by Howard Kurtz
The media environment even penetrated her home. Her daughters had asked why she wasn’t voting for the woman in the race. It’s about backing the person with the right vision, she told them.
Media fame proved a double-edged sword. It made her a household name, but it also made her subject to terrible death threats that included her family. A package with a suspicious white powder was mailed to her home. She was forced to get round-the-clock Secret Service protection. And Kellyanne blamed it on a press that had seemingly decided to target her.
CHAPTER 7
SPICER GOES TO WAR
Donald Trump had been president for just one day when Sean Spicer got into his first full-blown confrontation with the press.
Running against the media had been Trump’s signature move throughout the campaign, a way to discredit, belittle, and intimidate his critics while riling up his base. He had a counterpunching instinct, and attacked reporters by name—sometimes to set the record straight, sometimes because he just couldn’t resist.
These denunciations, as well as his tendency to make exaggerated and sometimes untrue statements, served a larger purpose—by fueling coverage about the coverage, hand-wringing over whether he’d gone too far, they helped Trump dominate the media. Trump hated the negative stories but knew that they nevertheless helped him by infuriating his supporters—it always kept the spotlight on him.
Spicer was expected to be his chief enforcer with the media, and on January 20, 2017, he had an opening to fill that role. When the Trump team let journalists into the Oval Office, Time’s Zeke Miller reported that a bust of Martin Luther King Jr. had been removed. Actually, it was still there—Miller had just missed it—and he apologized. Spicer scolded him on Twitter for getting his facts wrong.
The morning after the inauguration, Trump grew incensed as cable news reports denigrated the size of his crowd, saying it was far smaller than Barack Obama’s in 2009.
Trump was convinced this was more media phoniness and struck back during a visit to the CIA. Standing in front of a memorial wall, he declared a “war” on the so-called dishonest media and blamed them for accusing him of feuding with the intelligence community. The truth was that Trump had, in fact, feuded with outgoing intel officials, accusing them of leaking information.
Trump remained obsessed with affirming the size of his inaugural crowd, especially after some cable networks gave gargantuan coverage to the massive women’s protest marches in several major cities. He wanted Spicer to call a special Saturday briefing and denounce the press coverage.
Much of his staff was against it. Picking this fight was no way to kick off the president’s first full day in office. Kellyanne Conway tried to talk Trump out of it. She invoked a line that she often employed when Trump was exercised over some slight.
“You’re really big,” she said. “That’s really small.”
Spicer knew that his job was to do what the new boss wanted. A veteran spokesman who had enjoyed cordial relations with reporters for years, he was personally fed up with what he viewed as a relentlessly negative media narrative that the incoming administration was perpetually on the brink of failure. His anger rose as he delivered a scolding from behind the lectern.
The Martin Luther King Jr. bust mistake was “irresponsible and reckless.” The crowd photos used by some cable networks were “intentionally framed” in a misleading way. “These attempts to lessen the enthusiasm of the inauguration are shameful and wrong,” Spicer declared, and for all the media chatter about holding Trump accountable, “we’re going to hold the press accountable as well.” He took no questions.
Reporters who had long known Spicer were stunned that he had escalated his tone on such meager matters. Several accused him of lying. The New York Times accused him of peddling falsehoods. Spicer felt stung. He had never been called dishonest before.
This wasn’t really about the crowd size; it was a proxy fight in a larger battle. Reince Priebus, Spicer’s mentor, believed the press was actively trying to delegitimize Trump’s presidency at the outset.
The president called Spicer later. He was not happy. “You didn’t go far enough,” Trump said. He didn’t like Spicer’s look, grumbling to others that he should have worn a better-fitting dark suit. Trump preferred that men wear white shirts. He really cared about television visuals.
Spicer knew he needed help. He called Corey Lewandowski after midnight, seeking advice. Lewandowski said there was a Sean Spicer brand out there that the new spokesman had to protect.
Trump remained boastful about his inaugural crowd. When Conway, who had taken up residence on the third floor, was contacted by a freelance photographer who sent her a panoramic shot of the inauguration, Trump loved it so much he hung it on a wall near his office.
But as the crowd debate raged for days, Trump made a rare admission to Conway, Spicer, and other staffers.
“You were right,” he said. “I shouldn’t have done that.” Trump had paid a penalty for his defiance disorder, for refusing to let the matter go and, as the new leader of the free world, focusing on more important topics.
When Trump went off script in this fashion, it was Sean Spicer who invariably took the heat, given his daily clashes with the press corps.
The president repeated to a group of congressional leaders that as many as five million immigrants had voted illegally in the election, thus explaining his popular-vote loss to Hillary. The president, again, offered no evidence to back this claim; it was just another Trump hunch. A front-page New York Times headline called it a “lie.” His advisers said privately that once a notion like that got into Trump’s head it was going to come out, that he couldn’t help himself; when he thought something was true, he just said it.
Spicer was the one who had to face down the press, telling reporters that Trump believed there was massive voting fraud and “continues to maintain that belief based on studies and evidence people have presented to him.” He looked uncomfortable as he tried to avoid personally vouching for the unsubstantiated claim. He was caught between the rock of Trump’s exaggeration and the hard place of not embracing that falsehood. The Washington Post said Spicer was “killing his credibility.” New Yorker correspondent Ryan Lizza said he should resign. Spicer believed that Lizza wasn’t a reporter but a left-wing commentator.
Already, just days into the administration, there were rumors of political infighting in the White House. Someone quickly leaked to the website Axios that at least one White House official was talking about replacing Spicer.
The danger for Spicer was that Trump’s attitude was: the media hate me, and I get bad press because of you. Some thought Spicer, who was acting as both press secretary and communications director after Jason Miller’s withdrawal, had been set up to fail.
Donald Trump was in a joking mood as he walked down a corridor near the Oval Office, looking as relaxed as if he had the day off.
He walked over when he spotted me. He pointed at Hope Hicks, whose confident demeanor masked a natural shyness. “You should get Hope to go on TV,” the president declared. “That would be it for you, Sean,” he said to Spicer. And looking at deputy spokesman Boris Epshteyn, he said, “You’d never get on again. She would be the biggest star.”
No conversation with Trump was complete without an assessment of how I was doing. He said he would give me an interview, but first he had a message. “You’ve gone neutral on me,” Trump said in a good-natured tone. He turned to his team and loudly proclaimed, “Howie’s gone neutral on me!” I hadn’t changed a bit, though his station in life most assuredly had.
He quickly guided me to the framed photo on the wall showing a seemingly massive crowd for his inaugural speech. A week after the event, Trump was still focused on the chatter that his crowd hadn’t been the largest ever.
“Can you believe that?” he said, admiring the shot. “Look at that, there are more people over here. And Obama had fences here and here.” He grew more animated as he spoke. “But you’ll never see thi
s picture on TV.”
A casual visitor would never have guessed that less than two hours earlier, Trump had signed an executive order that would create an international firestorm for his fledgling administration. He had banned all refugees from entering the United States for 120 days, and all travel from seven predominantly Muslim countries for ninety days, in an effort to tighten security screening for potential terrorists. This was what Trump had vowed to do during the campaign, but the reality came as a shock.
Downstairs in the briefing room, Kellyanne Conway, who had kicked off her heels, was finishing a remote interview with Fox News. Reporters quickly surrounded her, peppering her with questions about the executive order. The administration had not yet identified the seven targeted countries.
“Kellyanne, can you give us any guidance about this EO?” asked NBC’s Hallie Jackson. “They’re killing us on the broadcast today.”
Conway offered no details but a vivid rationale: “Everyone’s going to wait until the next savage murder and say, ‘Oh, we should have done something.’”
“Can I have two sentences on the extreme vetting?” asked ABC’s Jonathan Karl. “I go live in 10 minutes.” Conway complied.
Within twenty-four hours, the world was consumed by what was being dubbed a Muslim ban, which was technically wrong, although Trump had said he would favor Christian refugees seeking asylum. There was chaos at several U.S. airports as hundreds of people who had gotten on planes expecting to be admitted, including legal green-card residents, were detained for questioning, and protests broke out at JFK.
Trump’s top aides knew that the rollout was something of a debacle. The order had been rushed out on a Friday evening, key officials hadn’t been consulted, there was no messaging strategy. Spicer felt they had needed a couple of briefings and a raft of fact sheets. Policy people, he believed, often didn’t grasp the need for strong communications and thought it was a waste of time.
Steve Bannon, who had spent years warning about the radical Islamic threat, was driving the policy and had a larger agenda. He thought the press, focused on the chaotic rollout of the travel ban, was too dumb to figure out that his real intent was to provoke Democratic outrage, freezing the party into a left-wing resistance movement that would drive more voters to Trump and eventually raise support for the mass deportation of illegal immigrants.
But it was Trump, with his bing-bing-bing business approach of getting things done, who had shoved through the sweeping order after just seven days in office; for him it was matter of quickly tackling his campaign promises.
The next morning, Kellyanne was in the makeup chair at Fox, her iPhone earpiece in place, listening intently to her colleague Stephen Miller as her mascara and false eyelashes were applied. Jared Kushner texted her, but she said she would have to call him later. There were many legal nuances to absorb about refugees and regulations, and Miller, the earnest domestic policy chief who had helped Bannon draft the order, was spearheading the damage control.
Jotting notes on a pad, Conway started asking questions:
“And the reason these people were detained is they happened to be traveling?”
“How do you relate this to Nice and Brussels and Paris?”
“But can I say that publicly, Stephen?”
Conway suggested a point to counter the reports that some families had been split up during the detentions: “How many children lost parents on 9/11?” She paused. “You like that?”
Moments later, Conway was telling Chris Wallace on air: “The whole idea that they’re being separated and ripped from their families, it’s temporary, and it’s just circumstantial in terms of whether you are one of those 300 and some who were already on an aircraft or trying to get on an aircraft, as opposed to the over 3,000 children who will be forevermore separated from the parents who perished on 9/11.”
Conway seemed drained after the interview. She was coping with her own family separation, the longest she had ever been apart from her children, who were finishing the school year in New York. Melania Trump, who was remaining with ten-year-old Barron at Trump Tower, had convinced her that a new home and new schools would be too disruptive for the kids while their mother worked all the time.
Finally, Conway had a chance to go to church. As she walked toward a waiting car on North Capitol Street, flanked by her Secret Service agents, she was ambushed by a man in a gray sweatshirt from TMZ. Without missing a beat, Kellyanne looked into the camera lens and defended the refugee ban for one of television’s most gossipy shows.
She called back Kushner. Several newspapers had reported that he wanted to limit Conway’s access to Trump. She had walk-in privileges to the Oval Office but was careful not to abuse them.
“I just want you to know that is not true,” Jared said of the stories. “You know I love you.”
“You know,” Kellyanne said, “these leaked stories aren’t flattering to you. They’re meant to make you look like a misogynist.” But they patched things up and Kushner became extremely cordial to Conway.
Meanwhile, Washington Post opinion columnist Josh Rogin reported that Steve Bannon had visited retired General John Kelly, the Homeland Security secretary, at his office and pressured him to include green card holders in the travel ban, and that Bannon had joined other officials in a two a.m. conference call about the executive order. Both those stories were untrue.
Spicer called Fred Hiatt, the Post’s editorial page editor, and unloaded on him: “What the fuck kind of operation are you running over there? He literally made it up out of whole cloth. There was no staff meeting.”
Hiatt said the best way to clear up any discrepancies was for Spicer to talk to Rogin.
“You ratfuck us, and you want me to call him and get it straight? Fred, your paper went after me viciously, you said I was a liar, I have no integrity. He didn’t even do the basics.” Hiatt, trying to be transparent, updated the story with Spicer’s denials and said in an editor’s note that Rogin should have contacted the White House, rather than just leaving a message for Homeland Security.
Trump soon assessed the travel ban with Corey Lewandowski.
“You know,” Trump told him, “the rollout wasn’t really that bad.”
“No one’s questioning the policy, it was the rollout.”
“It really wasn’t that bad, it’s the goddamn media,” Trump said.
On this issue and others, Newt Gingrich had told him that his tweets were hurting him, that his scattershot attacks on the media and his political opponents were too much of a distraction.
“No, I have to be on offense,” the president said.
The pundits targeted Stephen Miller for much of their rage about the travel ban. Joe Scarborough, backed by his co-host Mika Brzezinski, called Miller an inexperienced “Little Napoleon” whose policy “was a disgrace” and who should resign.
The thirty-one-year-old Miller, a rail-thin man who had recently quit smoking, was bewildered. He felt that he was simultaneously being described as incredibly powerful and incredibly incompetent. Miller knew that you couldn’t achieve real change without making some people angry, but he viewed himself as part of a team; he hadn’t gone rogue with this policy; it was a Trump campaign promise.
Conway rose to his defense. She marched into the Oval Office and said, “Mr. President, I feel compelled to tell you that Stephen Miller is being mistreated, by name, by Joe Scarborough. He said the guy screwed up and shouldn’t be here.” This, she said, was totally inappropriate for a cable news host.
Joe and Mika had just been at the White House for lunch on Sunday. Things had gone smoothly, except when Jared Kushner had praised the “genius” of Steve Bannon in targeting working-class voters and Trump had loudly proclaimed, “That wasn’t Steve Bannon’s strategy, that was my strategy!”
As Scarborough was leaving the set on Tuesday, his phone rang and an angry president was on the line. Trump shouted, “It’s not for you to tell me who shouldn’t be here. I could have invited Sean Hannity here
, he didn’t attack me. I invite you and you attack me. I know what your deal is. You have to attack me to prove you’re your own man.”
“No, Donald, that’s not it at all,” Scarborough said, What Miller had done “was deeply offensive” and “undemocratic.”
Scarborough knew Trump watched the show, and used his platform to give him advice that he might not accept privately. But Scarborough got the message: the president was pissed. He had played the gracious luncheon host, showing Joe and Mika his Andrew Jackson memorabilia in the Oval Office, and then they had turned around and attacked him on their next two shows. Trump valued loyalty above all.
CHAPTER 8
BANNON AS DARTH VADER
The press was obsessed with Steve Bannon, but while Reince Priebus defended Trump on the Sunday shows and had the loftier title of chief of staff, Bannon, the White House strategist, stayed out of public view. Behind the scenes, he was the driving force behind Trump’s populist, establishment-be-damned agenda, and the press, viewing him as a sort of Svengali, made him the focus of some vicious coverage.
Bannon, in a rare public comment, said the press should “keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while.” Trump backed him up the next day, embracing his charge that the media were the “opposition party.” Time put Bannon on its cover as “The Great Manipulator.” The New York Times ran an outraged editorial titled “President Bannon?” Washington Post cartoonist Tom Toles depicted him behind a toilet, calling him the power behind the throne. Bannon had officially been anointed the administration’s evil genius.
All this attention bothered Trump. What was Bannon—a staff guy—doing as Time’s cover boy? Bannon needed to understand there was only one star in this White House. Conway thought it would be better if Steve did an occasional interview. The hit newsmagazine 60 Minutes wanted him, but she didn’t want Bannon getting sliced up on the show. George Stephanopoulos of ABC’s This Week wanted him too. But Bannon texted Conway, “LOL.”