Top White House aides arrived at work in a buoyant mood Thursday morning, pleased with the pre-dawn return of three American hostages who had been detained in North Korea and aware that President Trump would soon reveal the date and location of his summit with Kim Jong Un, an unprecedented opportunity for their boss to demonstrate the deal-making skills he’s long touted.
On television sets around the West Wing, cable news hosts were discussing the surprisingly positive results Trump’s maximum pressure campaign and repeated insults toward Kim had yielded. The diplomatic breakthrough provided some respite from the constant coverage of Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen and his newly-disclosed consulting arrangements with a handful of companies who sought access to the administration.
“It’s starting to set in for most folks in this White House that when it comes to the daily news cycle, there are two different Americas,” a source close to the White House told the Washington Examiner. “There’s a news cycle that’s created by and consumed by the media hubs of New York and D.C. – one that focuses on Michael Cohen and the Mueller probe – and then there’s the rest of the country, where front page news is being driven by the developments in North Korea, the president’s withdrawal from the Iran deal, and the economy continuing to hum along.”
Cohen’s legal nemesis, Michael Avenatti, dropped a bombshell this week about the many lucrative contracts Trump’s longtime attorney had secured by pitching himself as an expert on the president’s policy plans. In one case, Cohen received $1.2 million from the pharmaceutical company Novartis, which had hired him to help navigate the administration’s agenda on healthcare. Novartis admitted in a statement on Wednesday that Cohen was eventually deemed “unable to provide the services” he had promised but nevertheless continued to receive a monthly retainer due to the company’s inability to terminate their contract.
The Manhattan lawyer also brokered a $500,000 deal with Columbus Nova, an asset-management firm with well-known ties to Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg. The arrangement has already drawn the attention of special counsel Robert Mueller, whose team of investigators questioned Vekselberg as part of their probe, CNN reported earlier this week.
White House allies were stunned by the news surrounding Cohen, and one Republican close to the administration admitting “there’s no way to explain” what Trump’s personal attorney was thinking.
“Especially with the Russian oligarch deal,” the source said. “Anyone with half an ounce of common sense would know to reject that.”
But for many of the administration’s supporters, Trump’s decision to exit the Iran nuclear deal – something he repeatedly promised to do over the course of his presidential bid – combined with his serious discussions of disarmament with Kim easily outweigh frustrations they may have over Cohen or the president’s other legal challenges.
A Gallup poll released on Monday showed the president’s approval rating rising above 40 percent for the first time since last May. The results were released before Trump announced his plan to pull out of the Iran deal or that he had dispatched Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to safely retrieve the American hostages from Pyongyang. The poll showed Trump’s approval had particularly grown among nonreligious voters and adults between the age of 50 to 64.
The source close to the White House predicted that the president’s progress with North Korea would create new closeted Trump supporters, or voters who might support his reelection at the ballot box but never admit so publicly.
“[This] is always a big under-reported vote with Trump,” the source said, pointing to a tweet that claimed it’s “getting a lot easier for 40 [to] 45 percent of the country to overlook domestic scandals” because of recent accomplishments like record unemployment, progress with North Korea, and the capture of five Islamic State leaders in Iraq.
American Conservative Union chairman Matt Schlapp, whose wife works in the White House, told the Washington Post on Wednesday the media has missed “the bigger point of the Trump presidency” by spending so much time focusing on the Russia probe or Cohen’s legal struggles. The latter issues are far less likely to stick with voters than the president potentially achieving a nuclear-free North Korea, Schlapp argued.
Still, Trump has also worked to control the narrative surrounding Cohen by sending outside attorney Rudy Giuliani to go to bat for him in the media. Giuliani told Time Magazine late Wednesday evening that he spoke with the president about Cohen’s efforts to provide various companies access to the administration and Trump didn’t know anything about it.
“It doesn’t involve him. Nobody’s concerned about it,” claimed the former New York City mayor.
“There’s no such thing as news about the Mueller investigation or Michael Cohen’s drama going away anytime soon so we therefore have two choices,” said the source close to the White House. “We can get up there and drive through a message with external counsel or we can sit there with our heads in the sand.”
The source continued, “What Giuliani is going to continue to do is look for ways to tell President Trump’s story and drive the narrative, as opposed to constantly being on defense.”
