Why Trump’s White House Won’t Stop Leaking

Sorry, Anthony Scaramucci. Your mole hunt is doomed.

Over the past 15 years, I’ve worked in dozens of political organizations that all leaked to varying degrees. In 2008, I was the national press secretary for the Republican National Committee when internal concerns about vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin turned the final weeks of John McCain’s presidential campaign into a gusher of leaks.

.. In contrast, last year I was the communications director on Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign, an organization that proudly rarely leaked.

.. To borrow from Tolstoy: Political organizations that don’t leak are all alike; every one that does leak is leaky in its own way. In some leaky organizations, people leak to advance agendas or undermine opponents. Some leakers seek to enhance their egos or curry favor with reporters. Sometimes people leak without even realizing it, speaking carelessly to journalists or lobbyists, who then repeat the story to others. The common thread is that unauthorized leaks are a symptom of political organizations that have a broken culture: They lack unity, trust and self-discipline.

.. But mole hunts inevitably lead only to more moles, and more leaks.

.. Trump’s White House is not leaky because of a few bad apples. The No. 1 reason why it leaks is because his team lacks unity. It’s not without irony that many of the leaks are about the very staff infighting that is causing the leaks.

..  in the White House, Trump has failed to unite his team (let alone the American people) around an organizing principle that is larger than defending the president’s own reputation. Without a common purpose, factions feel the need to leak against one another.

.. If Trump wants loyalty from his Cabinet and staff, he must recognize that loyalty is a two-way street and show them more respect than he has to date. With his attacks on Attorney General Jeff Sessions, he’s demonstrating precisely the opposite: Even his most loyal supporters cannot expect loyalty in return.

.. The temptation to curry favor with powerful influencers is real, especially for aides with big egos or little experience. Obviously, this White House has plenty of both, which makes it even more important that Trump model the behavior he wants to see in others.

.. Instead, the president’s tweets and interviews show a lack of discipline. It is no secret that he continues to have off-the-record conversations with the news media and sometimes shares more than he should. In this environment, it’s not realistic to expect discipline from staff when the boss sets a poor example.

.. However, his presidential campaign leaked like a sieve for many of the same reasons that his White House does. The problems are more acute now only because his team lacks the shared goal of winning an election.

.. “You are either going to work inside the culture the way the president wants it or you’re gonna be on Pennsylvania Avenue out here selling postcards to the tourists,” Trump’s new communications director, Anthony Scaramucci, said on Fox News this week.

With all due respect, he has it backward. The leaks will stop only if President Trump instills a culture of unity, loyalty and self-discipline in his administration.

Blue State Blues: The Bible Warned Against ‘Fake News’

The setting is dramatic. Moses has led the Children of Israel from slavery in Egypt and across the Red Sea to freedom. He has guided them to Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments, and repented their sin of the Golden Calf. Now, Moses stands with them near the boundary of the Promised Land.

.. The majority, ten out of the twelve, give a discouraging report to the people. “We came to the land to which you sent us, and it is flowing with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. However, the people who inhabit the land are mighty, and the cities are extremely huge and fortified, and there we saw even the offspring of the giant. … We are unable to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we. … The land we passed through to explore is a land that consumes its inhabitants, and all the people we saw in it are men of stature. … There we saw the giants …. In our eyes, we seemed like grasshoppers, and so we were in their eyes.” (13: 27-33)

This is the first recorded example of “fake news.” It includes two types of fakery. One involves “facts” that are just made up — stories of giants and grasshoppers. The other involves true facts — “milk and honey” — that are spun in a damaging way, couched in editorial language — “We are unable” — that is calculated to create division and despair.

.. The “fake news” has had its effect — not only misinforming the people, but encouraging political division and sedition.

.. As punishment, the Children of Israel are condemned to wander in the desert for another 40 years, until nearly all of the adults have died. Only a new generation, the Lord decrees, will be able to enter the Promised Land. (14: 29-35)

.. So fake news is nothing new. What fundamentally divided the spies was not what they saw when they scouted the land, but what they believed about their ability to inhabit it. The majority did not have enough faith, and sought to undermine the faith of others. They planted faulty intelligence with that deliberate, destructive agenda in mind.

.. Today we face the same problem. The truth is obvious enough for our reporters to see. But some are determined to divide the country and undermine its leadership. They feed false information to the public, or present true facts in the most negative light. As a result, half the country lives in a nightmarish alternate reality, terrified of the country’s leadership.

It is not just a crisis of reporting, but also a crisis of faith. We lack faith in the country’s institutions; we lack faith in ourselves.

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.