Aides to President Donald Trump brace for new environment after the appointment of a special counsel
.. some of the president’s senior advisers have recently begun a study of the Democratic administration of former President Bill Clinton, examining how it managed to push through major, bipartisan budgets and reform bills, despite being the subject of an independent counsel’s probe for five of its eight years... Mr. Trump’s aides have also been pressing for more restraint by the president on Twitter ,and some weeks ago they organized what one official called an “intervention.”.. In that meeting, aides warned Mr. Trump that certain kinds of comments made on Twitter would “paint him into a corner,” both in terms of political messaging and legally.. A coterie of former campaign associates, including David Bossie, Anthony Scaramucci, Jason Miller and Corey Lewandowski, were spotted.. described the White House currently as a “toxic work environment.”.. “The president goes through moods where sometimes he wants to blow everything up,”.. the administration hasn’t lined up successors for the people Mr. Trump has considered firing.. The aides’ recommendation to Mr. Trump: cite the continuing investigation, then pivot to the economy, health care and taxes... Ken Duberstein, a former chief of staff to former President Ronald Reagan, said in an interview that he used to urge the GOP president not to respond to questions that reporters might throw his way involving the Iran-Contra scandal.“You can’t go off on a tangent. You can’t answer the sound bite gotcha questions,” Mr. Duberstein said.He said Mr. Trump should not “take the bait of a shouted question or the shiny silver dollar of being able to tweet. Because then the rest of the agenda gets left on the cutting room floor.”
How Trump’s Bodyguard Keith Schiller KO’d James Comey
Ask around how Schiller got to where he is and you hear the story of a day in 1998 when he chanced to see Trump’s second wife, Marla Maples.
.. He happened to be at the Manhattan District Attorney’s office on a drug case when he saw Maples there, as a complainant against her publicist Chuck Jones, whose fetish for shoes had prompted him to steal as many as 200 pairs from her. She was accompanied by a bodyguard.
.. Schiller decided that there was no reason why he himself could not also be a bodyguard. An assistant district attorney in the Maples case agreed to call Trump’s director of security, who in turn agreed to give Schiller a try.
.. Schiller became head of security in 2014—his predecessor, Matthew Calamari, having been promoted to executive vice president and chief operating officer of the Trump Organization.
.. by figuring that Trump would be worse for America and therefore better for Russia.
.. More often than not, Trump does not so much act as react to something he had seen on television
.. Trump no doubt resented Comey’s remark about feeling “mildly nauseous” at the thought he may have influenced the election. That was tantamount to saying that Trump had not won a great victory.
.. Imagine how those agents felt upon seeing video of Trump happily meeting with Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, along with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak
.. If nothing else, Trump and Schiller appear devoutly loyal to each other.
Who is Keith Schiller, the man Trump sent to fire Comey?
Schiller is widely regarded inside and outside the White House as the “most underestimated person on Trump’s team,” as one former aide put it — someone with constant access to Trump who has not only developed a deep level of trust with the President, but also has turned into a sort-of Trump translator... During the campaign, “it mattered more to me what Keith Schiller thought of me than what the campaign manager thought,” a former top campaign aide told CNN about Schiller. “Now I think it means more what Keith thinks of you than Reince (Trump’s chief of staff) thinks of you.”.. Friends from high school say Schiller never shied away from a fight during his younger years, a trait that has stayed with him. When protesters gathered around Trump tower during the campaign, Schiller ripped a sign out of one man’s hands a punched him when he tried to grab it back... Schiller, former aides and advisers said, understands the President better than most in the White House... “Any time I wanted to understand something, I would ask Keith,” former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski said. “I valued him for all the roles he played.”.. Schiller is regularly the aide checking the quality of the shot to make sure his boss looks good... Schiller enjoys something that not many of Trump’s White House aides has: Trust.
“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.