Fear: Trump in the White House(95)

In a small group meeting in his office one day, Kelly said of the president, “He’s an idiot. It’s pointless to try to convince him of anything. He’s gone off the rails. We’re in crazytown.

“I don’t even know why any of us are here. This is the worst job I’ve ever had.”



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Kelly began to have less control, less involvement. Trump called members of Congress when Kelly wasn’t around. He called Chuck Schumer, Tom Cotton, Lindsey Graham, Dick Durbin or cabinet members, underscoring that he was his own chief of staff and his own legislative affairs director.

“Madeleine,” he would call out, “get Speaker Ryan on the phone.”

Trump’s questions started. “How’s Kelly doing?” he asked Porter. “He’s tough but it kind of seems like he’s too tough. I don’t know that the staff really likes him that much.”

“I think he’s helped,” Porter answered. “Better to be feared than loved. But he’s got his limitations. I think he just needs to recognize them. And you do too.” Porter said he thought Kelly’s weakness was on legislative matters. “You really need a good political affairs director because that’s not Kelly’s background. And if you want your chief of staff to be your chief political adviser, it shouldn’t be Kelly.”



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Tillerson complained to Kelly many times about Porter getting Trump to sign decision memos without a sign-off from the secretary of state.

“I know you’ve been trying to loop Rex in,” Kelly told Porter, “but now you cannot take a decision memo to the president—you can’t brief the president on something like that—unless you have explicit sign-off.” Kelly made clear that feedback from State in general or from Tillerson’s chief of staff would not be sufficient. No decisions, Kelly instructed, “until you’ve talked or emailed with Rex specifically.”

Trump heard about the conflicts. He liked aggressive disagreements. They smoked out a wide variety of opinions. Harmony could lead to groupthink. He embraced the chaos and churn beneath him.



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At about 9 p.m., Monday, November 27, more than four months after Priebus left the White House, the president reached him on his cell phone. They talked for 10 minutes.

What about the upcoming Senate race in Alabama? Trump asked. How was the ocean cruise that Priebus had just been on? Trump said it was amazing how much they got done together in the first six months. What about tax reform? And the Republican senators who were holding out on tax reform? Trump said that the stories The New York Times had that week were nuts.

How do you think Rex is doing? Trump asked. You think he gets it?

Priebus was careful. He thought Tillerson should have been great, but he was hard with the president. And the president didn’t like hard.

But the call was not heavy, as if Trump wanted someone to shoot the shit with. Kelly was all business. Kelly would not sit and BS.

The president invited Priebus to lunch at the White House for Tuesday, December 19. Now as a private attorney his proximity to the president and his well-publicized meetings were useful with his private clients. The world knew Priebus was still a player for sure. However, the president’s questions about Tillerson reminded Priebus of all the times he learned that Trump had sounded out others about him: How do you think Reince is doing?

It was a bad memory. Trump was always asking everyone their opinions of everyone else, seeking a report card. It was corrosive and could become self-fulfilling—undermining and eating at the reputations and status of anyone and everyone.

“The president’s MO is to put people back on their heels,” Priebus said. “Put all the chips on the table. And then slowly but surely pick off each chip individually.” It could be a person, a policy, a country, a foreign leader, a Republican, a Democrat, a controversy, an investigation—Trump would try to leverage anyone, by any means, and at times he would succeed. “He uses leverage in a way I’ve never seen before.”





CHAPTER


35




Now that he had agreed to stay to do tax reform, Gary Cohn had to deliver. The current U.S. corporate tax rate was 35 percent, one of the highest in the world. Reducing it had been a rallying point for Republicans and businesspeople for years.

It was all Trump had wanted to talk about at first. During the Bush and Obama years, dozens of large companies had moved their headquarters overseas to take advantage of lower foreign tax rates. This process was known as inversion because it typically entailed creating a new parent company in a low-tax country like Ireland and making the existing American company its subsidiary. This was a big issue with Trump’s business friends. Lowering the corporate tax rate could bring trillions of dollars back to the United States.

“The corporate rate’s got to be 15 percent,” Trump said.

“Sir,” Cohn said, “we’ll try and get that.” Treasury Department calculations showed very few corporations paid the full 35 percent because of various loopholes and special tax breaks that Congress had passed.

Cohn agreed that the U.S. was out of sync with the rest of the world. Some countries, like Ireland, had a corporate tax rate as low as 9 percent. “So bring the money back home,” Cohn agreed. “Trillions of dollars are parked offshore to avoid U.S. higher tax rates.”