‘Looking Like a Liar or a Fool’: What It Means to Work for Trump
President Trump has never shown any reluctance to sacrifice a surrogate to serve a short-term political need
.. Vice President Mike Pence, who was part of the small group of advisers who planned Mr. Comey’s ouster in near secrecy.
.. it is not clear what type of changes Mr. Trump is prepared to make or who he can draw as a replacement. In the short term, Mr. Trump and his team have focused their energies on a familiar fixation — rooting out leaks in the leaky West Wing.
.. The president, said Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, “resembles a quarterback who doesn’t call a huddle and gets ahead of his offensive line so nobody can block him and defend him because nobody knows what the play is.”
.. He has been especially critical of Mr. Spicer, they said, openly musing about replacing him and telling people in his circle that he kept his own press secretary out of the loop in dismissing Mr. Comey until the last possible moment because he feared that the communications staff would leak the news.
.. Mr. Trump has raised the Fox News host Kimberly Guilfoyle to allies as a possible press secretary
.. Those who have managed to stay in Mr. Trump’s orbit over a period of time have developed unique adaptation skills.
Campaign aides learned not to lean too much on his accounts of events, steering away from unequivocal public pronouncements unless they could point to his words.
.. a sense, associates say, that a tacit agreement exists between him and the people who work for him: In exchange for the wealth, fame and power he conveys to them, they agree to absorb incoming fire directed at him.
.. “With Mr. Trump, it’s pretty simple: Once he makes up his mind on something, that’s it,” said Sam Nunberg, a former Trump political adviser who remains close to the president’s team.
“You either work for him” or quit