The sense of disappointment throughout the administration was palpable after Charlottesville. We felt the president’s reaction revealed an uglier side of his nature: the shallow and demagogic politician, prone to self-inflicted disaster. So many of us were already frustrated by the president’s handling of his job. Now, purposefully or not, he was channeling the views of bigots, who were in turn excited that an American leader was sticking up for them. Once people like David Duke are praising you, a normal person quickly figures out they’re on the wrong track and corrects course. Not Donald Trump.
Of all the crazy, embarrassing statements we were enduring weekly, his comments about Charlottesville took the cake. It was repugnant. I thought of how the Republican Party, which once helped propel the civil rights movement, now had as its mouthpiece a man whose words fed racial intolerance. I wondered, would he learn anything from this? Could he learn anything from this? And how the hell do I stick around?
I know that’s a question many of you are asking: Why didn’t anyone leave? God knows it would’ve been easy. We all have draft resignation letters in our desks or on our laptops. That’s the half-teasing, half-true advice you get on day one in the Trump administration or immediately following Senate confirmation: “Be sure to write your resignation letter. You may need it at a moment’s notice, or less.” Some of us did consider resigning on the spot. One journalist reported a cabinet member saying he would have written a resignation letter, taken it to the president, and “shoved it up his ass.” The sentiment was shared. But in the end, no one angrily stormed out. There was no protest resignation.
“Why do people stay?” a close friend asked me at the time. “You all should quit. He’s a mess.”
“That’s why,” I responded. “Because he’s a mess.” It was true for a lot of us. We thought we could keep it together. The answer feels more hollow than it used to. Maybe my friend was right. Maybe that was a lost moment, where a rush to the exits would have meant something.
The mood in the administration darkened in the months ahead. The controversy left a permanent bruise on Trump’s presidency. We were only partway through our first year, yet I feared—and knew—it was a harbinger of more to come. It was also the moment when I received the answer to that lingering question I had about him. The question was not whether Trump was a model leader. Such a conclusion would have been laughable by that point. The question was whether the presidency would at least instill in this man the ability to be a bigger person than he was, whether he could rise up to meet the moment. That was my hope.
Not long after, as I was walking the State Floor of the White House, I scanned the portraits of American leaders adorning the corridors. One thought started to grip me and never left: Donald Trump does not belong among them. He isn’t a man of great character, or good character. He is a man of none.
CHAPTER 3
Fake Views
“We must present to the world not just an America that’s militarily strong, but an America that is morally powerful, an America that has a creed, a cause, a vision of a future time when all peoples have the right to self-government and personal freedom. I think American conservatives are uniquely equipped to present to the world this vision of the future—a vision worthy of the American past.”
“There is a tweet for everything.” That’s a frequent eye-roll comment from the president’s critics. They like to show how Trump takes one position and then, a few years or even days later, tweets out the 180-degree-opposite opinion. It’s now a common refrain for people inside his administration, too, who both marvel at and curse the president’s uncanny inability to stick to his guns.
A cottage industry has cropped up around the phenomenon of his shifting views. One online entrepreneur created a small business out of it. President Flip Flops. The webstore literally sells sandals with a Trump tweet on the left shoe contradicted by a Trump tweet on the right shoe, including gems such as: his claim that the Electoral College was a “disaster for a democracy”; followed by an online post hailing the Electoral College as “actually genius” after he won the election. His tweet citing an “extremely credible source” with rumors about Barack Obama; followed by a warning to his followers: “Remember, don’t believe ‘sources said’… If they don’t name the sources, the sources don’t exist.” Or his message urging the Obama administration, “DO NOT ATTACK SYRIA” because it would be “VERY FOOLISH”; followed by a tweet praising “our great military” for doing “so well in the Syria attack,” which he ordered.
The inconsistencies remind me of something a pollster friend once told me. She explained what she called “the fact-problem test.” It was a simple way to determine whether a candidate’s “views” were resonating with voters, creating a strong and trusted brand. Ronald Reagan was a high scorer. For instance, you could give a 1980s voter a fake political scenario about any major topic and then ask, “What would Reagan’s position be on this matter? X, Y, or Z?” The voter would respond without hesitating. “Z.” Reagan communicated his views clearly and acted decisively, so people knew where he stood.
Imagine voters receiving the same fact-problem test for Donald Trump. “What would Trump’s position be on this matter? X, Y, or Z?” Fill in whatever scenario you want. Let’s say the issue was health care, abortion, trade with China, or guns. I pity the voter who would give a confident answer. Because Trump has flip-flopped on all of them.
He repeatedly called for a “full repeal” of Obamacare as president, and ripped Republicans in Congress for failing to deliver; later, after hanging them out to dry, he said he didn’t want a full repeal. He wanted to keep parts of it. He has long said he is “pro-choice,” but later while running for president, that he was so deeply “pro-life” that he believed “there has to be some form of punishment” for women who have abortions. Trump said China’s government should be labeled a “currency manipulator” and held accountable; then later, “They’re not currency manipulators”; and then later, they were “historic” (!) currency manipulators. He ranted that “gun control legislation is not the answer!”; then toyed with the idea of supporting it as president; then got lectured by the National Rifle Association and backed away; then tweeted after shootings in Ohio and Texas about “serious discussions” with Congress on gun control legislation; then backed off his pronouncements again. By the time you read this, the president may have flip-flopped on these issues several more times.
The brilliant Abigail Adams, one of our earliest First Ladies and a leader in her own right, once said, “I’ve always felt that a person’s intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting points of view he can entertain simultaneously on the same topic.” Donald Trump’s problem is he never lands on a final position. His points of view are in constant conflict and liable to change for no reason whatsoever, and certainly not from thoughtful deliberation.