President Trump is famous for taking down his enemies with slashing comments and tweets. But, sometimes, his friends and allies get a strong dose of the Trump treatment as well.
The president’s friendships are reportedly defined by fealty. He surrounds himself with faithful stewards of his message. And, while he is willing to hear a variety of opinions, dissent is not to be aired publicly, and perceived mistakes are not taken lightly. He can be quick to punish, it is said, lobbing broadsides that can resemble the taunts he tweets at his enemies. For some, a door stays open to the rekindling of the friendship. Less so for others.
Here are six friends who stepped out of line and felt some degree of Trumpian wrath.
Lindsey Graham
Today an ally, Graham and Trump’s disagreements surfaced early in the 2016 race and remain on issues that include foreign policy. When missile strikes from Iran hit Saudi oil facilities on September 14, 2019, Graham was quick to criticize Trump’s “measured” response, which he called weak. “Sanctions so far haven’t worked, and I doubt they ever will. So, I think an appropriate military response is in order,” Graham told reporters. “I actually think it’s a sign of strength,” Trump fired back. “Ask Lindsey how did going into the Middle East, how did that work out?”
David Bossie
The head of Citizens United goes back years with Trump and was an early booster for him in 2016. But Bossie drew Trump’s ire after a Campaign Legal Center report published jointly with Axios in May detailed how the Bossie-led Presidential Coalition raised $18.5 million in 2017 and 2018, spending just $425,000, or 3%, on direct political activities. Only one super PAC, America First Action, run by Linda McMahon, is authorized by Trump.
“The president was livid when he learned about what David Bossie’s group was doing,” a person close to the Trump campaign told the Washington Examiner. In response, the campaign issued a tartly worded statement attacking unaffiliated booster organizations. An early draft included Bossie’s name. Bossie’s actions, a source close to the president told the New York Times, were akin to stealing from the boss. For almost three months, Bossie was kept off the air at Fox News, where he is a contributor. The two reportedly made up in August during a meeting at the White House. A former White House official told the Washington Examiner that, to their knowledge, “matters have been patched up.” Today, Bossie’s Presidential Coalition is targeting, with big ad buys, vulnerable Democrats in districts won by Trump in 2016 for their impeachment votes.
Paul Ryan
Ryan spent much of the 2016 presidential race voicing strident objections to candidate Trump. With the election in hand, however, Ryan made his about-face. As House speaker for the first half of Trump’s term, Ryan was a key steward of the president’s first major domestic policy achievement, the GOP tax bill.
Details of Ryan’s time working alongside Trump emerged this summer, as relayed in a new book, American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump, by Tim Alberta. “Those of us around him really helped to stop him from making bad decisions. All the time,” Ryan said. “I’m telling you, he didn’t know anything about government.” The former speaker described wanting to “scold him all the time” but making sure to do so privately. “He actually ended up kind of appreciating it.”
Trump was quick to lash out at the former speaker, tweeting three times about Ryan and condemning his fundraising and leadership record. “Couldn’t get him out of Congress fast enough!” the president wrote. Speaking to reporters on the South Lawn one day later, Trump blasted Ryan as a “baby” and a “terrible speaker” and said, “Paul Ryan let us down. Paul Ryan was a terrible speaker. He didn’t know what the hell he was doing.”
Jeff Sessions
Sessions entered the Alabama Senate race in November, igniting the chance for a possible “collision course” with Trump, embittered by Sessions’s decision to recuse himself as attorney general from the Russia investigation, the New York Times reported.
Sessions, who was the first senator to endorse Trump in 2016, suffered numerous Trump verbal lashings, including in an Oval Office interview with Hill.TV where Trump took multiple shots, calling him “mixed up and confused” and saying, “I don’t have an attorney general.” Trump called Sessions a “dumb Southerner” and “mentally retarded,” Bob Woodward’s book reported, is said to have called Sessions an “idiot” to his face, and referred to him as the bumbling cartoon character Mr. Magoo in private.
Despite the animus, Sessions has proven a steadfast ally to the Trump presidency from the outside. In the statement announcing his Senate run, he reiterated his loyalty. “When I left President Trump’s cabinet, did I write a tell-all book? No. Did I go on CNN and attack the president? No. Have I said a cross word about President Trump? No,” the statement said. “I was his strongest advocate. I still am. We must make America great again.”
Kim Jong Un
Trump has tried to portray how good his relationship is with the Korean dictator, sharing how the two leaders “fell in love” and saying Kim wrote him “beautiful letters.”
But with North Korea continuing its nuclear weapons program and issuing vague threats of a “Christmas present” for the United States, Trump has turned menacing toward his new friend, saying Kim could lose “everything.”
He warned early this month that the romance could come to an end. “Kim Jong Un is too smart and has far too much to lose, everything actually, if he acts in a hostile way,” Trump tweeted. “He does not want to void his special relationship with the President of the United States.”
North Korea warned it might start calling Trump a “dotard” again.
Fox News
While Fox is viewed as one of the president’s biggest boosters and the network’s coverage has generally been favorable, Trump, in recent months, has turned on Fox over stories he doesn’t like. “The New @FoxNews is letting millions of GREAT people down!” Trump wrote this summer. “We have to start looking for a new News Outlet. Fox isn’t working for us anymore!”
Trump said in August on Brian Kilmeade’s radio show: “I’m not happy with Fox,” calling the network’s polls “phony.” And, two weeks ago, he advised them, “Get a new pollster!” The spat does not extend to the president’s allies on Fox’s night-time shows, Laura Ingraham, Tucker Carlson, and Sean Hannity, nor to Fox Business, home of “The Great Lou Dobbs,” whose relationship with Trump is close enough to be a “mind meld.”
