Inside Trump's White House

by Doug Wead

  “When Mr. Trump announced his candidacy in 2015,” Videgaray said, “coming down the escalator, putting Mexico and Mexicans in the center of his initial statement, he was immediately unpopular in Mexico.

  “No one believed he would be the Republican nominee, much less the president of the United States. So, as he began to survive the primaries it became more and more serious. I began to tell our Mexican president, Enrique Peña Nieto, ‘You know, Mr. President, I think we should all think more seriously about Mr. Trump. We have no connections. He has apparently tapped into feelings of the American people. I think you should try to have a back-channel connection.’

  “The president said, ‘That’s fine, so you do it.’”

  As Videgaray explored his contacts in Washington and on Wall Street to find the best way to approach Donald Trump, Jared Kushner’s name came up repeatedly. His first meeting with Kushner was in May 2016, held in a café at a nondescript hotel in Washington, DC. What was supposed to be a short introductory meeting ended up being long and substantive.

  “I was immediately impressed by Jared Kushner,” Videgaray told me. “I knew he was young. People told me that he was a smart guy, but I was still pleasantly surprised by his clarity. He came off as a wellmeaning person who cared about America.”

  After several meetings and phone conversations, Kushner arranged a breakfast meeting with Donald Trump at the Bedminster Club in August 2016. Jared and Ivanka were present, and the meeting lasted two hours. “I found Donald Trump to be a very likeable person,” Videgaray later told me. “He was very gracious. It was a fun conversation. My sense was that he wasn’t anti-Mexican at all. He just wanted to change some things, primarily on trade.”

  Videgaray knew that it was a tough time for the Trump campaign, with the media and critics sniping at the candidate from every side. Videgaray recalled Trump’s words: “I am doing my best. We might not win. If I win it will not be bad for Mexico. There will be changes. We will negotiate. But I will be the first president in a long time who actually thinks about Mexico and cares about our relationship.’”

  Videgaray summed up the meeting this way: “I left thinking, ‘If he wins, we know one thing for sure: it’s going to be very interesting.’”

  Most important was that a back channel was now in place that would benefit all parties going forward.

  A BETTER DEAL FOR ALL THREE COUNTRIES

  When Donald Trump became president, the American establishment, both Left and Right, howled about Trump’s challenge to NAFTA. The national media gleefully amplified the criticism. Trump was considered reckless, destroying the relationship with our biggest trading partners and our closest friends.

  Conservative Republicans said it was an assault on free trade. Trump pointed out that the NAFTA agreement was 17,000 pages long—which makes it very unlikely that a single human being on earth has actually read it. Teams of lobbyists, special interest groups, politicians, and companies have read the one hundred pages that affected them or their industry, but who could claim expertise on all of it? Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace is only about 1,000 pages. Did it really take 17,000 pages to spell out the words “free trade”? Obviously the agreement was filled with qualifications and requirements for its participating member nations. Donald Trump contended that the final product was a maze of corruption and conflicting objectives. There needed to be fixes.

  Jared Kushner’s relationship with Luis Videgaray from Mexico, and with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s chief of staff, Katie Telford, and his private secretary, Gerald Butts, in Canada, would prove critical. Time and again, the trade negotiations would reach a toxic level, with each side dug in. Kushner would break apart the various pieces and start rebuilding them again, in different ways, constantly seeking to look beyond the words and what was said, trying to find the real hot buttons. What were the most important, nonnegotiable issues? Discussions went on for hours.

  Most in the American media railed against the process and denounced the final product. Thoughtful experts admitted that the newly created USMCA was better for American workers, which was Trump’s objective.9 The new agreement benefited American dairy farmers and manufacturers. It forced Mexico to end discrimination against women and underpaid migrant workers from Central America.

  In October, 2018, Ambassador Robert Lighthizer, the US trade representative, appeared in the White House Rose Garden to announce the new deal. Lighthizer told reporters, “I’ve said before, and I’ll say again, this agreement would not have happened if it wasn’t for Jared.”10

  Most significantly, government experts in all three countries praised the final product. President Donald Trump, Prime Minister Trudeau, and Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto signed the agreement on November 30, 2018, in Buenos Aires at the G20 summit.

  Trump declared, “The USMCA is the largest, most significant, modern and balanced trade agreement in history.”11 It was not over. It still had to be ratified by the US Congress, where the House of Representatives was controlled by Democrats reluctant to give the president any more wins.

  “Jared and I were both extremely involved in the renegotiation of NAFTA,” Luis Videgaray says. “At first President Trump wanted to cancel NAFTA outright and start all over again, but the consequences would have been great for both countries.”12

  Was Donald Trump right to put the three countries through such an arduous and risky process? Was it worth the effort?

  “I think he was right,” Videgaray told me. “It is better for all of us. It was not an easy process. It was difficult. But he was right. He was being truthful. I can tell you that now, looking back and seeing what was changed.”

  THE IMMIGRATION CHALLENGE

  The ultimate crisis in the Western Hemisphere is immigration. Not only illegal immigrants coming to the United States, but also floods of immigrants fleeing socialist Venezuela to neighboring countries.

  The crisis in Central America is an example of how complex the problem can be. Under Bush-Obama, Honduras, for example, was given millions of dollars in aid, as well as military and law enforcement expertise to combat gangs of drug traffickers in the country. Today, critics say that the Honduran government has been successful in wiping out more than twenty-three narco-gangs that terrorized the country, only to have them replaced by the government itself. The Honduran president’s own brother is now in American custody on drug charges.13

  The chief source of hard dollars for the Honduran economy comes from two sources: its drug trade, which depends on masses of immigrant “mules” crossing illegally into the United States, and remittance income from immigrants, legal or otherwise, working in America and sending their money back home. The latter also involves a thriving sex slave operation. In both cases, the country encourages massive caravans of immigrants to pour across Mexico and into the United States.

  Concluding that American aid money was going directly into the hands of drug traffickers, Donald Trump ordered it cut. Critics admitted that ending subsidies to some corrupt governments was long overdue but said that cuts to programs promoting the work of charities was harmful to the people. The myopic American media, refusing to report on the desperate conditions on the ground in Central America, nevertheless, attacked the president for his lack of humanity.

  The driving force behind the immigration debate in the United States is the partisan contest between Republicans and Democrats. In 1979, I cofounded Save the Refugees. The organization morphed into Mercy Corps. I served as a founding board member of that organization, which has now donated several billion dollars’ worth of food and medicine around the world.

  Our challenge in the early eighties was Democrats opposed to immigration from Asia. Then-senator Joe Biden complained about American workers losing jobs.14 California governor Jerry Brown tried to block the use of Travis Air Force Base in California as a port of entry for orphans from Vietnam.15 They were the children of American servicemen and Vietnamese women. Their mixed race made them readily identifiable on the streets of Saig
on, where they were sometimes murdered.

  There was a very clear political reality involved. Asian immigrants tended to go into business. They opened restaurants and stores, and they eventually voted Republican. African and Latino immigrants, on the other hand, tended to require welfare assistance. They were more likely to vote Democratic to be assured of those opportunities.

  The current open invitation from Democratic leaders, calling for no borders, for no restrictions, making any kind of entry into the United States legal, will shift the political power in America to the Democratic Party. According to some election models, Trump would have lost the 2016 election with a transfer of only 80,000 votes.16 As I write this, in just one month (May 2019), US Border Patrol officers “encountered 144,000 undocumented immigrants on the southwest border of the United States.”17

  During the 2016 campaign, Donald Trump made building a wall on the border with Mexico a clarion call. And he said, “Mexico will pay for it.”

  This was one promise that the Democrats did not want Trump to keep. It went to the heart of their plan for political ascendancy. There was a short-term, tactical, cosmetic reason as well. Recent presidents were stung by the charge that they broke their promises. Presidents were seen as liars.

  “Read my lips: no new taxes,” George H. W. Bush had said.18

  “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky,” Bill Clinton had declared.19

  “The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quanities of uranium from Africa,” George W. Bush told the world.20

  “You can keep your doctor,” Barack Obama had promised voters.

  Stung by Trump’s record of promises kept, his political opponents fiercely opposed any moves toward finishing such a wall.

  President Trump offered a deal on citizenship for children of illegal immigrants already in the country. He offered new programs to speed up legal immigration. The Democrats were not having it. There would be no wall. At a Democratic Party presidential primary debate on June 27, 2019, the candidates were asked to raise their hand if they supported government-provided health insurance for illegal immigrants.

  Incredibly, every Democratic candidate raised his or her hand.21

  NOTES

  1. https://cronkitenews.azpbs.org/2016/03/19/19044/

  2. https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2019/02/08/u-s-admiral-maduro-distrusts-venezuelans-so-much-he-uses-only-cuban-bodyguards/

  3. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/russia-sends-2-nuclear-capable-bombers-venezuela-n946246

  4. https://www.militarytimes.com/flashpoints/2019/03/25/pompeo-says-russian-troops-in-venezuela-increases-tensions/

  5. https://ijr.com/bernie-sanders-fails-call-maduro-dictator-venezuela/

  6. https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/which-countries-support-maduro-guaido

  7. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-cuba/in-major-shift-trump-to-allow-lawsuits-against-foreign-firms-in-cuba-idUSKCN1RS1VY

  8. My interview with Luis Videgaray took place in January 2019. All quotes from him in this chapter come from that interview.

  9. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/10/2/17925424/trump-mexico-trade-deal-nafta-workers-labor

  10. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-trade-nafta-kushner-insight/how-trumps-son-in-law-helped-salvage-the-north-american-trade-zone-idUSKCN1MC04M

  11. https://www.washingtonagnetwork.com/2018/12/03/leaders-sign-usmca-in-argentina/

  12. See also, https://thenationalsentinel.com/2018/12/28/trump-may-cancel-nafta-outright-to-force-dems-hands-on-trade/

  13. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/26/world/americas/honduras-brother-drug-charges.html

  14. https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/jul/4/joe-biden-opposed-helping-refugees-from-south-viet/

  15. https://www.sfchronicle.com/nation/article/America-s-long-history-of-shunning-refugees-6639536.php

  16. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/12/01/donald-trump-will-be-president-thanks-to-80000-people-in-three-states/

  17. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/record-number-undocumented-immigrants-flooded-southern-border-may-n1014186

  18. https://time.com/3649511/george-hw-bush-quote-read-my-lips/

  19. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/17301.stm

  20. https://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/28/politics/state-of-the-union-address.html

  21. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/healthcare-for-illegal-immigrants-all-10-democrats-raise-their-hand

  18

  NO COLLUSION, NO OBSTRUCTION

  “How soon do you think Mueller knew there was no collusion? Four days, maybe?”

  —DONALD TRUMP JR.

  The Mueller investigation slogged on under a universal premise. A good prosecutor could indict anyone, in any circumstances, regardless of his or her guilt or innocence. A former New York state judge had once declared he could “indict a ham sandwich.”1 Lavrentiy Beria, Stalin’s chief of the secret police, once declared, “Show me the man and I will show you the crime.”2 In this case, the man was President Donald Trump, and an alliance of the national media and the Democratic Party were convinced that they could find him guilty of something. Eventually.

  In the sixteenth century, Cardinal Richelieu, who was practically ruling France at the time, was quoted as saying, “Give me six lines written by the most honest man in the world, and I will find enough in them to hang him.” The idea, if not the actual quote, captured a real sentiment. The special counsel Robert Mueller was the supreme master of the game. If Richelieu needed only six lines, what could Mueller do with 1.4 million pages of White House memoranda, and seventy hours of interrogating the president’s own personal attorney?

  The very idea of the Mueller investigation prompted many of the leading media figures to declare the Trump administration was all but over. How could anything be accomplished with this bearing down on them? The drumbeat began only three months after the presidential inauguration.

  There seemed to be favorite words, talking points, which were repeated daily by different guests, even on different networks. “The beginning of the end for the Trump presidency,” declared the MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell.3 Presidential historian Douglas Brinkley said essentially the same thing on CNN.4

  “Mike Pence might have to assume the office of the presidency,” proclaimed Chris Stirewalt, digital politics editor at Fox News.5

  “Another turn of the screw,” said Norman Eisen to CNN viewers.6 Eisen had been President Obama’s ambassador to the Czech Republic.

  “Do you think this is a tipping point?” CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer eagerly asked one of his on-air guests.7 As if an echo from another building, a guest on MSNBC answered the question. “This is a tipping point,” said Joel Benenson, a former Clinton campaign adviser.8

  John Schindler, a former National Security Agency employee, claimed that he had received an email from a senior intelligence agent that began with these dark words about President Trump: “He will die in jail.”9

  Obama’s CIA director John Brennan tweeted that the sum of Trump’s actions “rises to & exceeds the threshold of ‘high crimes & misdemeanors.’ It was nothing short of treasonous.”10

  JAMES COMEY GETS THE BOOT

  FBI director James Comey looked at the TV screens in utter disbelief. He was addressing the FBI employees at the Los Angeles field office. They were meeting in the communications room. He was facing the employees but could see a bank of big-screen televisions running live coverage behind them.

  On one of the screens a large graphic appeared. COMEY RESIGNS. Knowing that he had not resigned, Director Comey was stunned and puzzled, thinking fast. Could this be a prank? Then the graphic changed. COMEY FIRED. The graphics were now regenerating on the other screens on different channels. The volume on the televisions was muted, but the graphics were screaming for attention.

  The employees saw the expression on Comey’s face and began to turn around to look at the wall. It was May 9, 2017. James Comey’s t
ime as FBI director had come to an end.11

  Since that January 6, 2017, Trump Tower meeting when Director Comey had briefed President-elect Trump on the Steele dossier, the relationship between Trump and Comey had gone downhill.

  The day after the inauguration, President Trump had invited members of law enforcement to a White House meeting. These were the people who had helped with security during the transition. The president wanted to personally thank them for their service. The list of guests included members of the Secret Service and the FBI. James Comey was reluctant to go. His political instincts and his appreciation for the power of the corporate media were urging him to stay as far away from Trump as possible. But when he learned that the head of the Secret Service was attending, Comey knew he could not decline.

  The event was held in the White House Blue Room. Comey, wearing a dark blue suit, tried to blend into the blue curtain, hoping the president would not notice him. Hard to do for a man with a height of six feet, eight inches.

  The president praised the head of the Secret Service, Joe Clancy, and asked him to come stand with him and the vice president. Then it was Comey’s turn. The president called him forward. In his book, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership, Comey describes this as a “complete disaster,” being praised by the president in front of TV cameras.

  Trump leaned forward and said into Comey’s ear, “I’m really looking forward to working with you.” In the corporate world, this was a nice gesture by an incoming boss to an executive who had been hired by someone else. Comey decided it was Donald Trump asking him “to come forward and kiss the great man’s ring.”12

  Over the next few months, Trump and Comey had several private meetings, including a one-on-one dinner at the White House. Unknown to the president, Comey had started composing memos based on their private conversations. Comey had worked for two previous presidents. According to his own account, he had “never done something like that.” He had never felt the need to reconstruct a conversation in a later memo. This had never happened with another president, or even “about encounters with any other person.”13