The Enemy of the People

by Jim Acosta

  A former senior White House official insisted to me that Kelly shouldered too much of the blame for the Porter fiasco. As this official explained, White House counsel Don McGahn knew a lot more about Porter’s background than he revealed to Kelly as the scandal was unfolding. Kelly was initially unaware that McGahn had been talking to people with direct knowledge of Porter’s abusive past. To protect McGahn, Kelly “fell on his sword,” this official said. Trump “knew the fuck-up was on McGahn,” the official added.

  This wasn’t the first time McGahn was aware of damaging information but kept it from others. He was also aware of National Security Advisor Michael Flynn’s contacts with the Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak, a senior White House official told me. There wasn’t anything malicious about McGahn keeping these secrets to himself, the official insisted. Just how he operated.

  Why would Kelly take a bullet for the White House counsel? McGahn, who has since stepped aside, had greater influence inside the West Wing than the public fully understood, this former senior official explained. As soon as the general was named chief of staff, McGahn and chief strategist Steve Bannon went to Kelly to push for the departures of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, who had become their own power center, removed from the rest of the staff. Recruiting the outgoing chief of staff, Reince Priebus, McGahn and Bannon appealed to Kelly “to send the kids home,” the official told me. The “cabal,” as this official called McGahn, Bannon, and Priebus, tried to recruit other top aides to join the rebellion. The factional infighting was part of the reason Kelly had been brought in from the Department of Homeland Security. Rather than unseat Trump’s own family members, he tried to keep the peace, as part of his mandate to bring order to the disorderly West Wing. Still, Kelly and McGahn formed close ties and became “inseparable,” the former senior official said, maintaining the counsel’s position as a power player behind the scenes.

  Jared and Ivanka were their own source of management turmoil inside the West Wing, multiple former senior White House officials told me. Getting rid of the “kids” was a running “theme” from the early days of the administration, one of those former senior officials said. Another former senior official went further, blaming Jared and Ivanka for most of the president’s bad decisions.

  “They aren’t part of the problem. They are the problem,” the ex-official said. “The railhead of every bad decision is Jared and Ivanka,” the official added, pointing to the firing of James Comey as exhibit A.

  “They are also grifters,” the official continued, commenting that the president’s daughter and son-in-law were essentially pretending to know what they were doing. Yet, they wielded enormous power. “They are the chiefs of staff,” the official added.

  But Kellyanne Conway defended Jared and Ivanka to me, blaming the revolt against “the kids” on aides who wanted the couple out of the way to advance their own agendas.

  “Some folks probably did. But those folks are gone,” Conway told me. “No wonder they wanted them to leave; the dearly departed regarded Jared and Ivanka as obstacles more than colleagues,” she added.

  Indeed, Kelly’s predecessor, Priebus, was so frustrated about his lack of influence inside the West Wing that he would go on to tell people he was just the “chief of stuff.” A former senior White House official explained why Priebus felt this way. Anytime Priebus was locked in a heated debate with Jared over a particular policy, he often felt he was in a losing position. Reince knew he was disposable. The kids were not. So, in those arguments behind the scenes, he always felt the kids were automatically in a winning position.

  Kelly was also miserable in his command position, a feeling he sometimes revealed in his public appearances. “I did something wrong and God punished me,” he joked at an event honoring the Department of Homeland Security.

  Kelly didn’t hide his agony with White House aides, often venting with the first person he saw after meeting with Trump in the Oval Office. “He was not covert about his frustration,” that former senior official told me.

  Still, for Kelly, the Porter story was a devastating blow to the general’s standing in the White House. “Everything went downhill pretty fast” for Kelly after that, the official added. As several outlets, including CNN, reported, Kelly had talked to Trump about whether he should resign, but the president, knowing Kelly wasn’t fully responsible for what had happened, decided to keep the general on board.

  With the Porter fiasco, the press office had botched its response as well. Under the circumstances at play in the whole saga, a competent press shop would never have contemplated releasing a favorable statement about an employee credibly accused of spousal or other abuse. A statement from a competent press shop would likely have read, “Rob Porter is leaving the White House. His final day was today.” Kind of the way they gave Steve Bannon the boot.

  I pressed Raj Shah, the deputy press secretary, who was filling in for Sanders in the Briefing Room that day, on that very question.

  ACOSTA: How can the White House Chief of Staff, how can the Press Secretary, how can this White House still be standing behind him when Mr. Porter appeared to be acknowledging that he had this past?

  SHAH: I think it’s fair to say that we all could have done better over the last few hours—or last few days in dealing with this situation.

  My sources told me at the time that Trump hated that statement from Raj. In Trumpworld, this was a violation of the rules: you never admit a mistake.

  What happened with Porter added up to be much more than a failure on the part of Trump’s staff. The code of ethics of the Trump White House had revealed itself yet again, as the president fell back into a familiar pattern. When it comes to allegations of sexual misconduct, Trump almost always stands with the accused and not the accuser. He had done this before; he would do it again. Speaking to reporters, Trump expressed sympathy for his former staff secretary, noting that Porter had proclaimed his innocence.

  “He also, as you probably know, says he’s innocent and I think you have to remember that,” Trump said. “He said very strongly yesterday that he’s innocent so you have to talk to him about that, but we absolutely wish him well, he did a very good job when he was at the White House.”

  That statement, siding with Porter, was another reminder of just how Trump didn’t seem to understand the president’s role of providing moral leadership in a situation like this. This would not have been tolerated at a Fortune 500 company, and yet it was happening at the White House.

  All this was exacerbated, of course, by the fact that Trump lacked a top-flight press shop. But as I’ve said before, there wasn’t much of a choice. Too many Republicans in Washington simply wouldn’t (and won’t) work for Trump. I could name names here, but I won’t. That would be wrong. But privately, a good number of well-known Republican operatives have told me they could never serve in the Trump administration. Others tried it and walked away, viewing the situation as unworkable. That left Trump with a lot of folks who, under normal circumstances, wouldn’t have been working somewhere as important as the White House.

  But the staff is not the story here, and this is key. This is why I keep coming back to what a top GOP congressional aide told me during the 2016 campaign. The staffer, who shall remain anonymous, sounded almost helpless watching from the sidelines as Trump vanquished a field of sixteen establishment candidates to win the party’s nomination.

  “Our top candidates are just playing into people’s worst prejudices rather than rising above them. And so this is what we get. The bubble will crash at some point,” the aide said, worrying that Trump would ultimately leave the party in “tatters.”

  “We reap what we sow,” he added.

  In the early days of the administration, it was equally revealing to listen to the GOP officials who had been on the inside. Former administration officials described to me scenes of unbelievable incompetence—agency after agency staffed with young, inexperienced aides who came into the administration from the Trump campaign with little o
r no government experience.

  Many inside the party told me they were concerned Trump had no real moral compass. In less than six months, he had aligned himself with white supremacists, supported an alleged child molester, and defended an accused wife beater. Some in the party may have wrestled with these demons, but Donald Trump did not.

  * * *

  ONE OF TRUMP’S POLICIES THAT MOST REPUBLICANS QUICKLY ADOPTED as their own was his stance on immigration. Gone were the days of George W. Bush’s moderate ideas on the issue, such as a path to citizenship for the nation’s undocumented immigrants living in the shadows. Trump had made his vow to crack down on immigration as a cornerstone of his campaign, in ways that took the Republican Party by surprise. Once in office, he wasn’t about to let up in his approach to the subject, including his hate-filled, extremist language. The GOP largely followed Trump’s lead.

  In January 2018, Trump began to reveal what was at the heart of his immigration agenda. During a closed-door meeting with Democratic and Republican lawmakers, he made the ugly remark that he didn’t want immigrants coming into the United States from Haiti and certain countries in Africa, nations he referred to as “shitholes.” According to Illinois Democratic senator Dick Durbin, who was at the gathering, Trump said he would rather have immigrants come in from places like Norway. So, naturally, during an event in the Oval Office, I asked Trump about his remarks. That was when he told me to get out.

  “Did you say that you wanted more people to come in from Norway,” I asked him on January 16, 2018.

  Trump then told a whopper to the reporters gathered in the room. “I want them to come in from everywhere. Everywhere,” he responded.

  Give me a break, I thought. That’s definitely not true. So, I followed up with the question that was on everybody’s mind.

  “Just Caucasian or white countries, sir? Or do you want people to come in from other parts of the world? Where there are people of color?” I asked.

  “Out,” Trump responded, ordering me to leave the Oval Office. Adding to the chaos, White House aides were shouting right in my face to drown out my questions.

  Moments later, Trump moved on to another event, in the Roosevelt Room of the West Wing, where I again attempted to ask him about his immigration comments. This time, however, a few of Trump’s aides stood right in front of me and began shouting in my face to drown me out. It was an absurd scene straight out of a totalitarian country like China, not the United States. Imagine trying to ask a question in that kind of environment. I have covered elected officials from city hall to the White House. That’s never happened before.

  My questions clearly angered Trump and his allies. An adviser who is close to the president texted me in protest: “Haiti is a shithole.”

  Truth be told, I struggled for a bit over how to relay the “shithole” story to viewers. Then the executive producer of CNN’s Situation Room, Jay Shaylor, got in my ear about a minute before my live shot to inform me that, yes, I could say the word shithole on CNN. So, I did. Minutes later, the show’s host, Wolf Blitzer, declined to say “shithole,” reminding me once again that Wolf is one of the most decent people in our business, a true gentleman.

  As for the Trump staffers screaming in my face, it’s one part of the job in Trumpworld that clearly fascinates everybody. People continually ask me, “Who are those people screaming in your face when you’re trying to ask a question?” Some of them are perfectly nice and friendly; others are not. Take Katie Price, a former makeup artist who once worked at CNN. She made a name for herself in the White House as the loudest screamer of them all. When you watch video of reporters gathered around the president in the Oval Office or the Cabinet Room trying to ask questions, Katie is the wrangler who can be heard shouting over all the voices of reporters in the room. It’s kind of impressive, in a sick and twisted way.

  “Time to go, guys!” she’d shriek. “No questions!” she’d yell, inches away from our ears. “Let’s go, Jim. Time to go!”

  Posing a question to the president with wranglers screaming in your ears is quite an experience for a White House reporter. It’s a bit like being the umpire at a baseball game and having the most unruly, drunken fans in the stands shouting directly in your face. Try calling balls and strikes in that kind of environment. I don’t blame Katie. How would she have known any better? Besides, her shrieks made her a Trump favorite. An administration official told me Trump loved the way Katie yelled at us, at one point remarking to aides that she should be deputized in his battle against illegal immigration.

  “I should send her down to the border,” he would say of her, according to the official. Katie, Trump thought, would scare the migrants away.

  I once asked Katie how she became one of Trump’s favorites. “He likes how I can be both assertive and professional,” she told me at one of his rallies.

  But I digress. Like Charlottesville and Roy Moore, the “shithole” controversy was hardly the end of the cavalcade of cringe-worthy moments at Trump’s White House. Almost like clockwork, more episodes occurred, ranging from the disturbing to the depressing.

  Immigration, it seemed for Trump, was the issue where he excelled in finding new ways to turn this reporter’s stomach.

  Consider Trump’s handling of the millions of young Americans brought into the country illegally by their parents but protected under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program known as DACA. A life-saving initiative launched by the Obama administration, DACA was designed to prevent children from being deported back to countries where they would essentially be foreigners. The DACA recipients, also known as Dreamers, are kids, teenagers, and young adults who attend our schools and colleges and, in some cases, serve in our military. During the Obama administration, they were able to live in the United States, largely without fear of deportation—which is good, because many of these DACA kids don’t even speak the language of their country of origin. They are, for all practical purposes, American.

  Back in September 2017, Trump had decided to end DACA as part of his crackdown on immigration. Now, it should be noted that about a year later, in November 2018, an appellate court decision kept the system on life support—as of this writing, the Supreme Court has not yet heard the case—but up until that relief at the appellate level, for a good year, those Dreamers were living in fear of deportation. On April 1, 2018, Trump ratcheted up that fear. As he was heading into Easter Sunday services in Florida, he blamed Democrats for the failure to pass legislation in Congress to protect the Dreamers. The truth, of course, is that for years, both parties in Congress had failed to address the problem. And in any case, it was he who had terminated the DACA program.

  @realDonaldTrump

  Border Patrol Agents are not allowed to properly do their job at the Border because of ridiculous liberal (Democrat) laws like Catch & Release. Getting more dangerous. “Caravans” coming. Republicans must go to Nuclear Option to pass tough laws NOW. NO MORE DACA DEAL!

  8:56 AM–Apr 1, 2018

  Looking back now, one easily sees how much of this was just his typical bluster. But at the time, his tweet sent shockwaves through the immigrant community. If Trump had closed the door on solving DACA, a program he had eliminated six months earlier, these young immigrants would be at risk. The DACA kids could be sent back to their countries of origin. Families would be ripped apart.

  One day after Trump made these comments, he hosted the Easter Egg Roll at the White House. As is customary, the press was invited to cover this event. Now, the expectation among White House staffers is that we reporters will stay dutifully on the sidelines, taking our pictures and keeping our mouths shut. But with his DACA tweet, Trump had rolled out his own Easter surprise. We had no idea if he was serious about pulling the plug on the Dreamers, but we meant to find out. After all, it had been his decision to go on the attack on this issue on Easter Sunday, and our feeling was, If he’s not going to relent on an occasion like this, then why should the press? So, needless to say, watching kids rol
l Easter eggs was not exactly what I had on my mind that day.

  Easter Bunny or no Easter Bunny, the president had struck fear into the lives of millions of immigrant families and the people whose lives they touched. DACA kids aren’t just a bunch of numbers in a graphic on the nightly news. They have parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters, teachers, principals, friends, classmates, coaches. The very least Trump could do was give a broader explanation of what he planned to do about the Dreamers.

  As we entered the South Lawn, the White House press wranglers were waiting for us. One of them, Caroline Sunshine, took a special interest in where I was standing for the event. Caroline had just come on board at the White House. Prior to joining the administration full time, she had worked as a White House intern. Before that, she had gained notoriety as a teen star on the Disney Channel.

  “Acosta!” she yelled. “This way,” and she ushered my photographer and me to the area where the press pool was positioned.

  Great, I thought. This is perfect. She had moved me into the press pool area, much closer to where the president would interact with the kids, and possibly within earshot of a question.

  But CNN wasn’t in the pool that day, which meant she had accidentally placed me in a better spot than where I was supposed to have been corralled. A mistake that would be exploited!