President Trump generally has two kinds of aides: those who try to slow him down by resisting or containing his instincts and those who cater to him by enabling those instincts.
Trump does not seem to have many aides who skillfully try to channel those instincts productively, trying to keep him true to who he is, flaws and all, while being more effective.
That’s what makes the announcement that former Fox News executive Bill Shine is joining the White House staff in a senior communications role — “Assistant to the President and Deputy Chief of Staff for Communication” is the lofty title, per the official statement — so interesting. Like his former network, Shine could present Trump’s message without watering it down but in a less amateurish fashion.
Even this appointment comes with the kind of optics problems so many things Trump-related do. Shine was ousted from Fox amid its burgeoning sexual harassment scandals, which the company badly mishandled. Trump has accusers of his own, the baggage of a brutal “Access Hollywood” tape, and he just made a joke about the “Me Too” movement at a rally in Montana Thursday night.
There are also good reasons to believe anyone assuming a top communications role in this administration is taking on a doomed mission, as the communications that matter most are the president’s own ad-libbed speeches and tweets. Trump has presided over the serial humiliation of the men and women hired to speak on his behalf.
But Shine helped build the network that perfected a feedback loop between the president and his ardent backers that has no real rival. He brings a level of media and communications experience that no one on the current team can touch, including the most cable-savvy denizens of the White House.
It is no coincidence that the last White House communications director, Hope Hicks, was also the last top aide to really “get” Trump. Shine marries that attribute to a level of professional achievement in the field that far exceeds anything the 29-year-old Hicks could plausibly claim.
Trump has sharp political instincts. He read the Republican primary electorate better than 16 experienced politicians did in 2016. There is a growing body of polling data that suggests immigration, at which Trump keeps pounding away on the stump, is energizing GOP base voters more this year than the tax cut, which is the congressional Republicans’ issue of choice.
Even when they are ridiculous, to say nothing of factually imprecise, Trump’s nicknames and attacks are sharp and memorable. The video presentation to North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un was a clever idea. Trump understands television and how to drive a news cycle. But he is also sloppy and undisciplined. He wanders aimlessly from topic to topic.
Trump’s press aides seem afraid to unleash him despite the fact he has more experience dealing with the media than any of them for precisely this reason. But the end result of that approach has been futile press briefings in which over-matched spokespersons try to avoid answering the same questions over and over, posed by reporters who are mostly vamping for the cameras, or anodyne statements quickly undercut by the president himself on some Air Force One gaggle.
“Fox and Friends” does more to focus Trump’s thoughts than it appears any comms adviser has come close to doing. You would have to think Shine surpasses their understanding of both Trump’s supporters and the president himself, helping him to broadcast a populist message better than we’ve seen thus far.
The opportunity could be missed if Trump primarily tasks Shine with plugging leaks. There is also a possibility that Shine becomes the story himself, like short-lived former communications director Anthony Scaramucci but for very different reasons, and thus a distraction.
During the campaign, it was often rumored that instead of the White House, what Trump really wanted was to join with Roger Ailes proteges in founding “Trump TV.” Shine has a chance to help give him the best of both worlds.
