Fear: Trump in the White House(69)

Priebus knew not to ask why.

Hope Hicks, now the director of strategic communication, was horrified. She tried to take the lead on the tweets about Mika.

“It’s not politically helpful,” Hicks told the president. “You can’t just be a loose cannon on Twitter. You’re getting killed by a lot of this stuff. You’re shooting yourself in the foot. You’re making big mistakes.”

Following the Mika tweet, a measurable storm of protest came from key Republicans who were necessary votes on repealing and replacing Obamacare and other legislation. Senator Susan Collins of Maine said, “This just has to stop.” Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska: “Stop it!” Already on shaky ground with women, Trump’s personal attack encouraged comparisons to his past history.

As an extreme measure, Hicks, Porter, Gary Cohn and White House social media director Dan Scavino proposed they set up a committee. They would draft some tweets that they believed Trump would like. If the president had an idea for a tweet, he could write it down or get one of them in and they would vet it. Was it factually accurate? Was it spelled correctly? Did it make sense? Did it serve his needs?

“I guess you’re right,” Trump said several times. “We could do that.” But then he ignored most reviews or vetting and did what he wanted.

When Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un amped up the rhetoric, he was warned, “Twitter could get us into a war.”

“This is my megaphone,” Trump said again. “Let’s not call it Twitter. Let’s call it social media.” Though the White House had Facebook and Instagram accounts, Trump did not use them. He stuck to Twitter. “This is who I am. This is how I communicate. It’s the reason I got elected. It’s the reason that I’m successful.”

The tweets were not incidental to his presidency. They were central. He ordered printouts of his recent tweets that had received a high number of likes, 200,000 or more. He studied them to find the common themes in the most successful. He seemed to want to become more strategic, find out whether success was tied to the subject, the language or simply the surprise that the president was weighing in. The most effective tweets were often the most shocking.

Later, when Twitter announced the number of permissible characters in a single tweet was being doubled from 140 to 280, Trump told Porter he thought the change made sense on one level. Now he would be able to flesh out his thoughts and add more depth.

“It’s a good thing,” Trump said, “but it’s a bit of a shame because I was the Ernest Hemingway of 140 characters.”



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At the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, in early July Trump wanted to talk with Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull. In violation of security rules he invited Turnbull into his Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF). Only those with the highest U.S. security clearances for Top Secret Sensitive Compartmented Information were allowed in the SCIF. It was an absolute rule, intended to prevent someone planting listening devices. This facility, a large steel room, had to be torn down after the meeting.

The relationship between the leaders had been difficult since the first week of the administration, when the two men spoke by phone. Trump wanted to get out of what he called a “stupid” deal that is “going to kill me” between the U.S. and Australia, made under President Obama. Under the agreement, certain refugees with questionable backgrounds waiting on an island off Australia would be allowed to enter the U.S. The transcript of their January 28, 2017, call had leaked. Trump had said, “It is an evil time. . . . Are they going to become the Boston bomber?”

As he went to the meeting with Trump in Germany, Turnbull was aware of the debate within the White House about possible tariffs on steel imported into the United States.

“If you do ever put steel tariffs on,” Turnbull said, “you’ve got to exempt Australian steel. We do this steel that’s specialty steel. We’re the only one that produces it in the world. You’ve got to let us out. You’ve got a $40 billion trade surplus with us. We’re military allies with you. We’re in every battle with you.”

“Of course,” Trump said, “we’ll let you out. That makes total sense. You guys are great. We’ve got a big surplus with you guys”—the holy grail.

Gary Cohn, who was in the meeting, was pleased. Turnbull had previously been a partner at Goldman Sachs and had worked for Cohn when he was Goldman president.



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Coming back from the G20 summit, Trump was editing an upcoming speech with Porter. Scribbling his thoughts in neat, clean penmanship, the president wrote, “TRADE IS BAD.”



Though he never said it in a speech, he had finally found the summarizing phrase and truest expression of his protectionism, isolationism and fervent American nationalism.



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Nearly eight months later, on February 23, 2018, Turnbull arrived at the White House to see the president.

In the prep session in the Oval Office for the meeting, Cohn reminded Trump of his pledge.

“Mr. President,” Cohn said, “the first thing he’s going to bring up is the steel tariffs. And he’s going to remind you that you let him out.”

“I don’t remember,” Trump said, sitting behind the Resolute Desk.