Fear: Trump in the White House(63)
Chain migration, formally called the family reunification policy, allowed a single legal immigrant to bring close family members into the United States—parents, children, a spouse and, in some cases, siblings. These family members would have a path to legal permanent residency or citizenship. They might be followed by a “chain” of their own spouses, children, parents or siblings.
Two thirds (68 percent) of legal permanent residents entered under family reunification or chain migration in 2016. This was at the heart of Trump’s and Bannon’s anti-immigration stance: They wanted to stop illegal immigration and limit legal immigration. Bannon wanted a new, stricter policy. Graham and he were not able to come close to agreement.
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Ivanka and Jared invited Stephen Miller, the hard-liner on immigration, to their house for dinner along with Durbin and Graham.
“All you do is listen,” Bannon instructed Miller. “Just go and receive. Don’t fight them. I just want to hear it all.”
Miller reported that Ivanka and Jared thought they had Trump on some sort of deal that included funding for the wall in exchange for amnesty for 1.8 million Dreamers. Bannon figured chain migration made the real number double or triple that—3 to 5 million new immigrants. “They can’t think we’re that dumb.”
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Some days, it seemed to Bannon that Senator Graham had moved into the West Wing. He heard his pitch on Dreamers at least three times. He thought that Graham wanted to replace McConnell as majority leader.
Bannon was at the height of his war with McConnell and saw Graham as his biggest ally. Graham and Bannon were on the phone nearly every day. Bannon believed everyone hated McConnell and wanted to put the shiv to him because he ran things too tight.
Graham did talk about finding a replacement for McConnell. “We’ve got to find our guy who’ll replace him,” Graham said. But Graham denied he wanted McConnell’s leadership job.
Bannon believed Graham was the best deal maker for Republicans, but he was the establishment. Graham didn’t like Bannon’s nationalist agenda, telling him, “Bannon, that America First is bullshit. This is all bullshit.”
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In the true and practiced Trump White House style, Bannon was willing to ride any horse to achieve his purposes. He called Attorney General Sessions to the White House. Their problem on immigration was now Trump. “He’s going to be listening to Jared and Ivanka. And Graham is the best salesman around there. He loves Graham. Graham can sell him anything. He’s got Durbin. They’re going to be loving up on him. We’ve got a fucking problem.”
Bannon spoke with Kris Kobach, the secretary of state of Kansas, one of the biggest opponents of the Dreamers and a hero of the Right. Kobach’s idea was that he and other state attorneys general would file suit claiming DACA was unconstitutional. Bannon and Sessions developed a plan not to defend the lawsuit. “It’s over,” Bannon said. “DACA’s finished. All Trump had to say to Congress was, Hey, I work at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. If you’ve got an idea, come up and see me.” Trump only had to stay neutral.
CHAPTER
23
As Trump was laying plans to withdraw from the Paris Accord on climate change, Priebus had had it with Ivanka. The president’s 35-year-old daughter and White House senior adviser effectively had free run of the West Wing. She had launched what amounted to a covert operation in support of the Paris Accord, a nonbinding international agreement to address climate change by voluntarily cutting greenhouse gas emissions that was reached in 2015 and involved 195 countries.
Obama had pledged to cut these emissions about 25 percent below the levels in 2005. This would be accomplished by 2025. He had committed $3 billion to aid underdeveloped countries in a Green Climate Fund.
Only $1 billion had been paid, and Obama had transferred half of that three days before he left office.
Ivanka strongly wanted her father to stick with the pro-environmental agreement. Priebus would be meeting in his office with a handful of aides from the economic team and the National Economic Council for 15 minutes and in would walk Ivanka. She would sit down and often say nothing.
Who is this person? Priebus marveled. What is she doing?
It was becoming impossible to manage the West Wing. At times it seemed Ivanka’s presence—hours a day, days in a row—was nonstop. Jared had the same squatter’s rights in the West Wing. They were like a posse of second-guessers, hovering, watching, interacting as family and senior advisers with the president. Ivanka planted seeds of doubt about policy and passed her father articles.
When Priebus voiced his dismay, Trump regularly joked, “They’re Democrats.” They were New Yorkers infected with the liberalism of their city roots. The president made no real effort to curtail their freelancing. Priebus believed he had run a very tight and organizationally sound Republican National Committee. The Trump White House seemed designed to upend any order or routine.
At one point Priebus had a decision memo for the president to review and sign on the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement.
Ivanka said to her father, “Mark Zuckerberg wants to talk to you.” She had lined up a call between her father and the founder and CEO of Facebook. Zuckerberg was an outspoken climate change advocate. She did the same with Tim Cook, the Apple CEO, and others. At one point she slipped a personal message from former vice president Al Gore, one of the foremost Paris advocates, into a stack of papers on the president’s desk.