Another excerpt of Michael Wolff’s jaw-dropping and stomach-churning account of life behind the curtain at the Trump White House has been released. So apparently that cease-and-desist from Trump’s legal team is as funny to Wolff’s publishers as it has been for everyone else.
A lawyer representing President Trump sought Thursday to stop the publication of a new behind-the-scenes book about the White House that has already led Trump to angrily decry his former chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon.
Sorry. Looks like the decrying will continue. While the first section of the book revealed Trump’s minuscule memory and utter lack of comprehension, the new release focuses on the one part of The Donald’s mind that’s actually far larger than normal—his ego. A task that generated not one, but multiple competing press organizations inside the White House.
The conundrum was that conservative media saw Trump as its creature, while Trump saw himself as a star, a vaunted and valued product of all media, one climbing ever higher. It was a cult of personality and he was the personality. He was the most famous man in the world. Everybody loved him – or ought to.
Trump believed that last part. Really believed it. He looked on winning the election like being handed a giant trophy with the badge “World’s Best ____” where the blank was whatever Trump wanted it to be. While others seemed to understand that advocating the wild, alt-Reich theories promoted by Bannon, Miller and others on Trump’s team would generate a lot more enemies than friends, Trump genuinely seemed to think that after the election everyone, and every media source, would be on his side.
Which made it ridiculously easy for Fox News to simply own Donald Trump.
Mainstream media’s self-righteousness and contempt for Trump helped provide a tsunami of clicks for right-wing media. But an often raging, self-pitying, tormented president had not gotten this memo, or had failed to comprehend it. He was looking for media love everywhere. In this, Trump quite profoundly seemed unable to distinguish between his political advantage and his personal needs – he thought emotionally, not strategically.
In trying to find the love he never received between trips home from dress-up school, Trump never got the idea that people might not like his policies. Or his statements. Or his persistent whining. He never groked that it wasn’t the media’s job to be nice to him.
The burden here for Conway and Hicks was their understanding that the president did not see the media’s lack of regard for him as part of a political divide on which he stood on a particular side. Instead, he perceived it as a deep personal attack on him: for entirely unfair reasons, ad hominem reasons, the media just did not like him. Ridiculed him. Cruelly. Why?
How did Trump come to trust Kellyanne Conway and Hope Hicks more than his other advisers? Well, there was that one thing about Hicks that he really admired.
Shortly after Lewandowski, with whom Hicks has been rumoured to have had an on-and-off romantic relationship, was fired in June 2016 for clashing with Trump family members, Hicks sat in Trump Tower with Trump and his sons, worrying about Lewandowski’s treatment in the press and wondering aloud how she might help him. Trump, who otherwise seemed to treat Hicks in a protective and even paternal way, looked up and said, “Why? You’ve already done enough for him. You’re the best piece of tail he’ll ever have,” sending Hicks running from the room.
But there was a bigger reason why Trump was more likely to listen to Conway and Hicks—he didn’t believe they had lives of their own. In his mind, they live for him.
Women, according to Trump, were simply more loyal and trustworthy than men. Men might be more forceful and competent, but they were also more likely to have their own agendas. Women, by their nature – or Trump’s version of their nature – were more likely to focus their purpose on a man. A man like Trump.
In fact, Trump developed a real level of fondness for Hicks …
Hicks, sponsored by Ivanka and ever loyal to her, was in fact thought of as Trump’s real daughter, while Ivanka was thought of as his real wife.
Meanwhile, the selection of Sean Spicer as the press secretary was made expressly because Trump was mad at the press. Trump wasn’t going to give them a good-looking woman. Instead, they were to be punished with Spicer.
And then Trump punished Spicer. While simultaneously thinking up ways to make the press conferences less convenient, less informative, and less frequent, Trump battered Spicer (and Hicks, and Conway) for the continued bad press.
Trump’s pressure on Spicer – a constant stream of directorial castigation and instruction that reliably rattled the press secretary – helped turn the briefings into a can’t-miss train wreck. Meanwhile, the real press operation had more or less devolved into a set of competing press organisations within the White House.
Trump created his own little press operation with Hicks that focused mostly on one thing—making Maggie Haberman at the New York Times like him. Conway and Spicer were left mopping up Trump’s daily disasters, often with little help—but plenty of complaints—from Trump. Meanwhile, Jared Kushner created his own press organization, much of which seemed to be focused on promoting the image of Ivanka. And of course Bannon had his own press relations—which existed in a public-private stew.
None of them managed to keep Trump from looking like an idiot. In fact, except for Hicks—who seems to be Trump’s collaborator on many of his statements—the rest could just as well pack it in. They could leave the job of Trump defense to conservative commentators, and not have to suffer the pain of being undercut by Trump while in the middle of trying to turn his latest statement into something close to a rational statement.
Although it did take all hands on deck to achieve the one real accomplishment of Donald Trump’s media team—convincing him not to go to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner:
The White House Correspondents’ Dinner rose, as much as any other challenge for the new president and his team, as a test of his abilities. He wanted to do it. He was certain that the power of his charm was greater than the rancour that he bore this audience – or that they bore him.
But, fortunately for Trump, other people had a slightly more realistic view of his abilities.
The central problem was that the president was neither inclined to make fun of himself, nor particularly funny himself – at least not, in Conway’s description, “in that kind of humorous way”.