Donald Trump is in Texas, waiting for pundits to declare that his presidency starts … now. Right now. But while Trump gets in his photo op with Ted Cruz in a place carefully away from the actual emergency, and the Times hits that handy “pivot” key, some of Trump’s top advisers aren’t rushing to sing his praises.
President Trump’s senior aides are increasingly airing their private disagreements publicly, exposing a widening rift between the president and key members of his administration over his handling of racial divisions exposed by white supremacist violence in Charlottesville.
But Trump isn’t taking out his wrath on the big names.
President Donald Trump is not happy with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Gary Cohn, director of the National Economic Council, for publicly criticizing his response to violence in Charlottesville, Virginia. But it appears there is little he is planning to do about it, according to people who have spoken to him.
Instead, he’s kicking assistants who don’t have their own megaphones.
Donald Trump was in a bad mood before he emerged for a confrontational speech in Arizona last week. …
It was too late for a longtime Trump aide, George Gigicos, the former White House director of advance who had organized the event as a contractor to the Republican National Committee. Trump later had his top security aide, Keith Schiller, inform Gigicos that he’d never manage a Trump rally again, according to three people familiar with the matter.
Over the weekend, both Tillerson and Cohn attempted to distance themselves from Trump’s remarks on Charlottesville and his subsequent defense of Confederate statues and “very fine” white supremacists.
Among Trump’s allies, the emerging voices of dissent are being likened to a “mutiny” by disloyal aides. But so far, Trump has not taken any action to dismiss anyone, to the disappointment of those same allies.
“You should not air the dirty laundry with the president in public,” said Roger Stone, a longtime Trump adviser and political ally. “On a personal level, he should feel betrayed because he has been.”
Because if there’s anyone who is a master of what-to-say-in-public etiquette, it’s Roger Stone.
Honestly, the statements from both Cohn and Tillerson were subtle enough that they might have sailed past Trump. After all, neither of them made their answer on Twitter and it doesn’t seem either aired their complaints on Fox & Friends.
Seriously. Is that the State Department, where Tillerson continues to wander among the empty offices? Is it missing ambassadors? How about the open slots at FEMA or DHS that Trump hasn’t bothered to fill? Those would seem like roles worth noting. Unless you were watching the program Trump was watching, when he was watching it, it’s hard to tell.
Anyway … Tillerson and Cohn are so upset that they … didn’t actually do anything. Though Cohn was supposedly so upset that he almost—almost—wrote up his resignation.
Cohn, who is Jewish, said that he had come under enormous pressure from friends and associates to speak out and that he aired his disagreement with the president bluntly in private. But Trump was irritated that Cohn fueled the public controversy over Trump’s comments.
Only, he decided that he couldn’t let a little thing like working with a guy who embraces Nazis get in the way of crafting a tax cut for billionaires.
Tillerson has told people he has no plans to depart the administration immediately. Cohn is working on a tax-reform speech that Trump is expected to give Wednesday. “If Trump wants to fire him, he will, or he won’t,” one person familiar with the president’s thinking said. Or, this person said, Trump will say something “crazy” and Cohn will quit.
Or he’ll decide that, no matter how crazy Trump is, he’s so sane about capital gains that it all works out.