The Best People

by Alexander Nazaryan

  Philip Rucker and Karen Tumulty of the Washington Post reported on President-elect Trump’s disdain for John Bolton’s mustache: “Donald Trump Is Holding a Government Casting Call. He’s Seeking ‘the Look’” (12/22/16).

  Christie made his comments on the presidential transition in Trenton on December 6, 2017. He called the transition “brutally unprofessional” in an ABC interview four months later. A number of high-ranking transition and campaign officials offered detailed accounts of his comportment during the campaign and after. Those accounts clashed strikingly with his own portrayal of his work. There is good reason to believe that his self-regard as Trump’s transition manager was not warranted.

  Bannon made his comments about Christie “not making the plane” to Charlie Rose during a 60 Minutes interview that aired in September 2017.

  For an account of Rich Bagger’s meeting with lobbyists, see Isaac Arnsdorf in Politico: “K Street Huddles with Trump Transition” (11/03/16).

  In response to my questions about the Christie-led transition, Bill Palatucci sent the following statement: “The transition team led by Gov. Christie was professional, comprehensive and ready on election day to advise the President-elect on all matters, including foreign and domestic policy, personnel, ethics, and government structure.”

  For the Obama official’s critical comments on the Trump transition, see “Trump marginalizes D.C. transition staff” (Nancy Cook and Andrew Restuccia, Politico, 12/06/16).

  Chapter 3: The Strongest Men of the Party

  James Pfiffner’s White House Staff Versus the Cabinet: Centripetal and Centrifugal Forces is among the smartest things on the American presidency that I have read. I am indebted enormously to him for his insight, and for the many excellent historical details he includes. Those details pepper this chapter.

  Richard Hofstadter’s Anti-Intellectualism in American Life included examples of how the Saturday Evening Post covered the New Deal.

  William Safire’s Political Dictionary, a slyly delightful history of American politics, provides the fullest account I know of the “eight millionaires and a plumber” quip about the Eisenhower administration.

  David Halberstam’s The Best and the Brightest was not just a source, but an inspiration throughout.

  Marc Tracy was the New York Times reporter who spotted Steve Bannon reading Halberstam’s book in an airport terminal (“Steve Bannon’s Book Club,” 02/04/17).

  Shirley Anne Warshaw’s Guide to the White House Staff includes Richard Nixon’s ornery approach to domestic policy. Her Powersharing: White House-Cabinet Relations in the Modern Presidency related Jimmy Carter’s management struggles.

  Pat Buchanan’s complaint about Reagan comes from historian Gil Troy, author of Morning in America: How Ronald Reagan Invented the 1980s.

  For a good backgrounder on the Clinton-Trump similarities, see “How Trump Can Fix His Troubled White House” (David A. Graham, Atlantic, 03/21/17). Bill Galston’s comments come from his interview with UVA’s Miller Center, whose presidential oral histories are a priceless resource.

  I consulted Fred I. Greenstein’s The Presidential Difference for Dick Cheney’s role in the Bush administration.

  Robert Reich’s quote comes from Chris Whipple’s The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency.

  Most of the other chronicles of presidential cabinets come from research in the archives of the New York Times.

  The “slutburger” quip comes from Gawker.

  Recordings and transcripts of Trump cabinet nominees’ hearings are easily accessed by anyone with an Internet connection. At least one of the recollections I include is from an individual who was seated at that table. Other recollections in the section come from high-ranking veterans of the Trump transition and campaign.

  Coral Davenport and David E. Sanger of the New York Times reported on Rick Perry’s confusion about what the Department of Energy did: “‘Learning Curve’ as Rick Perry Pursues a Job He Initially Misunderstood” (01/18/17).

  Sam Levin of the Guardian conducted a thorough investigation into Steve Mnuchin’s sordid history as a bottom-feeding banker: “Inside Trump Treasury Nominee’s Past Life as ‘Foreclosure King’ of California” (12/02/16).

  America Bridge 21st Century, the progressive opposition research firm, conducted the research on lobbyists in the Trump administration: “Trump’s Corrupt White House” (06/02/17).

  Chapter 4: Free Commercials

  I spoke at length with Walt Schaub, White House officials, and others about ethics, for a Newsweek cover story in the autumn of 2017: “Trump Is Leading the Most Corrupt Administration in U.S. History, One of First-Class Kleptocrats” (11/02/17). That same story included aspects of my extensive conversations with White House officials.

  Christopher Hale of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good was the young conservative commentator who criticized Trump for turning the White House into QVC on Fox News.

  Shaub called Trump’s United States a “laughingstock” in a July 17, 2017, story by Eric Lipton and Nicholas Fandos of the New York Times: “Departing Ethics Chief: U.S. Is ‘Close to a Laughingstock.’”

  My conversation with Norm Eisen was for the same Newsweek article that included Shaub’s comments.

  Statistics about the number of lobbyists in the new Trump administration come from research conducted by American Bridge 21st Century, a liberal Super PAC.

  Chapter 5: Alligators and Lily Pads

  The Center for Responsive Politics has an excellent history of lobbying, as well as a database of members of Congress who have gone through the notorious revolving door. I used that database extensively. In particular, Anna Massoglia, a researcher there, proved an extremely reliable guide to the complexities of K Street.

  See also Lee Drutman’s essay in The Atlantic, “How Corporate Lobbyists Conquered American Democracy” (04/20/15). Drutman is also the author of The Business of America is Lobbying: How Corporations Became Politicized and Politics Became More Corporate, which was published the same year. Merriam-Webster’s website contains a helpful article on the etymology of “lobbying” in the English language. It references the Oxford English Dictionary, which suggests that the term, as we know it today, originated in 1777.

  My figures on the number of Heritage alumni in the Trump administration come directly from Heritage, whose Matthew Atwood kindly tracked down the statistics.

  In 1987, Senator Robert Byrd gave a remarkable history of lobbying in a floor speech that had all the hallmarks of a Byrd soliloquy: erudition, wit, and grace.

  I also relied on Kathryn Allamong Jacob’s King of the Lobby: The Life and Times of Sam Ward, Man-About-Washington in the Gilded Age (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010).

  Michael Crowley’s profile of Jack Abramoff in the New York Times Magazine, “A Lobbyist in Full” (05/01/05), is an excellent introduction to the town Jack built.

  Abramoff’s lobbying on the behalf of Congo’s president was reported on by Byron Tau of the Wall Street Journal (“Jack Abramoff Sought Meeting with Trump for Congo’s Leader,” 06/23/17).

  Eric Lichtblau of the New York Times wrote about Obama aides’ affinity for Caribou Coffee: “Across from White House, Coffee with Lobbyists” (06/24/10).

  Rebecca Ballhaus of the Wall Street Journal reported on the granting of ethics waivers in the Trump administration: “Ethics Office to Release Two Dozen More Trump Waivers” (06/02/17).

  Information on private funding of the inauguration comes from a U.S. Government Accountability Office: “Presidential Transition: Information on Ethics, Funding, and Agency Services” (09/07/17).

  Chapter 6: “Kind of a Rough Start”

  This chapter contains material from background interviews with senior White House officials who spent significant time in the Oval Office during the first weeks and months of the Trump administration.

  On the number of federal jobs added by Reagan: “Why Reagan’s Vaunted ‘Starve the Beast’ Plan Failed” (Robi
n Bravender, E&E News, 03/07/17).

  On the shrinkage of the federal government under Clinton, I cite John Kamensky’s summary of the efforts of the National Partnership for Reinventing Government, which he wrote in 1999.

  On the growth of the federal workforce under Bush and Obama: “Federal Bureaucracy Grew 70% More Under Bush than Obama” (Chris Edwards, Foundation for Economic Education, 02/16/16).

  Outgoing EPA administrator Gina McCarthy made her comments about the transition to Politico: “Obama Officials Alarmed at Slow Pace of Agency-Level Transition” (Sarah Wheaton, 12/08/16).

  A senior commerce official provided me with details of that department’s more or less successful transition process. I also spoke to individuals who spent significant time at both Treasury and HUD. These were all background conversations, as was the episode from the CFPB transition included in this chapter.

  Mother Jones reported on the career of Brian Klippenstein: “A Guy Who Exists Purely to Troll the Humane Society Was Just Hired by Donald Trump” (Tom Philpott, 12/13/16).

  On the lack of political appointees in the new administration, see Jonathan Bernstein in Bloomberg View: “The Empty Trump Administration” (01/18/17).

  McConnell made his “rough start” comment to USA Today’s Mary Troyan: “McConnell Blames Democrats for Bumps in Trump Transition” (01/18/17).

  Trump told Patrick Healy of the New York Times about his government of “relationships” during the presidential primary: “‘President Trump?’ Here’s How He Says It Would Look” (05/04/16).

  Arden Farhi and Jacqueline Alemany of CBS News reported on the plight of Trump’s beachhead teams: “Trump Loyalists Reshuffled at Key Agencies” (11/09/16).

  For transition leaks, see “Transition Team’s Request on Gender Equality Rattles State Dept.” (Mark Landler, New York Times, 12/22/16) and “Trump Transition Team for Energy Department Seeks Names of Employees Involved in Climate Meetings” (Steven Mufson and Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post, 12/09/16).

  The Washington Post’s “Behind the Chaos: Office That Vets Trump Appointees Plagued by Inexperience” (03/30/18) was a masterwork of investigative journalism by Robert O’Harrow Jr., and Shawn Boburg.

  On length of Senate confirmation process, see Michelle Cheng, “Trump Still Hasn’t Filled Top Jobs, and He Has (Mostly) Himself to Blame” (FiveThirtyEight, 07/03/17).

  I interviewed a number of West Wing staffers from that time. They were uniformly critical of the RNC crowd. The interviews were conducted on background.

  Aaron Blake of the Washington Post reported on Representative Kelly’s conspiratorial musings: “GOP Congressman Offers Strange Obama Conspiracy Theory—and Even Stranger Explanations” (03/11/17).

  Politico (Alex Caton and Grace Watkins, 01/09/17) and CNN (Andrew Kaczynski, Chris Massie, Nathan McDermott, 01/12/17) reported on Monica Crowley’s history of plagiarism.

  Scott Higham and Lenny Bernstein of the Washington Post (10/16/17), as well as Bill Whitaker of 60 Minutes (10/15/17), reported on Tom Marino allegedly profiting from the opioid crisis in his Pennsylvania district.

  NRDC published a highly useful primer on Kathleen Hartnett White: “Trump’s Pick to Head Council on Environmental Quality: ‘Carbon Dioxide Is Harmless’” (10/12/17).

  My understanding of Don McGahn’s role in the White House comes from a trained lawyer who was able to closely observe him at work.

  For an explanation of the Chevron deference, see “Kavanaugh and the ‘Chevron Doctrine,’” by Michael McConnell, writing for the Hoover Institution’s website (06/30/18).

  Amanda Reilly of E&E News, a superb outlet on environmental matters, reported on Kavanaugh’s speech at Notre Dame: “Would Kavanaugh Limit the Chevron Doctrine?” (06/10/18).

  Ben Terris of the Washington Post wrote about Brett Talley’s career as a horror novelist: “Meet the Ghost Hunter and Horror Novelist Who Writes Sen. Rob Portman’s Speeches” (12/08/14).

  Chapter 7: The Shitshow Strategy

  My chronicle of the federal government in the second half of the twentieth century comes, in good part, from research in the presidential archives of Johnson, Carter, Ford, Nixon, and Reagan. I also used the archives of the New York Times and the Washington Post.

  For the number of regulations issued by Obama in 2016, see a Forbes blog post by Clyde Wayne Crew Jr., a conservative policy scholar: “Obama’s Legacy: 2016 Ends with a Record-Shattering Regulatory Rulebook” (12/30/16).

  Paul Conklin’s account of the Johnson presidency comes from Big Daddy from the Pedernales: Lyndon Baines Johnson (Twayne Publishers, 1986).

  James K. Galbraith’s comment on Milton Friedman is from “How Milton Friedman Changed Economics, Policy and Markets” (Greg Ip and Mark Whitehouse, Wall Street Journal, 11/17/06).

  On Gerald Ford’s deregulatory policies, see Andrew Downer Crain’s “Ford, Carter, and Deregulation in the 1970s” (Journal on Telecommunications and High Technology Law, 2007) as well as Gerald Ford and the Challenges of the 1970s by Yanek Mieczkowski (University of Kentucky Press, 2005).

  For Jimmy Carter’s unlikely legacy as a deregulator, see William L. Anderson, writing for the libertarian Mises Institute: “Rethinking Carter” (10/25/00).

  For my account of how Trump used the CRA to enact regulatory rollback, I was able to talk to White House officials involved in that effort. I also used as reference Michael Grunwald’s “Trump’s Secret Weapon Against Obama’s Legacy” (Politico, 04/10/17).

  Carrie Levine reported extremely thoroughly on the Trump transition’s reliance on corporate largesse in “Donald Trump’s Inauguration Fueled by Tobacco, Oil and Drug Company Money” (Center for Public Integrity, 01/31/17).

  For the quote from the National Mining Association representative, see “U.S. Coal Miners Applaud Republican Axing of Stream Protections” (Timothy Gardner, Reuters, 02/02/17).

  Don Young’s quote comes from the Washington Post: “Trump Administration Moves to End a Ban on Alaska Hunting Practices That Many Say Are Cruel” (Darryl Fears, 05/22/17).

  The rest of this chapter relies on extensive background interviews.

  Chapter 8: Better People

  This chapter relies on multiple background interviews with several former and current Trump administration officials.

  Chapter 9: Turbulence

  Dan Diamond and Rachana Pradhan reported on their own work in an engrossing Politico Magazine story, “How We Found Tom Price’s Private Jets” (10/04/17). Their reporting is the basis for statistics about Price’s flights cited subsequently in this chapter.

  Greg Bluestein and Tamar Hallerman of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution profiled Price when he was nominated to head HHS: “Tom Price: The Georgia lawmaker Who Will Lead Trump’s Health Policy” (12/03/16). I relied on the newspaper’s archives in other portions of this chapter when discussing Price’s rise in Georgia politics.

  For the malevolent influence of Newt Gingrich on American politics, see Steve Kornacki’s The Red and the Blue: The 1990s and the Birth of Political Tribalism (Ecco, 2018).

  Dan Libit of Politico explained in an interview with Price why he had to shave his mustache (06/20/08).

  Price’s suspect stock deals were detailed by PBS: “HHS Pick Tom Price Made ‘Brazen’ Stock Trades While His Committee Was Under Scrutiny” (Marisa Taylor and Christina Jewett, Kaiser Health News, 02/08/17).

  Price’s lack of influence on Capitol Hill was well known by mid-2017. For reference, see “Price Was Never a Player on Obamacare Repeal” (Adam Cancryn, Politico, 09/29/17).

  The video of Tom Price at Bullfeathers was posted to Twitter by Yashar Ali, a writer for New York magazine and HuffPost.

  Katie Rogers and Eric Lipton of the New York Times chronicled Price’s newsletters in “Another Fantastic Week’: Tom Price’s Celebratory Travelogues” (09/29/17).

  Chapter 10: Fellow Travelers

  Some of the reporting in this chapter comes from a cover story I wrote for Newsweek in November 2017.

 
; Travel-related scandals from the George H. W. Bush and Clinton administrations come from widespread newspaper accounts from that time.

  The staff of former U.S. Representative Henry Waxman kindly found the letter he sent to then-OMB head Rob Portman.

  My accounts of the VA under David Shulkin come from background reporting. The Washington Post reported on his travel-related scandal: “Veterans Affairs Chief Shulkin, Staff Misled Ethics Officials about European Trip, Report Finds” (Lisa Rein, 02/14/18).

  ProPublica reported on the Mar-a-Lago influence at the VA: “The Shadow Rulers of the VA” (Isaac Arnsdorf, 08/07/18).

  Steve Mnuchin’s visit to Kentucky was covered by the Louisville Courier-Journal: “GOP Tax Reform Will Spur Wage Increases, Sen. McConnell and Treasury Secretary Mnuchin Say” (Grace Schneider, 08/21/17). The subsequent drama played out on Instagram and, later, in investigations by the Treasury Department’s inspector general.

  Tim Geithner’s frugal travel arrangements were covered in 2009 by CNN: “Geithner Leads by Example…in Coach” (Lesa Jensen, 03/28/09).

  Ryan Zinke’s flight to Montana was covered by Matthew Daly of the Associated Press: “Interior Officials Approved $12K Zinke Charter Flight Without Complete Information, Watchdog Says” (04/16/18).

  For reporting on Elaine Chao’s investments, see “Elaine Chao, Champion of Trump’s Infrastructure Plan, Chose to Keep Stock in a Building Company” (Tom Scheck, APM Reports, 09/29/17).

  My reporting on how the White House handled cabinet members’ travel-related scandals was conducted via background interviews with past and present members of the Trump administration, all of them sufficiently senior to have known exactly how things unraveled and who labored to put them back together again.

  Chapter 11: The Possum