As the 2016 presidential campaign neared its final throes, the journalist Salena Zito offered an elegant explanation of the chasm between the political-media class, which beheld Donald Trump as an unelectable clown, and those Americans propelling him toward victory. “[T]he press takes him literally, but not seriously,” she wrote; “his supporters take him seriously, but not literally.”
As a means of accommodating Trump’s unusual traits as a politician, however, the seriously/literally construct became inoperative on January 21, with the utterance of the words, “I, Donald John Trump, do solemnly swear . . . ” Any president, even this one, must be taken seriously and literally.
Trump himself, were he so inclined and able, might have learned this early in his tenure. One obvious opportunity presented itself in the aftermath of Trump’s impulse on the morning of March 4 to declare via Twitter: “How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!”
Trump’s defenders, who’d conditioned themselves to looking past his actual words to a discernment of what he must have really meant, took little offense. After all, Trump had been harried by a series of laser-targeted leaks, many from sources described as “former government officials,” who, presumably, had worked in the Obama administration. But to Democrats (and many Republicans) and most of the press, Trump had literally accused his predecessor of wiretapping him—an “explosive allegation,” as the New York Times put it, that dominated the news cycle for weeks. The shades of Watergate were aroused.
That Trump did not seem to learn from that experience became alarmingly apparent in the days after his May 9 firing of James Comey as director of the FBI on the pretext that Comey’s termination had been prompted by a scathing assessment of the director’s performance by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Two days later, on May 11, Trump told NBC’s Lester Holt that he’d actually decided to fire Comey before Rosenstein’s report was even written. He asserted a dissatisfaction with the former director’s handling of the investigation into Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election.
Having fully summoned the ghosts of Watergate, Trump then applied the finishing touch—via Twitter, of course—saying that “James Comey better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!” The phrase “obstruction of justice” became a staple in the news, and on May 17, Rosenstein appointed Robert Mueller, the former director of the FBI, as special counsel, charged with overseeing the Russian investigation.
Some in Trump’s circle sensed real peril—not because evidence of collusion with Russia was likely to be found, but because of things that Trump might do, or say, in pique that could further fuel the investigation.
While Trump was abroad on his first foreign trip as president, May 19-28, a plan was hatched inside the White House to turn the presidency around and to shield the president—not only from the risks inherent in a special counsel inquiry, but also from himself.
The model was the “war room” approach employed by the Clinton administration during the Whitewater crisis. To counter the inquiry of the special prosecutor’s team (and the inevitable leaks), Clinton brought in his own special counsel, Lanny Davis, to whom questions about the investigation were directed. This had the effect of separating the scandal from the daily business of the presidency, thus effectively consigning Whitewater to the realm of “politics.” Clinton also set up a rapid response team, to aggressively spin developments related to the inquiry.
The Trump version of a crisis survival plan began to take shape this week. For the rapid response team, the White House reached out to two hardballers from the 2016 campaign—Trump’s first campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, and deputy campaign manager David Bossie. They figure to form the heart of the team. Trump also summoned his longtime lawyer, Marc Kasowitz, from New York, and he spent May 31 at the White House with associates from his firm, according to a source familiar with the plan. That firm, Kasowitz Benson Torres, had already lost a name partner to the Trump administration in December when David M. Friedman was named ambassador to Israel.
The hope is not just to contain the Trump-Russia controversy, but also to fully convince the president of its gravity. If calm prevails, they can shore up the Trump base by making good on as many campaign promises as possible (hence, the announcement of the withdrawal from the Paris climate accord on June 1) and reassure Congress that it’s safe to try to advance the Trump agenda.
There are reasons to be skeptical about whether the Clinton Whitewater approach can work for Trump. For one thing, Clinton benefited from a supremely disciplined Democratic party, which defined the Whitewater scandal as a witch hunt conducted by sex-obsessed Republicans and stuck with that mantra until the end. It helped that it was a narrative to which many in the press were not unfavorably disposed.
Congressional Republicans are not similarly united in this president’s defense (nor, it sometimes seems, on much of anything), and the news media do not seem likely to respond to Trump’s defenses sympathetically.
More important, it is far from clear that this plan will succeed in governing Trump’s own impulses. Noting the recruitment of Kasowitz into the effort, the Wall Street Journal observed on May 31 that Trump “is the root of dysfunction” and editorialized that “Mr. Kasowitz is a babe in the Beltway. . . . Mr. Trump needs to hire a lawyer experienced in Washington political and legal cases and then deputize him to handle everything regarding special counsel Robert Mueller and the Russian question.”
As it happens, there are such plans afoot in the Trump circle, and one of D.C.’s legal heavy hitters, sources say, is being considered for the role: Stephen J. Brogan, the managing partner of the mega-firm Jones Day.
The firm has already placed a dozen lawyers in the Trump administration, including White House Counsel Donald F. McGahn II. Jones Day also represented David Bossie, the victorious plaintiff, in the Citizens United campaign finance case. Brogan did not respond to requests for comment on his possible involvement with a Trump defense.
During the campaign, Trump assured voters that “I can be more presidential than anybody—if I wanna be, I can be more presidential than anybody.” His supporters probably took him seriously, at the time. Now, many may find themselves wishing that the president would give them reason to take that vow literally, as well.
Peter J. Boyer is national correspondent at The Weekly Standard.
