Meetings are set for next week as the president returns from his overseas trip
the president slept only two hours in Saudi Arabia the night before his widely anticipated speech on Islam that he spent little time rehearsing.
.. One major change under consideration would see the president’s social media posts vetted by a team of lawyers, who would decide if any needed to be adjusted or curtailed. The idea, said one of Mr. Trump’s advisers, is to create a system so that tweets “don’t go from the president’s mind out to the universe.”
Some of Mr. Trump’s tweets—from hinting that he may have taped conversations with Mr. Comey to suggesting without any evidence that former President Barack Obama wire-tapped Trump Tower—have opened him to criticism and at times confounded his communications team.
Trump aides have long attempted to rein in his tweeting, and some saw any type of legal vetting as difficult to implement. “I would be shocked if he would agree to that,” said Barry Bennett, a former Trump campaign aide.
.. Some senior administration officials said they are considering hiring their own private attorneys... the president may also bring back a trio of former campaign officials: Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie, to handle communications and political duties related to the investigation, and David Urban, for a senior White House job.
- .. Mr. Bossie, the deputy campaign manager, is a long-time political operative who worked for the House oversight committee in the 1990s.
- Mr. Urban worked as a top Republican Senate aide in the late 1990s during the Bill Clinton impeachment proceedings.
.. “The most important thing is Trump listens to them,” one senior administration official said. “And it will free up the rest of the White House to focus on health care, taxes and the things we should be worrying about.”
.. Mr. Lewandowski’s return may prove awkward internally. He was accused of assaulting a reporter at a campaign event—charges were eventually dropped—and Trump family members believed he was peddling negative stories about Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, campaign officials said at the time. He was pushed out at the behest of Mr. Trump’s children.
.. One White House official said that Mr. Spicer, parodied by comedian Melissa McCarthy on “Saturday Night Live,” has taken on an unwanted celebrity status that threatens to undercut his effectiveness as a spokesman. “I wouldn’t wish being parodied on Saturday Night Live on anybody,” the official said.
.. Mr. Bannon’s critics say they suspect him of leaking to the press and regard him as too much of a firebrand to massage the president’s agenda through Washington’s traditional processes. Mr. Kushner’s detractors in the West Wing refer to him as the “young princeling.”
.. questioned the judgment of communications officials, citing as an example the rollout of a tax-plan outline in April that featured Goldman Sachs alumni Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, and Gary Cohn
.. “The left is automatically going to say the tax plan is tailored to the rich and to Wall Street. And we just gave them an image of the rich and of Wall Street,” one Trump former campaign official said.
Trump Discovers the Dangers of Governing at Daredevil Speed
Now the city is leaving its bruising mark on him, with the same astonishing swiftness that has been a hallmark of his lightning-strike political career.
.. all meant to disrupt American politics as usual.
.. Ten days of shocks, kicking off with Mr. Trump’s surprise ouster of James B. Comey .. have left the West Wing reeling.
.. dread of “5 o’clock,” marking the arrival of the daily dump of damaging leaks or fresh reports of staff infighting.
.. It is as if some unseen adversary has copied Mr. Trump’s own velocity and ferocity in an attempt to destroy him
.. Sources are shuttling all kinds of information about Mr. Trump to reporters at a pace the White House cannot match.
.. “Washington feels like a kiddie soccer game — tons of frenzy but no strategy,” said Senator Ben Sasse
.. members of Mr. Trump’s team are hoping to slow the tempo set by the president and his hard-charging chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon.
They have suggested that he calm down, spend less time on Twitter, and avoid making decisions too quickly.
.. Brian Ott, a Texas Tech professor who has analyzed Mr. Trump’s use of social media, said: “The velocity at which this is happening right now is absolutely unprecedented. News is breaking so fast the stories are stepping on each other.”
Hannity: Anti-Trump Forces ‘Wetting Their Pants Over Comey Memo’
In his Opening Monologue, Sean Hannity said the five collective forces aligned against President Trump are “wetting their pants” over the James Comey memo.
Hannity said the media, establishment politicians and others are “directly threatened” by the prospect of Trump having a successful presidency.
“If the president succeeds, they fail,” he said. “Their shock [at his win] has given way to anger and real bitterness.”
“I am most mystified that so many people in the West Wing are spending so much time trashing their colleagues, ill-serving the president in the process but that is a deliberate decision on their part,” he said.
“Our biggest current leaker is [James] Comey who is obviously going back to his notes, internal memorandum and through a friend or friends leaking them to the press,” ..
.. Former Whitewater Independent Counsel Robert Ray said it’s possible that some of the White House leaks have resulted from Trump’s combative relationship with intelligence agencies.
.. Rove said outside of the intelligence community, White House staffers are the principal source of the leaks against the Trump administration.
.. “I am most mystified that so many people in the West Wing are spending so much time trashing their colleagues, ill-serving the president in the process but that is a deliberate decision on their part,” he said.