McEnany ended the briefing by reminding everyone watching of Trump’s top priority: high ratings. “Everyone should watch the Fox News town hall with the president from seven to nine p.m.,” she said. “It’ll be can’t-miss television, much like the highly rated President Trump coronavirus task-force briefings have been.”
McEnany’s arrival, along with the hiring of Alyssa Farah as communications director, cemented Meadows’s control over the administration’s coronavirus messaging, which had been the domain of Pence’s office. Farah had a long-standing relationship with Meadows from the five years she spent on Capitol Hill, first as Meadows’s communications director and later as the spokeswoman for the conservative House Freedom Caucus. She then joined the Trump administration, first as Pence’s press secretary and then as Defense Secretary Mark Esper’s press secretary.
Meadows tried to exert complete control over all virus communications, including dramatically scaling back the media appearances by Fauci and other health officials, who too often corrected Trump’s misinformation about the virus. Meadows directed Farah to block television appearances and other media interview requests for the doctors. Francis Collins, Fauci’s boss, repeatedly had to intervene personally with Meadows to get approval for bookings. The doctors were trying to communicate the best health guidance to the public during a pandemic and needed to do as much media as possible.
Meadows sometimes agreed, but only reluctantly, and with conditions.
“You’ve got to tell Tony to talk about why this is actually going better now,” Meadows told Collins on one such occasion. “You’ve got to talk to Tony: ‘Don’t be such a fearmonger.’ ”
In other words, Fauci could go on TV, but only if he did “happy talk.”
Collins replied, “I don’t think that’s what Tony’s going to do. I will pass on your message.”
Collins and Fauci spoke every evening to compare notes from the day not only about scientific advances, but political struggles, too. With tensions so fraught on the task force, the two longtime colleagues felt it was essential there never be daylight between them. When Collins shared Meadows’s request that Fauci put a more positive spin on the trend lines, they both laughed about it. In the interview, Fauci told the truth.
Michael Caputo also tried to intervene to get the White House to approve bookings for Fauci, Redfield, Jerome Adams, and other health officials. He suggested they appear on shows that Farah and her White House colleagues considered too liberal, such as The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC, or on random podcasts that they thought would be a waste of time. Farah preferred the doctors appear on more apolitical shows with high ratings, such as ABC’s Good Morning America, where they might be less likely to be asked questions that made the president look bad. Caputo’s emails and calls to Farah often got no replies. At one point in the spring, he ran out of patience. He decided to book the doctors on several television shows, with or without Farah’s approval.
Caputo wrote an email to Meadows, Farah, and McEnany that said something along the lines of, “Look, I can’t get you on the phone. I can’t get you to reply. I’d love to have you involved, but if you can’t, that’s fine. I’m not booking Sunday shows. I’ll leave that to you. But I’m booking these six doctors on as many shows as will take them. As long as the interviews don’t interfere with their work at the agencies, that’s what they’re doing. We need more public health information, not less. These are all smart people and they’ll make the president look good.”
Caputo presented himself in the email as the doctors’ champion and an advocate for sharing accurate health information with the public. But subsequent reporting by Dan Diamond, then of Politico, would reveal that Caputo had played a key role behind the scenes in trying to manipulate federal data, reports, and guidelines to align with Trump’s claims that fears about the virus were overstated. Caputo and other Trump appointees, including Paul Alexander, a health adviser who worked closely with Caputo, demanded to review and seek changes to the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, a weekly digest authored by career scientists that analyzed for medical professionals and the public how COVID-19 was spreading and which kinds of people were at risk, according to the Politico report.
Farah already had doubts about Caputo’s competence and suspicions about his intentions, and sometimes had booked Fauci and other doctors without looping him in. She was furious about the email, which she thought Caputo intentionally sent knowing it would become part of the public record and might burnish his image in history books.
Meadows called Caputo. “Come to the office immediately,” the chief of staff said. “I’m of the mind to fire you right now.”
“Have you passed that by the president?” Caputo asked.
“I can fire anybody I want,” Meadows said.
“I believe you can, sir, but I think this is something we should talk to the president about,” replied Caputo, who was banking on Trump having his back, considering their long history together.
Before Caputo showed up, Farah had acknowledged to Meadows, “I could be nicer to him. I shouldn’t be as harsh. But I’m warning you guys, this guy is a liability.” When Caputo arrived in the chief of staff’s office, he assumed he was walking into his execution. Meadows, Farah, and McEnany were there. At one point, Azar joined them. Meadows dressed Caputo down about how all media appearances had to be approved by the White House communications office, which Farah ran. He said the doctors were not the right messengers on television and argued that Azar would be a better political spokesperson for the administration’s virus response.
Then Meadows turned genteel.
“Let’s hit restart on this relationship,” he said. “Kayleigh, can we do that?”
“I think we can,” McEnany said.
“Alyssa, can we do that?” Meadows asked.
“Sure,” Farah responded.
“Michael, can we do that?” Meadows asked.
“Hope dies last,” Caputo replied.
Meadows, puzzled, asked, “Michael, what do you mean?”
“I hope so,” Caputo said. “Palms up.”
On their way out of the meeting, Farah addressed Caputo: “I want to say one thing to you: You wrote that email to leak.”
“I don’t leak against the president of the United States,” Caputo said.
“Yes you did,” Farah shot back.
“Alyssa,” he said, “I’m not you.”
* * *
—
As task-force doctors used whatever means they could to preach to the public to wear masks and avoid large gatherings, their place of work suddenly turned into a coronavirus petri dish. On May 6, a military service member who served as one of Trump’s personal White House valets started having symptoms of COVID-19, and the next day tested positive.
For the germaphobe president, who once had infamously admonished Mick Mulvaney for coughing in his presence, the virus’s breach not only of the heavily fortified White House complex, but also of Trump’s personal bubble, was alarming. It should not have been surprising, however. Other than requiring regular testing of senior aides and others who came into proximity with Trump, the White House staff eschewed its own health recommendations. In fact, Trump continued to meet in person with groups of strangers, including a May 8 gathering of World War II veterans.
Some of Trump’s advisers were afraid of catching the coronavirus at work. Deborah Birx was militant about wearing a mask in the White House. She remembered how masks had protected her from any number of diseases when she traveled the world’s hot zones researching respiratory illnesses. She knew many of the young people on Trump’s staff believed they were invincible and gathered socially after hours. She also knew Secret Service agents used small communal break rooms on the complex, where the risk of exposure was high. She was fearful of bringing the virus home.
Similarly militant about masking was Matt Pot
tinger, whom other West Wing aides teased for covering up part of his face. The deputy national security adviser was so concerned about the likelihood of the maskless White House becoming an incubator of infection—and of staff dropping like flies—that in mid-March he made an urgent outreach to the Taiwan government. He procured hundreds of thousands of Taiwanese masks, primarily for U.S. health-care workers, and thirty-six hundred masks for the use of White House personnel.
Most others had a carefree attitude about masks, however, including Katie Miller, who in her role running Pence’s communications was a fixture at task-force meetings and worked closely with its members. Though she had an office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, Miller often worked out of Short’s cramped cubby-sized office in the West Wing, sitting sometimes on the floor, as did other vice-presidential aides. The two were overheard gossiping about and making fun of task-force doctors.
On May 7, Pence delivered boxes of personal protective equipment from FEMA to a nursing home in Alexandria, Virginia. Miller staffed him for the photo op. As she talked near a gaggle of reporters without wearing a mask, Miller coughed. She had tested negative earlier that day, but when she got tested again on May 8, her results came back positive. She had COVID.
The news of Miller’s positive test delayed Pence’s departure that morning for Iowa. Air Force Two sat on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews for nearly an hour as staffers who had been exposed to Miller disembarked. Pence and Short stayed on, despite having been in close proximity to Miller, and they continued on to Des Moines.
Back at the White House, Olivia Troye was distraught. She had been working closely with Short, Miller, and others on the staff. In the privacy of her office, Troye broke down in tears. She was afraid she had COVID and would get her immunocompromised husband sick. She took vitamin C and washed her hands obsessively that day, so much so that they felt raw by the time she got home.
Troye wasn’t alone in her fears. Other vice-presidential staffers came into her office, closed the door behind them, and privately asked for advice. They were scared about traveling with Pence in the future. “When you’re in these mass gatherings, never take off your mask,” Troye told them. “Don’t listen to Marc. Wash your hands all the time. Don’t shake any hands. Carry sanitizer with you. When you’re at rallies, stay behind the stage and in your own pod, where you know the people you’re traveling with have been tested. Don’t go to the front and take photos or interact with strangers. Protect yourself.”
Fear of the virus outbreak permeated the White House staff that weekend. Kevin Hassett gave voice to the concerns on May 10, when he said on CBS’s Face the Nation, “It is scary to go to work.” He added, “I think I’d be a lot safer if I was sitting at home than I would be going to the West Wing.”
* * *
—
Even though the virus dominated the administration’s focus, Trump continued through the spring with his postimpeachment tour of vengeance. He wanted to sack anyone who did not move loyally in lockstep with him. He had long been eyeing Chris Wray, the FBI director whom Trump had tapped in 2017 after he fired James Comey. Their honeymoon had been short-lived.
Soon after being confirmed as attorney general in early 2019, Barr noticed Trump would hammer away constantly at how much he hated the FBI and wanted to make a change in the leadership there. Trump said he wished Wray would do more to punish the FBI agents who “came after me.” Trump also had an allergic reaction to Wray’s just-the-facts style and evenhanded manner in public interviews. Trump preferred the pugilistic and unapologetic mode Barr displayed.
As Trump said to Barr in one such meeting, “He’s just so weak. He contradicts you! You should be mad! When they ask him, do you agree on this, he always weasels out of it. You should be mad!”
Barr explained that the FBI director played a different role than the attorney general, which is a more political position. Though both are nominated by the president, the FBI director typically served a ten-year term and was expected to work with both parties and avoid political sparring. Barr was a big fan of Wray and succeeded in tempering the president’s impulse to fire him. Barr had a standard line. “Mr. President, he and I are working well together,” Barr would say. “I understand the bureau and the kind of relationship that’s important to build, and I think we’re doing that with Chris Wray.”
With gallows humor, Barr then would joke with aides that he had become the FBI director’s “human heat shield.”
Trump also wanted to dump the FBI’s deputy director, Dave Bowdich, who was the bureau’s most senior agent. Trump had called Bowdich “a Comey guy,” a deduction he and Meadows made after reviewing Bowdich’s past job titles in his twenty-five-year FBI career. For instance, when Comey was FBI director, Bowdich had served as associate director overseeing budget and administration. Trump and Meadows seemed to think, Aha! Barr’s eyebrows rose at this Wikipedia method of ferreting out friend or foe. The attorney general told the president that he thought highly of Bowdich and said the fact that he served in a senior career job during Comey’s directorship didn’t make him a Comey acolyte.
Most alarming to Barr, though, were Trump’s suggestions for replacements for Wray and Bowdich. Barr had heard that Trump was considering making Kash Patel deputy director. In Trump’s view, Patel was gold, having toiled to discredit the Russia investigation as an aide to Congressman Devin Nunes, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee. In 2018, Patel had authored a memo for Nunes that claimed the Obama administration relied on anti-Trump sources to justify surveilling a Trump campaign aide. The memo made some accurate and some false claims while cherry-picking facts, and reached its conclusion based on information secretly provided by the White House. He was an ideological firebrand and highly controversial, even in conservative circles. In private conversations with colleagues, Barr called Patel a “walking disaster.” He thought Rudy Giuliani and Patel bore a good deal of responsibility for the president’s impeachment, as both were accused of feeding him misinformation alleging baselessly that Ukraine had interfered in the 2016 election on behalf of Democrats, and of encouraging him to strong-arm the country to boost his reelection.
“Mr. President, if you try to make Kash Patel the deputy director I will resign immediately. No ifs, ands, or buts,” Barr told him the first time Trump broached the idea. “No fucking way.”
Barr said the FBI’s rank and file would never accept a nonagent in any senior position other than the directorship, according to the account Barr gave confidants.
“Mr. President, the FBI is like the Marine Corps,” Barr added. “They’re all agents, they’ve all gone through agent school. You are nobody at the FBI unless you’re an agent. The only person who is not an agent is the director. The deputy director has been an agent and has always been an agent and always will be an agent, otherwise you cannot run that place. And to take a clown like him, who has no background, and make him deputy is just beyond the pale.”
In the first week of May, Trump’s interest in terminating Wray moved from festering pique to imminent action. In court papers filed the previous week, Flynn argued to the judge presiding over his case that the FBI had engaged in misconduct by bringing charges against him. Though he twice had pleaded guilty to the charges, Flynn and his lawyer, Sidney Powell, said newly unsealed documents showed the FBI had planned to close their investigation of him but kept it open when they learned about his call with a Russian ambassador. It was unclear why it would be misconduct for the FBI to keep a case open upon learning new information. A group of Trump supporters, including attorney Joseph diGenova, conservative commentator Dan Bongino, and former White House official Sebastian Gorka, publicly called for Trump to fire Wray over how the FBI handled its Flynn investigation. “Why does Christopher Wray still have a job?” Bongino said on May 4 on Gorka’s radio show. “I asked the president directly about it. . . . I cannot for the life of me understand how the current director of th
e FBI is still in his position.”
On May 7, at Barr’s direction, the Justice Department did a 180-degree turn and tossed out the prosecution of Flynn on the recommendation of a special prosecutor Barr had appointed to reinvestigate the case. To the president’s delight, Barr concluded that the lies that Flynn told to FBI agents and denials about his conversations with a Russian ambassador were not a crime because there was no official investigation under way at the time. This was another brutal affront to the line prosecutors working the Flynn case, and fresh evidence that Barr intervened to show mercy when the defendants were Trump allies. The day of the new filing, Trump applauded Flynn as “an even greater warrior” and called the senior FBI and Justice Department officials who pursued him “human scum.”
That morning, Bill Evanina, a former FBI agent who headed up the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, got an urgent call from an assistant to Robert O’Brien. “Can you get down here as quick as possible?” she asked.
Evanina said he would. He arrived at O’Brien’s office to find the national security adviser and Ric Grenell, the acting director of national intelligence, inside. Grenell told Evanina that Wray’s firing was imminent and they were looking for possible replacements. They informed him that when Comey was fired, Evanina had been one of the top names recommended to replace Comey as an acting director.
“Would you be interested?” O’Brien asked.
Evanina said it didn’t make sense because Wray was doing a great job. O’Brien and Grenell explained that it didn’t matter. Wray was on his way out.
I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump's Catastrophic Final Year Page 15