Fear: Trump in the White House(88)

“All right,” Trump finally said on Friday, September 1, “we’re not going to do the KORUS 180-day thing today. It’s not that we’re not going to do it, but all right, we won’t do it today.”

Porter put out the word to the legislative staff, the White House lawyers and the NSC staff to rest easy for at least that day. He made sure there was nothing drafted that the President could sign.

Four days later, on September 5, Cohn, Porter and the others went to the Oval Office. Trump had in his hands a draft letter giving notice of the required 180 days that the United States was withdrawing from KORUS. Porter had not written it and he was never sure who had, probably Navarro or Ross, but he never found out for sure.

“I’ve got a draft,” Trump said. “We’re going to withdraw from this. I just need to wordsmith this and we’re going to get it on official stationery and send this off. We need to do it today.”

McMaster made the national security arguments. Cohn and Porter made the trade and economic arguments.

“Until I actually take some action to demonstrate my threats are real and need to be taken seriously,” Trump said, “then we’re going to have less leverage in these things.” He then left the Oval Office.

Now that the president had gone outside of the staff secretary process that Porter controlled to get a new draft letter, Cohn was really worried. He removed it from the president’s desk.I



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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.”



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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.



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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.”



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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.”