Fear: Trump in the White House(92)

As usual, Pence was staying out of the way. He didn’t want to be tweeted about or called an idiot. If he were advising Pence, Cohn would have had him do exactly that—stay out of it.



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Kelly concluded that Peter Navarro was the problem. Navarro would get into the Oval Office and spin Trump up on the trade deficits. Since he was preaching to the converted, Trump would soon be in full activist mode, declaring, I will sign today.

Cohn took every chance he could get to tell Kelly how Navarro was an absolute disaster. Get rid of him, Cohn argued, fire him. This place is never going to work as long as he is around.

Kelly asked Porter for his opinion. “The current status quo is unsustainable,” Porter said. “I don’t think you can get rid of Peter, because the president loves him. He’d never allow for that.” You can’t promote Navarro, like he wants, because that would be absurd. “Peter needs to be responsible to someone, other than feeling like he’s got a direct report to the president. A lot of times I’m able to block him.”

Kelly decided he was going to assert control, and called a meeting of the combatants for September 26. It was like a duel. Navarro was allowed to bring in a second and he chose Stephen Miller. Cohn brought Porter.

Navarro started off arguing that during the campaign he was promised to be an assistant to the president. Now he was only a deputy assistant. This is a betrayal. He said he couldn’t believe it had lasted this long. He had talked to the president, who did not really know the difference between an assistant to the president and a deputy assistant. The president thought special assistant sounded a lot better, not realizing it was an even lower position.

Navarro said that the president had told him he could have whatever title and reporting structure he wanted. He and his Trade Council represented the American worker, the manufacturing base, the forgotten man.

“Peter’s out there going rogue,” Cohn responded. “He’s creating these problems. He’s telling the president lies. He’s totally unchecked. He’s the source of all the chaos in this building.”

“Gary doesn’t know what he is talking about,” Navarro replied. “Gary’s just a globalist. He’s not loyal to the president.” And Porter was always fiddling with the process and manipulating to delay everything so Navarro couldn’t get in to see the president.

“All right,” Kelly said. “I can’t deal with this anymore. Peter, you’re going to be a member of the National Economic Council, and you’re going to report to Gary. And that’s just how it’s going to be. And if you don’t like it, you can quit. Meeting over.”

“I want to appeal this,” Navarro said. “I want to talk to the president.”

“You’re not talking to the president,” Kelly said. “Get out of my office.”

Months went by. “Where the hell is my Peter?” the president asked one day. “I haven’t talked to Peter Navarro in two months.” But, as was often the case, he did not follow up.





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Trump’s face-off with Kim Jong Un was growing increasingly personal.

On Air Force One when tensions were ramping up, Trump said, in a rare moment of reflection, “This guy’s crazy. I really hope this doesn’t end up going to a bad place.”

He delivered contradictory comments on North Korea from provocative and bombastic to assertions that he wanted peace. In May he said he would be “honored” to meet with Kim “under the right circumstances.” In August he told the press, “North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States. They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.”

With no resolution, McMaster issued a new strategy outlining a North Korea Pressure Campaign. The plan, put forward in a signed document, was designed to pressure North Korea and China to negotiate the North’s nuclear weapons program and cease development of their ICBMs. Treasury would work on sanctions. State would work on engagement with China to pressure the North.

The Defense Department was to make military incursions such as overflights, going into their airspace in exercises called Blue Lightning, and engage in limited cyber activity to demonstrate capability and show the threat. But these actions were not to trigger an unintended conflict.

McMaster kept repeating in the NSC that Trump could not accept a nuclear North Korea.

But the president summed up his position on almost everything in an interview with The New York Times. “I’m always moving. I’m moving in both directions.”



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Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Dunford formed a strategic communications cell in his Operations Directorate, J3, to look at the messaging opportunities in North Korea. What actions could be taken that were just threatening enough to be a deterrent?

When there were three aircraft carriers in the vicinity, Mattis voiced discomfort. Could this trigger an unanticipated response from Kim? Could the United States start the war they were trying to avoid? He showed more concern about this than many others in the Pentagon and certainly in the White House.

Mattis was a student of historian Barbara Tuchman’s book The Guns of August about the outbreak of World War I. “He’s obsessed with August 1914,” one official said, “and the idea that you take actions, military actions, that are seen as prudent planning, and the unintended consequences are you can’t get off the war train.” A momentum to war builds, “and you just can’t stop it.”