As President Trump manages his latest crises, he is turning to strategies from his tumultuous business career: rely on family and a few trusted advisers, demand absolute loyalty from those beyond the inner circle, threaten opponents with legal action, and insist on bare-bones briefings.
.. His threats — such as tweeting that fired FBI Director James B. Comey “better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!” — have often backfired.
.. “The day I realized it can be smart to be shallow was, for me, a deep experience”
.. Trump’s view of Washington is rooted in deep distrust of government authority, stemming from the day in 1973 when the Justice Department sued him and his father for racial bias
.. When judges suspended his entry ban that mostly affected Muslim travelers and immigrants, he attacked judges and vowed to “see you in court,” just as he had during his business career.
.. Trump often deployed a tactic of telling others that he was taping their conversations and monitoring their work, and threatening to file lawsuits or to reduce payments owed to contractors. By suggesting that he had secretly recorded his dinner conversation with Comey, Trump apparently hoped to prevent the fired FBI director from speaking negatively about him.
.. Flynn’s firing took 18 days from the time that acting attorney general Sally Yates warned White House Counsel Donald McGahn that Flynn had compromised himself
.. McGahn is the nephew of Patrick “Paddy” McGahn, who once was Trump’s lawyer.
.. Paddy McGahn “was one of the few people that just didn’t care and would say anything to Trump,” O’Donnell said in a telephone interview. “He was a fixer, getting out in front of things, issues that might come, before they turned into problems.”
.. A former White House lawyer who has spoken to McGahn said the counsel ill served the president if he did not make it sound like an emergency.
.. there are concerns that McGahn, unlike his uncle, was reluctant to stand up to Trump.
.. He often paired the lawsuits with verbal vitriol, seeking to intimidate those he sued. While Trump keeps up the vitriol in the White House with his use of Twitter
What Is Steve Bannon And Jeff Sessions’ Shared Vision For Remaking America?
GROSS: So the goal is to keep America more white and Christian?
BAZELON: Well, yes. I think, bluntly speaking, that’s the case. So Sessions, for example, on Bannon’s radio show a couple of years ago was talking about an earlier period in American history of high immigration in the beginning of the 20th century. And he talked about that as a radical time. And he used that in a kind of pejorative sense. And then he said that the solution was the 1924 immigration quotas Congress passed and that those quotas were, quote, “good for America.”
So the 1924 immigration quotas barred immigration from most of Asia. And they tightly capped the number of people who could come from Italy, the number of Jews, people from the Middle East and Africa. So we’re not talking about a kind of neutral form of immigration restrictions. We’re talking about a particular way of trying to hold on to a vision of America, the kind of traditional Christian European demographic.
GROSS: So you say that Sessions and Bannon see immigration and the country’s changing demographics as America’s chief internal threat. What is the threat?
BAZELON: Well, I think from their point of view, there’s a kind of cultural threat going on. So one of the things Bannon said before the election was that he was worried that so many of the CEOs in Silicon Valley were from South Asia or from Asia.
And then he said a country is more than an economy, we’re a civic society. That seems to imply that if we have too many minorities and foreign-born people here, we’re not going to have the same kind of civic society that we’ve had in the past, that there is a kind of damage or fraying that will be happening. And that’s a, you know, very distinct idea of why you want to prevent immigration.
BAZELON: In 2015, Jeff Sessions wrote a 23-page memo to his colleagues saying that the party had to show working class voters how lax immigration policies have stolen their jobs and erased their prospects for moving up the social ladder. What do you know about that memo?
.. One of the themes that Trump emphasized throughout his campaign and has continued to push as president is the idea that there’s this very dark rise in crime happening particularly in what he calls the inner cities. It’s not statistically accurate. Actually, we’ve had a 25-year decline in crime with a small uptick in 2015.
But Trump really pushes this notion that America is under threat and that there’s all this danger. And there’s an obvious political reason for this. Republican presidential candidates since Nixon have tended to win office when they really strike a law and order theme
.. And so instead of kind of balancing the interests of law enforcement with the interests of people in the community who feel threatened by the police, we’re really seeing a shift here toward always siding on – with the police.
.. Jim Comey as head of the FBI has a fair amount of independence. But you’re right, the Justice Department oversees his work. And he wanted a kind of backup in refuting Trump from the Justice Department that Jeff Sessions was not willing to give.
There is a kind of further wrinkle here, which was that because Sessions didn’t mention his own meetings with the Russian ambassador during his confirmation
.. So during the George W. Bush administration, Alberto Gonzales testified before Congress. He wound up I believe saying, I do not recall, more than 60 times. This was in relation to another scandal over firing a group of U.S. attorneys that actually was also prompted by voter fraud investigations if you can believe it. And Gonzales was not prosecuted for perjury. But he did have to resign.
.. And I do think it’s a very good sign that Jeff Sessions recused himself from the investigation of the potential ties between the Trump campaign and Russia because that was an important norm kicking in. Trump publicly asked Sessions not to recuse himself, said he didn’t see any reasons for Sessions to do that. And Sessions did it anyway. And that was the right thing for him to do in terms of his professional integrity.
Never Ask if It Can Get Worse, Because It Always Can
If [FBI director James Comey’s] memo exists, then there is compelling evidence that the president committed a potentially impeachable offense. Here is the alleged chain of events: First, Trump asked Comey to drop an investigation of a close former associate and a former senior official in his administration. Second, Comey refused. Third, weeks later Trump fired Comey. Fourth, Trump then misled the American people regarding the reason for the dismissal. Each prong is important, but it’s worth noting that the fourth prong — Trump’s deception regarding the reason for Comey’s termination — is particularly problematic in context. Deception is classic evidence of malign intent.
.. But if there isn’t a taping system in the White House… Trump should stop sending out tweets suggesting there is one. We had the odd situation a few days ago of White House press secretary Sean Spicer repeatedly insisting Trump had been “clear” in his tweet about tapes of the Trump–Comey conversations… but that tweet wasn’t clear at all, and Spicer refused to confirm or deny that there was a taping system in the White House.
It’s a yes or no question. Are there tapes of these conversations or not?
If those tapes exist, and they support Trump’s account of events and not the account of anonymous sources and Comey… it means Trump has exculpatory evidence and is choosing to not release it and expose his accusers as liars and publicly humiliate them. How often do people choose to withhold evidence that clears them of accusations?
.. Trump told those present — including Mr. Pence and Attorney General Jeff Sessions — to leave the room except for Mr. Comey.
Boy, that doesn’t look bad, does it? Let’s remove anyone Trump trusts from the room who could verify his side of the story so he can discuss an extremely sensitive topic with a law enforcement official who is investigating his administration. What could go wrong, huh?
.. Apparently Steve Bannon was among the Trump advisors who wanted the president to hold off on firing Comey. When Bannon is calling for prudence and deliberation, you should probably slow down.
.. Notice how often lately Republicans are asked to step in and defend Trump not because of the policies he wants to enact, not because of his legislative agenda or his vision for the country, but for his own impulsive decision-making.
Comey Memo Says Trump Asked Him to End Flynn Investigation
President Trump asked the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, to shut down the federal investigation into Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, in an Oval Office meeting in February, according to a memo Mr. Comey wrote shortly after the meeting.
“I hope you can let this go,” the president told Mr. Comey, according to the memo.
The documentation of Mr. Trump’s request is the clearest evidence that the president has tried to directly influence the Justice Department and F.B.I. investigation into links between Mr. Trump’s associates and Russia.
.. In a statement, the White House denied the version of events in the memo.
“While the president has repeatedly expressed his view that General Flynn is a decent man who served and protected our country, the president has never asked Mr. Comey or anyone else to end any investigation, including any investigation involving General Flynn,” the statement said. “The president has the utmost respect for our law enforcement agencies, and all investigations. This is not a truthful or accurate portrayal of the conversation between the president and Mr. Comey.”
.. Mr. Comey created similar memos — including some that are classified — about every phone call and meeting he had with the president, the two people said.
.. Despite the conversation between Mr. Trump and Mr. Comey, the investigation of Mr. Flynn has proceeded.
.. Part of the Flynn investigation is centered on his financial ties to Russia and Turkey.
.. When the meeting ended, Mr. Trump told those present — including Mr. Pence and Attorney General Jeff Sessions — to leave the room except for Mr. Comey.
Alone in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump began the discussion by condemning leaks to the news media, saying that Mr. Comey should consider putting reporters in prison for publishing classified information, according to one of Mr. Comey’s associates.
.. In 2007, he told Congress about a now-famous showdown with senior White House officials over the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program. The White House disputed Mr. Comey’s account, but the F.B.I. director at the time, Robert S. Mueller III, kept notes that backed up Mr. Comey’s story.
.. At that dinner, on Jan. 27, Mr. Trump asked Mr. Comey at least two times for a pledge of loyalty — which Mr. Comey declined