The Enemy of the People

by Jim Acosta

  The same official said that Trump’s unpredictability often made life miserable for top officials in the West Wing, mainly Chief of Staff John Kelly, who could be overheard outside the Oval Office asking other staffers, “You didn’t leave him alone, did you?”

  Kelly was kidding, a separate senior White House official explained, acknowledging the chief of staff often joked about his unhappiness with Trump.

  “He didn’t disguise the fact that he didn’t always like his job. He has a very dry sense of humor,” the senior official explained.

  It goes without saying that what most puzzled and worried national security officials inside the administration was Trump’s coziness with Russian president Vladimir Putin. There was just something strange about how, despite the heightened scrutiny of his relationship with Russia and the investigations surrounding him, Trump never criticized Putin, and in fact he pursued policies that benefited the Kremlin, often over the interests of the American people. Yes, the Trump administration finally imposed sanctions on Moscow, but it did so, for all intents and purposes, because it was forced to take action by Congress. A question posed time and again at Trump press conferences and at White House briefings was why the president just couldn’t bring himself to agree with the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election.

  As we traveled the world with Trump on his tumultuous foreign trips, the president would all but toe the Kremlin line on a variety of issues. Take NATO, for example. Again, much of this dates back to the campaign, when Trump would refer to the decades-old alliance as “obsolete,” but he continued this baffling behavior as president. When we got to Belgium in May 2017, for a meeting of NATO in Brussels, Trump was beating up on the alliance again. One of the key questions of that trip was whether he would honor Article 5 of the NATO charter, which states that an attack on one member country is an attack on all members of the alliance. The one and only time that article was put into action was after 9/11, when NATO countries joined forces and went to war against the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan. For starters, there should never be a conversation about whether a U.S. president will honor Article 5. The mere mention of that all but invites Putin to meddle in the affairs of NATO’s smaller member states, such as those in the Baltic region. Trump had suggested during the campaign that his commitment to Article 5 might hinge on whether members of the alliance were meeting their financial commitments to the organization and devoting 2 percent of their GDP to defense spending. Some countries were falling short in that regard.

  Trump tried to sell this squishiness on NATO in populist terms during a speech at NATO headquarters in Brussels, as he heaped criticism on U.S. allies.

  “Twenty-three of the twenty-eight member nations are still not paying what they should be paying and what they are supposed to be paying for their defense. This is not fair to the people and taxpayers of the United States,” he said in his speech.

  He never explicitly restated America’s commitment to Article 5 during the course of his remarks. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson later told reporters that Trump was still on board with that key pillar of the NATO alliance. But was he? As Trump might say, “Who the hell knows?” Privately, national security officials were growing increasingly worried about Trump’s true intentions. And diplomatic officials with NATO and at foreign embassies in DC with whom I spoke were beginning to wonder whether Trump could be counted as a friend when it came to European stability. Nobody could figure out what it all meant, but it was concerning, administration and diplomatic sources have told me. Publicly, it should be noted, NATO’s secretary general Jens Stoltenberg has said Trump’s tactics have prompted some countries to increase their defense spending.

  The pattern continued, as we all remember, during Trump’s meeting with Putin in Hamburg, at the G20 summit in July 2017. Trump and Putin met behind closed doors for more than two hours on the sidelines of the summit. After their meeting was over, Secretary Tillerson told reporters that Trump had pressed Putin on the election interference issue. That seemed significant, we all thought. Putin, the secretary of state said, had denied the allegation. But the Russians had a different take on the closed-door discussion. Foreign minister Sergey Lavrov told reporters that Trump seemed to accept Putin’s denials and even conceded that the election-meddling story had been exaggerated in the American media. That seemed believable given Trump’s tirades on Twitter over the Mueller investigation. Even more troubling, the Washington Post reported a year and half later, in January 2019, that Trump had sought to keep notes from the closed-door meeting with Putin from being leaked and instructed his interpreter not to talk about the encounter. Add to that, Trump and Putin had a separate meeting after dinner at the same G20 in Hamburg, but that encounter wasn’t even disclosed until days later. Further, Trump did not bring his own interpreter to that meeting. Video emerged of the two leaders at the dinner table from that night. Trump can be seen in the video motioning to Putin in a way that appeared to indicate he wanted to pull the Russian president aside to speak to him in private. All of this added to the speculation in the U.S. national security community that something was off with Trump’s behavior. It was all so damn puzzling.

  Trump and Putin had another peculiar encounter later in the year, at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Vietnam. During that November 2017 conversation, Trump said he and Putin again spoke about the continuing questions regarding interference in the 2016 U.S. election. Trump sounded almost sympathetic as he relayed how Putin had denied it all.

  “Every time he sees me, he says, ‘I didn’t do that,’ and I really believe that, when he tells me that, he means it,” Trump said to reporters on Air Force One. “I think he is very insulted by it, which is not a good thing for our country.”

  The comment made waves all the way back in Washington. Who cares if Putin is upset about the special counsel’s investigation? What’s more important than getting to the bottom of a conspiracy by a foreign adversary to interfere in an American election? Both Republicans and Democrats largely agree with the refrain that Putin can have better relations with the United States when he ceases his destabilizing actions. Trump’s point of view appears to dovetail more with the rhetoric coming out of Moscow than the bipartisan concerns about election integrity back in Washington. And this is precisely what worried members of his own national security team. It was one of those episodes that just seemed weird. If it had happened only once, that could be understood. But this acceptance of the Kremlin’s version of events kept happening and would only get louder and more emphatic as time went on.

  Trump’s unusual behavior with autocrats and dictators extended well beyond his relationship with Putin. As we all saw during his trip to Asia in 2017, he cozied up to China’s president Xi Jinping before jetting off to the Philippines, where he laughed it up with that country’s brutal leader, Rodrigo Duterte.

  In Beijing, Trump and Xi got along famously. Xi rolled out the red carpet for Trump’s visit to the Chinese capital with the kind of pomp and circumstance that other world leaders have come to recognize as the way to this president’s heart. In Beijing’s Forbidden City, there were elegantly choreographed dances. Xi told Ivanka that her daughter had become a national obsession after she sang in Mandarin for the Chinese people. Trump ate it all up.

  A senior White House official acknowledged that the two leaders have forged a close bond. For all of the criticism of the president’s relationship with Putin, this official told me Trump and Xi have the real “bromance.”

  “What’s fascinating to me is that he’s much cozier with President Xi. And I can’t believe that doesn’t get more coverage,” the official said.

  Meanwhile, members of the White House press corps learned what traveling to China is truly all about. We had to be on guard at all times to prevent any kind of cyberattacks on our cell phones. As we landed in Beijing, we turned over our mobile phones and laptops, which were all placed in a metal box on our charte
r plane. We used burner phones and laptops instead to prevent hackers from infiltrating our devices and wreaking havoc. It’s an important reminder of the liberties we take for granted in the United States. In China, there is no expectation of privacy, and there is certainly no respect for freedom of thought.

  Having this kind of awareness of the importance of freedom of thought and expression is an essential American value that should be shared by any U.S. president, in my view. During a trip to China in November 2014, President Obama held a rare joint news conference with Xi. What was so remarkable about that press conference was that Xi actually took a question from an American journalist, Mark Landler of the New York Times. Landler pressed Xi on press access issues in China. And remarkably, after it first seemed that Xi was going to ignore the question, the Chinese leader actually answered it—not to anybody’s satisfaction, except for the Chinese, but he answered it. We later learned that it took some arm-twisting from top White House officials, including Obama, to persuade Xi to take the question. It was a critical moment during Obama’s trip, demonstrating the U.S. commitment to press rights around the world.

  Flash forward three years to Trump’s so-called press conference with Xi. The Trump team didn’t do the same arm-twisting. So, there were no questions, which meant it wasn’t really a news conference.

  “It was at the Chinese insistence there were no questions today,” Sanders told reporters.

  Previous press and advance officials from both Democratic and Republican administrations complained in news accounts that the Trump team had stumbled badly. As these veterans from past administrations explained, the Chinese always gripe about questions. They never want to take questions because they can’t control what American journalists are going to ask. But it’s the job of the White House, including the U.S. president, to insist that the press always be allowed to do its job. That’s standing up for American values on the world stage. If the Chinese want to have the American president posing side by side with their leader, an image of legitimacy and stability to send to their citizens, then they need to respect U.S. values. The problem with Trump, of course, is that he couldn’t care less about press freedom.

  This total lack of regard for the American press was magnified further during Trump’s visit to the Philippines. In Manila, he once again demonstrated his fondness for brutal autocrats, as he praised that country’s leader, Rodrigo Duterte.

  “We’ve had a great relationship,” he said at a bilateral meeting with Duterte.

  After the two leaders delivered their statements, reporters attempted to shout their questions, only to be ridiculed.

  “You are the spies,” Duterte said, getting a chuckle out of Trump. “You are,” Duterte continued. Trump laughed some more.

  Duterte had good reason to dodge questions from U.S. reporters. Ever since he came into office, he has presided over a violent crackdown on suspected drug dealers in his country, a campaign that has resulted in thousands of extrajudicial killings and sparked a global outcry. Journalists are also murdered in the Philippines. In 2017, the year of Trump’s visit, the Philippines ranked as the fifth-most-dangerous country in the world for journalists. After her work uncovering the brutality of Duterte’s regime, a fellow journalist and former CNN reporter in the Philippines, Maria Ressa, was accused of tax evasion, a charge regarded around the world as an act of retaliation by the government in Manila.

  If the Trump folks had done their homework before arriving in Manila, they would have learned that, in 2016, Duterte even endorsed the idea of assassinating journalists.

  “Just because you’re a journalist you are not exempted from assassination, if you’re a son of a bitch,” Duterte said, in an appalling admission.

  Despite this thuggish record, Trump declined to press his counter-part on human rights issues.

  “Human rights briefly came up in the context of the Philippines’ fight against illegal drugs,” Sarah Sanders told reporters after Trump’s visit with Duterte. A spokesman for Duterte contradicted her, incredibly or maybe not so incredibly, saying the subject of human rights never came up in discussions between the two leaders. Was Sanders lying? Or was it Duterte’s folks? How were we to know?

  Later that night, while having drinks with top White House officials, I remarked to retired army general H. R. McMaster, Trump’s national security advisor, that Trump and Duterte seemed to be getting along like old friends. McMaster stared at me coldly and gave no response. I thought it was odd that he couldn’t tell me one way or the other before he silently walked away.

  Now, this may be where a critic chimes in that “we don’t care about a bunch of whiny reporters” and their questions. Or perhaps you may ask, “Who are we to tell the people of the Philippines or China what to do?”

  But that’s exactly the job of an American president on the world stage. No, the president is not supposed to harass foreign leaders, insisting that they live their lives and lead their countries exactly how we do. But there are some democratic values we can defend on the world stage, such as free and fair elections and a free press. We know these institutions are worth defending because of the quality of life we enjoy in the United States. An American president could tell a world leader that these principles are worth respecting because they helped create the kind of enviable living conditions that made the United States the most prosperous society mankind has ever known.

  As Trump traveled the world, it was dawning on me and, I’m sure, on many of my colleagues in the press that other Western leaders and their top officials were beginning to worry about what was happening to America. European leaders were certainly saying so publicly after their dealings with Trump. The U.S. president’s sudden love affair with autocratic leaders, which he demonstrated time and again, and his erratic behavior, as demonstrated by his statements and tweets, became a national security concern during the first two years of his presidency.

  Even without the worries over his launching a unilateral nuclear strike, Trump had given our allies more than enough cause for concern. More than anything else specific, there was the growing realization that the United States could no longer be counted on to play the geopolitical role that it had occupied for decades, whether that meant honoring commitments to NATO allies or pressing China’s leaders on human rights violations.

  All this set the stage for Trump’s most unexpected overture yet: an invitation to meet with the world’s most oppressive dictator, Kim Jong-un of North Korea.

  * * *

  THROUGHOUT 2017, TRUMP HAD BEEN INVOLVED IN A RHETORICAL arms race with Kim, which featured threats, name calling, and all manner of grade school behavior, all the while, behind the scenes, having other aims in mind. Trump clearly wanted to have the summit to end all summits with the North Korean dictator. To give credit where credit is due, Trump officials in the White House and over at the State Department, aided by some intense diplomatic efforts on the part of the South Koreans, achieved the unthinkable when they finalized the Trump-Kim summit.

  Not surprisingly, there were some hiccups along the way, and for a time, the entire summit was canceled after the North Koreans missed a planning session and insulted Mike Pence. But Trump left the door open for the summit to move forward in his letter to Kim calling it off. The scuttled summit quickly became something of an embarrassment for the White House. A staffer in the White House Communication Agency, a nonpolitical military office that provides audio and video coverage of the president’s movements, produced a coin to commemorate the Trump-Kim summit. One of our producers, Noah Gray, a well-known collector of challenge coins—these are frequently traded back and forth between law enforcement and military officials as a sign of friendship—had obtained one of the newly minted items. After Noah got wind of the coin, we were buzzing around the press areas of the White House. What in the world is this? we all thought. This is going to go viral. And it did.

  Photos of the coin triggered an avalanche of amazement and some ridicule on social media. The coin featured
Trump and Kim, face-to-face, with the words “Supreme Leader” next to the image of the dictator of North Korea. “Supreme Leader”? Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, in a sign that the administration was seeking to elevate Kim’s stature, was already calling him “Chairman Kim,” a sanitizing of the dictator’s true role in North Korea, which is that of an oppressor of his own people. The nonpolitical staffers at the White House Communications Agency received an unfair amount of abuse over this coin, which had obviously been produced with the best of intentions. But the coin illustrated some of the concerns shared by world leaders about the prospect of a Trump-Kim summit. What was needed in confronting the dangerous regime in Pyongyang was real progress, not reality TV–style theatrics.

  Within a week, to the relief of the global coin-collecting community, the summit was back on. On June 1, Trump and Pompeo walked out to the microphones on the South Lawn of the White House and announced that it was full steam ahead. There was a lot of relief behind the scenes inside the West Wing. We had heard that numerous West Wing officials, including advance staffers, had put in long hours arranging Trump’s summit with Kim. Those staffers were well aware of the pride Trump took in showing off the letter he had received from the North Korean dictator, as part of their correspondence in setting up their face-to-face meeting. In short, Trump seemed more invested in this summit with Kim than other parts of his foreign policy agenda. From Seoul to Washington, there were even questions about whether he could be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. A Nobel Peace Prize for Trump? Whenever Trump was asked about that prospect, you could see his eyes widen. This was something he wanted badly.