Fear: Trump in the White House(82)
On CBS, Stephen Colbert joked darkly, “It’s just like D-Day. Remember D-Day, two sides, Allies and the Nazis? There was a lot of violence on both sides. Ruined a beautiful beach. And it could have been a golf course.”
Former General John Kelly had stood in the Trump Tower lobby as Trump took questions with a grim look on his face. Colbert said, “This guy is a four-star general. Iraq, no problem. Afghanistan, we can do it. Twenty-minute Trump press conference? A quagmire.”
Porter had watched from the sidelines in the Trump Tower lobby. He was in a state of shock, shattered and in disbelief. Later, when Trump brought up the second speech to him, the staff secretary said, “I thought the second speech was the only good one of the three.”
“I don’t want to talk to you,” Trump responded. “Get away from me.”
Kelly later told the president that because he had made three statements, “now everybody has one to choose, and it might work in the president’s favor. Maybe it’s the best of all possible worlds.” He said his wife liked Tuesday’s statement and press conference, the third one, because it showed the president being strong and defiant.
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Kenneth Frazier, the head of Merck, the giant pharmaceutical company, and one of the few African American CEOs of a Fortune 500 company, announced he was resigning from Trump’s American Manufacturing Council, a group of outside business advisers to the president.
“America’s leaders must honor our fundamental values by clearly rejecting expressions of hatred, bigotry and group supremacy. . . . As CEO of Merck and as a matter of personal conscience, I feel a responsibility to take a stand against intolerance and extremism,” Frazier said in a statement.
Within an hour, Trump attacked Frazier on Twitter. Now that Frazier had resigned, Trump wrote, “he will have more time to LOWER RIPOFF DRUG PRICES!”
The CEOs of Under Armour and Intel followed Frazier, resigning from the council as well.
Still stewing, in a second Twitter swipe at Frazier, Trump wrote that Merck should “Bring jobs back & LOWER PRICES!”
On Tuesday, August 15, Trump tweeted, “For every CEO that drops out of the Manufacturing Council, I have many to take their place.” He called those who had resigned “grandstanders.”
Trump’s press conference proved too much for the members of the president’s Strategic & Policy Forum, a second advisory board, and the Manufacturing Council. Throughout the day, the CEOs of 3M, Campbell Soup and General Electric announced their resignations from the Manufacturing Council, as did representatives from the AFL-CIO and the Alliance for American Manufacturing president.
Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, told employees that the Strategic & Policy Forum had decided to disband. Trump preempted further resignations by abolishing both groups via Twitter: “Rather than putting pressure on the businesspeople of the Manufacturing Council & Strategy & Policy Forum, I am ending both. Thank you all!”
Most significant, however, were the private reactions from House Speaker Ryan and Senate majority leader McConnell. Both Republicans called some of the CEOs and privately praised them for standing up.
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On Friday, August 18, Gary Cohn flew by helicopter from East Hampton, Long Island, to Morristown, New Jersey, where it was raining heavily. He had to wait on the tarmac to get clearance to Bedminster. He was carrying a resignation letter. This was too much. Someone had put a swastika on his daughter’s college dorm room.
He headed to the clubhouse where Trump was going to address a member-guest tournament. Walking in to applause, Trump shook hands and made remarks, reminding everyone he had won the member-guest before. Trump and Cohn took food from the buffet and slipped into a private dining room.
“Mr. President,” Cohn said when they were alone, “I’m very uncomfortable with the position you have put me and my family in. I don’t want this to be a contentious discussion.”
“You don’t know what you are talking about,” Trump said.
They debated what Trump had said and what he had not said.
“Before you say anything further,” the president said, “I want you to go back and listen to it again.”
“Sir,” Cohn replied, “I’ve listened to it like 30 times. Have you seen the video, sir?” Cohn said.
“No, I haven’t seen the video.”
“I want you to watch the video, sir,” Cohn said. “I need you to watch the video of a bunch of white guys carrying tiki torches saying, ‘Jews will not replace us.’ I cannot live in a world like that.”
“You go listen and you go read,” Trump said. “I’ll go watch the video.”
They agreed to discuss it after they had done their listening and watching.
“I said nothing wrong,” Trump said. “I meant what I said.”
“The Monday statement was great,” Cohn said. “Saturday and Tuesday were horrible.”
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The next Monday at the White House, Cohn appeared at the Oval Office. Ivanka was sitting on one of the couches. Kelly was standing behind a chair.
Cohn was halfway into the Oval Office when Trump said, “So you’re here to resign?”
“Yes, sir, I am.”
“I’ve done nothing wrong,” Trump repeated. He was leaving “because of your liberal Park Avenue friends. This must be your wife,” Trump said, blaming Cohn’s wife. Trump launched into a story about a great golfer. The golfer’s wife complained because he was gone every weekend. So he listened to her, and now Trump said the once-great golfer is selling golf balls and making no money, completing his blame-the-wife narrative.