval Office in the spring of 2018 and found Trump in his private dining room.
“Sir, do you have a minute?” Bossert, a 43-year-old lawyer and security expert, asked.
“I want to watch the Masters,” Trump said. He had TiVo’d the Augusta National Golf Club tournament, the most famous in the world, and was glued to it.
Bossert, another high-flying aide with Oval Office access even in the Kelly era, invited himself to sit down and watch.
The lawyer knew the United States was already in a constant state of low-intensity cyber war with advanced foreign adversaries such as China, Russia, North Korea and Iran. These countries had the ability to shut down the power grid in United States cities, for example, and the only deterrent was to make clear that a massive cyber attack would not just be met with cyber-for-cyber symmetry.