The Room Where It Happened

by John Bolton;

  Kelly came to my office late the next morning to talk about the article, saying, “Mattis is just in survival mode now,” and that he was pointing the finger for the leaks at Ricardel, which showed amazing chutzpah. I explained Judge Larry Silberman’s theory about assessing leaks, namely asking, “Cui bono?” which means “Who stands to gain?” and which, in this case, pointed squarely to Mattis and his associates’ being the leakers. Kelly had served under Mattis in the Marines, as had Joe Dunford, a remarkable alignment the press never seemed to notice and that a spy novelist could not have convinced a publisher was plausible. Trump, Kelly, and I discussed the article again later in the day, and Trump asked, “Mattis didn’t like canceling the Iran deal, did he?” which was an understatement. Shortly thereafter, the speculation on Mattis’s replacement picked up again in earnest. I wondered if the leaks started in the Oval Office.

  One week later, however, when I was in New York for the annual opening festivities of the UN General Assembly, Kelly called me to say the First Lady wanted Ricardel fired because her staff complained she had been uncooperative in preparing for FLOTUS’s upcoming trip to Africa. I found this stunning, and Kelly said it was “not clear how it got to this level.” He then characterized the First Lady’s staff as a bunch of catty, gossipy sorority types. No one said anything further to me, and I thought it had died away. Kelly was still in Washington because of “this Rosenstein thing,” meaning the stories about whether Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had ever proposed invoking the Twenty-Fifth Amendment against Trump, or that he wear a wire into the Oval to gather evidence to that end. This was also a first in presidential management history.

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  Being in New York reminded me why UN Ambassadors should not have Cabinet rank (the traditional Republican approach). Or, if they were going to have that rank, they needed to be told by the President that there was nonetheless only one Secretary of State. Haley had never gotten that reminder, and from everything I heard, including directly from Trump, she and Tillerson cordially detested one another (well, maybe not cordially). Early evidence of the Haley problem occurred in her mishandling of the Russia sanctions question in the immediate aftermath of the April US attack on Syria. It emerged again in June regarding US withdrawal from the UN’s misbegotten Human Rights Council. Trump agreed to leave it, which all of his advisors recommended, confirming it in an Oval Office meeting with Pompeo, Haley, and me. Trump then asked Haley, “How’s it going?” and she responded by talking about the trade negotiations with China, which formed no part of her responsibilities. After a lengthy trade riff by Trump, with all his favorite lines (“The EU is just like China, only smaller”), Haley asked him about a trip she wanted to take to India to visit the Dalai Lama. The purpose of this trip was unclear, other than getting a photo op with the Dalai Lama, always good for an aspiring pol. But the minefield she strayed into by raising the China trade issue showed a political tin ear: once Trump wondered how China would view Haley’s seeing the Dalai Lama, the trip was essentially dead. This episode confirmed to Pompeo how far out of line Trump had allowed Haley to drift, and why it had to stop. In any case, on June 19, we withdrew from the Human Rights Council.

  Replacing departing senior Administration officials could also be arduous, especially as the halfway mark in Trump’s term neared. Choosing Haley’s successor was one such marathon. After conferring alone with Trump, Ivanka, and Kushner on a “purely personal” matter, Haley told Kelly (but not Pompeo or me) on October 9 that she was resigning, although that resignation came with a long recessional extending until its effective date on December 31. Few doubted the 2024 race for the Republican presidential nomination had now begun. In a jaw-dropping statement, sitting next to the President in the Oval, Haley ruled out a 2020 run, just so she could remind everyone she was available: “No, I’m not running for 2020… I can promise you what I’ll be doing is campaigning for this one.”4 Many thought she was instead running to replace Pence as Trump’s 2020 running mate, supported by Kushner and Ivanka, which was not idle speculation.5

  One Trump prerequisite for Haley’s successor was that it be a female. Early favorite Dina Powell had been at the NSC, and, preferred by the family, initially appeared to be a shoo-in. Enormous opposition developed, however, and the search was quickly on for other candidates. Pompeo and I agreed from the outset that the UN Ambassador should not have Cabinet rank, but we first had to persuade Trump. He said of Powell that Cabinet status “will help her out,” which left me speechless. If someone needed that kind of help, they should have been looking for other work. In addition to the status issue, Pompeo and I discussed, over several weeks, possible alternatives, conferring with several of them to see if they were interested. When the sorting was done, we both concluded that Ambassador to Canada Kelly Craft was the most logical choice. In addition to being qualified, Craft was already in the Administration, had been fully vetted and granted appropriate security clearances, and was therefore ready quickly to assume new duties.

  In the meantime, the White House lapsed into full conspiracy mode, as everyone had an opinion about who should succeed Haley. I never went through a time where more people told me not to trust other people on an issue. Perhaps they were all right. The internal politics were byzantine, much of it played out in the media. Candidates rose and fell, entered and withdrew, and then entered again, came close, or were actually picked, only to find some disqualifying factor took them out of the running and us back to the beginning. Even when Pompeo and I thought we had Trump decided on one candidate, we were often wrong. As Pompeo said at the November G20 meeting, “You can’t leave him alone for a minute.” It was like being in a hall of mirrors. As the weeks passed, I wondered if we would have a nominee in time to get her confirmed before Haley’s three-month-long curtain call ended on New Year’s Eve.

  Indeed, we didn’t. Not until February 22, in the Oval Office, when Trump called me down in midafternoon, did Trump and Kelly Craft shake hands on the nomination. I was delighted, as was Pompeo, but dismayed that nearly five months had disappeared on something that could have been resolved in just days after Haley’s announcement. Trump said to Craft, “It’s the best job in government next to mine,” which I thought wasn’t far from wrong. We were done, at least with the Executive Branch deliberations. Almost five months in the making.

  * * *

  As Mattis’s troubles continued to rise, speculation turned to whether Kelly might also have finally had enough. Pompeo said, “If Mattis goes, Kelly goes too,” which had a logic to it. This was now beyond personnel dysfunction but meant a major change in White House direction. Nielsen’s unending problems with Trump also seemed to indicate her early departure, another incentive for Kelly to leave, but she hung on. Indeed, Nielsen lasted until April 2019, probably long after she should have left voluntarily for her own well-being. Kelly and Kushner also had not gotten along well since the controversy over Kushner’s security clearance.

  Kelly also had his troubles, not unlike those I experienced, with Treasury Secretary Mnuchin, a Trump confidant. In July 2018, for example, Mnuchin fussed endlessly about a press release he wanted to issue on new sanctions against a Russian bank that had facilitated North Korea’s international financial transactions. Trump agreed the sanctions should proceed, but he didn’t want a press release, to avoid potential negative reactions from Moscow and Pyongyang. Mnuchin feared Congress would grill him for covering up for Russia if he didn’t issue something. I thought he was overwrought, and a few days later, Trump agreed to a release. Exasperated, Kelly told me Mnuchin cared more than anything not to be exposed to any risk, notwithstanding his inordinate desire to attend Oval Office meetings and travel the world. A few days before, Kelly and I had spoken about Mnuchin’s efforts to get into meetings where he had no role, including calling Trump to get himself invited. Kelly said he was sure Mnuchin spent far less than half his time at his desk at Treasury, so eager was he to go to White House meetings or on presidential trips. “They h
ardly recognize him in his building,” said Kelly disdainfully.

  In the meantime, Mattis’s long-standing efforts to fire Ricardel, combined with the clandestine efforts of the First Lady’s staff, finally had their effect. I was in Paris for meetings in advance of Trump’s arrival to attend the November 11 World War I Armistice Day centenary. On the evening of November 9, as I was walking to dinner with my British, French, and German counterparts, Kelly called me from Air Force One, which was nearing arrival in Paris. We were on nonsecure phones, so we didn’t talk fully until closer to midnight, when Kelly said the First Lady’s office was still trying to get Ricardel fired. “I have nothing to do with this,” said Kelly.

  On Saturday, I went to the US Ambassador’s residence, where Trump was staying, to brief him before his bilateral with Macron. The weather was bad, and Kelly and I spoke about whether to travel as planned to the Château-Thierry Belleau Wood monuments and nearby American Cemeteries, where many US World War I dead were buried. Marine One’s crew was saying that bad visibility could make it imprudent to chopper to the cemetery. The ceiling was not too low for Marines to fly in combat, but flying POTUS was obviously something very different. If a motorcade were necessary, it could take between ninety and a hundred and twenty minutes each way, along roads that were not exactly freeways, posing an unacceptable risk that we could not get the President out of France quickly enough in case of an emergency. It was a straightforward decision to cancel the visit but very hard for a Marine like Kelly to recommend, having originally been the one to suggest Belleau Wood (an iconic battle in Marine Corps history). Trump agreed, and it was decided that others would drive to the cemetery instead. As the meeting broke up and we prepared to leave for the Élysée Palace to see Macron, Trump pulled Kelly and me aside and said, “Find another spot for Mira. Melania’s people are on the warpath.” Kelly and I assumed we were to find an equivalent position elsewhere in government in a calmer setting in Washington.

  The press turned canceling the cemetery visit into a story that Trump was afraid of the rain and took glee in pointing out that other world leaders traveled around during the day. Of course, none of them were the President of the United States, but the press didn’t understand that rules for US Presidents are different from the rules for 190 other leaders who don’t command the world’s greatest military forces. Trump blamed Kelly, unfairly, marking a possibly decisive moment in ending his White House tenure. Trump was displeased throughout the trip (“He’s in a royal funk,” as Sanders put it) because of the disappointing election results, and nothing made things better. The rest of the Paris visit was similar. Macron opened their bilateral meeting by talking about a “European army,” as he had been doing publicly earlier,6 which a large number of other Americans were fully prepared to let the ungrateful Europeans have, without us. Macron all but insulted Trump in his November 11 speech at the Arc de Triomphe, saying, “Patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism. Nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism by saying: ‘Our interest first. Who cares about the others?’ ” Trump said he didn’t hear Macron’s rebuff because his earpiece cut off at the critical point.

  After Paris, I flew on to the United Arab Emirates and then Singapore to help support the Vice President’s trip to the annual Association of Southeast Asian Nations Summit. At 2:20 a.m. on November 14, Ricardel called to say there was a Wall Street Journal story, obviously leaked from an unfriendly source, that she was about to be fired. The story was also full of speculation on Kelly and Nielsen’s being fired, so I immediately called to reach Trump (Singapore being thirteen hours ahead of Washington) and others to find out what was happening. In the interim, an incredible tweet went out from “the office of the First Lady” that Ricardel no longer deserved to work at the White House. Talk about unprecedented. I was still digesting this when Trump called me back at about 5:30 a.m. He asked, “What is this thing from the First Lady?” and called to Westerhout to bring him the tweet, which he read for the first time. “Holy fuck,” he shouted, “how could they put that out without showing it to me?” Good question, I thought. “Let me work on this,” Trump concluded. Trump later called Ricardel and the FLOTUS staffers into the Oval, where they presented their versions of the FLOTUS Africa trip Ricardel had tried to keep from going off the rails due to the ignorance and insensitivity of the First Lady’s staffers. Ricardel had never actually met the First Lady; all the criticism was from her staff. Trump was justifiably irritated by the tweet from the “office of the First Lady,” which the staffers denied they were responsible for. “That statement is crap,” said Trump, correctly.

  I spoke to Pence about Ricardel when the two of us had a private lunch. “She’s great,” he said, and promised to be totally supportive. Kelly called later in the day to say Trump had instructed him, after the Oval meeting, “Find a place for her to land… we should keep her in the government,” and that he’d said, “She’s not a bad person,” despite what the FLOTUS staffers had alleged.

  Kelly went on to say, “Paris was a complete disaster,” and that Trump had complained incessantly on Air Force One flying back to Washington, and even thereafter. He kept rehashing what had gone wrong, along with demanding that Mattis and Nielsen be fired, largely due to the Mexican border issue. Kelly said he had gotten Trump “off a number of ledges” but was not at all sure what would come next. I asked him to keep me posted, and he said simply, “Okay, pal,” which told me he didn’t have a lot of friends left at the White House. Trump issued a statement the next day that Ricardel would be transitioning to a new job in the Administration, although we didn’t have it nailed down yet. Unfortunately, the atmosphere had been so poisoned by the FLOTUS staff that Ricardel decided on her own simply to leave government entirely and rejoin the private sector. The whole thing was appalling to me, and grossly unfair to Ricardel.

  I did my own evaluation of the NSC after almost nine months. Substantively, we had met a “do no harm” standard, entering no new bad deals and exiting several inherited from days gone by (e.g., the Iran nuclear deal, the INF Treaty). But I could sense turmoil was coming on other fronts.

  As the November election approached, the rumor mills were going full speed. Especially given the disappointing results, and after Armistice Day, rumors circulated constantly about who might succeed Kelly. One persistent theory was that Trump would select Nick Ayers, Pence’s Chief of Staff. It was unusual, to say the least, to move from working for the VP to working for the President, but Jim Baker had gone from being George H. W. Bush’s campaign manager in 1980 to being Reagan’s White House Chief of Staff. Ayers’s political skills made him a logical choice, if Kelly decided to leave, for a President looking toward a reelection campaign, but the real question was whether Ayers wanted it. He sought in advance to define the terms of the role, and Trump seemed amenable to doing so but repeatedly reneged on key points or dismissed the entire idea of a job description as unworkable. Although Ayers was tempted by the job, the experiences of the past two years had convinced him that, without a piece of paper to fall back on in times of crisis, the risk was not worth taking. Of course, it was an open question whether the piece of paper would have ever been worth anything, but that question would never be answered.

  While this personnel pot simmered, the Mattis pot came to a boil. Nonetheless, I still fully expected Ayers would be named to succeed Kelly, likely on Monday, December 10, 2018. Kelly told me that morning at six thirty a.m., one of our last early conversations, that, after two days working directly for Trump as an experiment, Ayers had decided it would simply not work. Kelly was also convinced Trump planned to swap Haley for Pence as the 2020 VP nominee, which would have put Ayers in an impossible position. In any case, we were back at square one, and the whole world knew it. The only good news was that on December 10, Pat Cipollone started as White House Counsel, not a minute too soon. Mattis’s departure soon became highly public.

  Many candidates, inside and outside, vied for the Chief of Staff role, but Trump tweeted on December
14 that Mick Mulvaney, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, would be Acting Chief of Staff once Kelly left. Kushner came by that afternoon to say he was delighted at the decision and that the “acting” part of the title was just a charade. As I pieced things together later, there were no real negotiations between Trump and Mulvaney over the terms of the job, so the decision struck me as somewhat impulsive. Pompeo thought Mulvaney would do essentially whatever Ivanka and Kushner wanted him to do, which worried both of us philosophically. The handover from Kelly to Mulvaney was effective January 2.

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  In an October 2019 interview, in the midst of the Ukraine impeachment crisis, Kelly said he had told Trump, “Whatever you do—and we were still in the process of trying to find someone to take my place—I said whatever you do, don’t hire a ‘yes man,’ someone who won’t tell you the truth—don’t do that. Because if you do, I believe you will be impeached.”7 Trump flatly denied Kelly had made such a statement: “John Kelly never said that, he never said anything like that. If he would have said that I would have thrown him out of the office. He just wants to come back into the action like everybody else does.”8 And Stephanie Grisham, previously one of the First Lady’s Furies, now White House press secretary, pronounced ex cathedra, “I worked with John Kelly, and he was totally unequipped to handle the genius of our great President.”9 These quotes speak volumes about the people who uttered them.