Mr. Trump asked Mr. Spicer to stay on as press secretary, reporting to Mr. Scaramucci. But Mr. Spicer rejected the offer, expressing his belief that
Mr. Scaramucci’s hiring would add to the confusion and uncertainty already engulfing the White House,
according to two people with direct knowledge of the exchange.
The president’s health care effort foundered in the Senate last week, and next week promises no respite, with his son
Donald Trump Jr. and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, due to testify before Congress on questions about their contacts with Russia.
His rapport with the president establishes a new power center in a building already bristling with rivalry.
The president has no intention of changing his behavior — he merely believes his communications staff needs to defend him better — and Mr. Scaramucci even suggested his role would be to unshackle an already unfettered president.
.. “We have accomplished so much, and we are being given credit for so little,” he said. “The good news is the people get it, even if the media doesn’t.”
.. He had hoped to last a year as press secretary. He quit after six months and a day.
.. The eventual appointment of Mr. Scaramucci was backed by the president’s daughter
Ivanka,
Mr. Kushner and the commerce secretary,
Wilbur Ross
.. Mr. Kushner has grown increasingly critical of both Mr. Spicer and Mr. Priebus, whom he regards as party establishment figures who operate out of self-interest.
.. Mr. Priebus and Stephen K. Bannon, the president’s chief strategist, both strongly opposed the appointment of Mr. Scaramucci — in large part because he enjoys an easy banter and direct line to Mr. Trump, potentially threatening their positions
Mr. Trump, aggravated by their opposition, dressed the pair down in a testy Oval Office exchange around the time he decided to offer Mr. Scaramucci — known in Trump’s circle as “The Mooch” — the job.
.. one of the reasons he hired Mr. Scaramucci was to cut down on anonymous leaking — and took a swipe at his two advisers.
.. He asked them how the leaks were happening, according to a person familiar with the discussions, and called Mr. Spicer a “good guy” who leaks only when told to by Mr. Priebus.
.. He is said to be especially high on Sebastian Gorka, a blustery foreign policy official who has been accused of having ties to far-right groups in Europe.
.. Mr. Priebus urged Mr. Trump to hire Mr. Spicer and another lieutenant, Katie Walsh, as deputy chief of staff. But Ms. Walsh left the White House after a short time when Mr. Kushner and other West Wing officials forced her out
.. In recent weeks, Mr. Trump had told people that Mr. Spicer was no longer “tough,” one of the harshest insults he can level
.. Mr. Spicer told friends he was tired of being blindsided by Mr. Trump, and weary of Mr. Trump’s constant criticism.
.. He instituted the highly contentious practice of holding off-camera briefings, less so to snub reporters than to avoid Mr. Trump’s critiques of his performance
.. Unlike others in the Trump administration, Mr. Spicer would occasionally flirt with being a sympathetic figure.
.. His tired eyes would telegraph distress signals to the television cameras: Help me. I’m sad. Please stop picking on me; this is actually hurtful. I thought the suit looked good. Donald is mean.
.. Without Mr. Spicer, who will lie to the public? Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who has all the sparkle and charm of the airline call center employee who tells you there’s no way you can get on a flight to Chicago until at least Wednesday?
.. None of them could possibly convey the combination of chutzpah and shame Mr. Spicer embodied.
It’s easy to see why Sarah Huckabee Sanders wants the TV cameras off during her White House news briefings.
.. But above all is a more simple explanation: Sanders has no earthly idea what’s going on in the White House she purports to represent.
.. The Trump White House move to have fewer briefings and to move them off camera is just a symptom. The real problem is that the people giving the briefings don’t have a clue; they can’t, as Trump put it, “stand at podium with perfect accuracy.”
.. The humiliations that ruined Sean Spicer will do the same to Sanders or whoever fills the role. Trump doesn’t seem to tell his people what he’s doing, if he knows himself. ABC News’s Jon Karl published a list last month of 26 times Sanders and Spicer said they would “get back to you” but never did. There are, surely, many more.
.. She brought out Marc Short, Trump’s legislative director, to deliver a diversionary statement about Democrats’ “needless obstruction” of Trump’s nominees. But the distraction failed when half a dozen reporters used the opportunity to quiz Short about the floundering effort in the Senate to pass Trumpcare.
.. Then came a barrage of questions about Donald Jr.’s newly reported meeting with the Russians, which negated, as CBS’s Major Garrett noted, the White House’s “long history of blanket denials” that there had been campaign contacts with the Russians.
.. “There was simply no collusion,” she said, eyebrow cocked and lip corner raised.“That’s a different question,” Garrett pointed out.
.. She also declined to echo Trump’s tweeted suggestion Monday morning that former FBI director James Comey had leaked classified information — which means he would have perjured himself when he said he didn’t. “Uh, I think there are a lot of questions out there and a lot of reports,” Sanders demurred.
.. In fairness to Sanders, there are no good answers to these questions. Trump, with his reckless tweets and nonsense claims, leaves his mouthpieces in an impossible position. No less an authority than former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee said after Trump’s vulgar tweet about Mika Brzezinski that “he makes my daughter’s job very difficult.”
But that’s no excuse. Sanders has agreed to interpret the nonsensical and to rationalize the indefensible. Like Spicer, she will fail.
this concocted dumb show of loyalty only served to suggest how unsustainable it all is.
.. The reason that this White House staff is so leaky, so prepared to express private anxiety and contempt, even while parading obeisance for the cameras, is that the President himself has so far been incapable of garnering its discretion or respect. Trump has made it plain that he is capable of turning his confused fury against anyone in his circle at any time.
.. blamed the Deputy Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein, for the legal imbroglio that Trump himself has created.
.. The President has fired a few aides, he has made known his disdain and disappointment at many others, and he will, undoubtedly, turn against more.
Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway, Jared Kushner, Jeff Sessions, Sean Spicer–––who has not yet felt the lash?
.. Trump’s egotism, his demand for one-way loyalty, and his incapacity to assume responsibility for his own untruths and mistakes were, his biographers make plain, his pattern in business and have proved to be his pattern as President.
.. Veteran Washington reporters tell me that they have never experienced this kind of anxiety, regret, and sense of imminent personal doom among White House staffers
.. by retailing information anonymously they will be able to live with themselves after serving a President who has proved so disconnected from the truth and reality.
.. Pat, who on vacations resided separately from the President.
.. making sure that Henry Kissinger was no longer seated at state dinners next to the most attractive woman at the occasion.
.. Nixon, who barely acknowledged, much less touched, his own wife in public, resented Kissinger’s public, and well-cultivated, image as a Washington sex symbol.
.. Incident after incident revealed Nixon’s distaste for his fellow human beings, his racism and anti-Semitism, his overpowering personal suspicions, and his sad longings. Nixon, the most anti-social of men
.. It was all for the sake of “history,” Nixon said.
.. Kennedy and Johnson had taped selectively, but Nixon wanted it all for the record––his own records––but no one was to know.
.. there is little evidence that the show of bogus loyalty performed last week has any basis in real life.
.. Will Bannon, Spicer, Conway, Sessions, Kushner, and many others who have been battered in one way or another by Trump, keep their counsel? Will all of them risk their futures to protect someone whose focus is on himself alone and the rest be damned? Will none of them conclude that they are working for a President whose honesty is on a par with his loyalty to others?