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@realDonaldTrump
Don’t let the FAKE NEWS tell you that there is big infighting in the Trump Admin. We are getting along great, and getting major things done!
(9:14 a.m., March 7, 2017)
The institution of the presidency has several aspects. It reaches beyond the president’s Oval Office to the Executive Office of the President (EOP), a series of presidential bureaucracies employing about four thousand people. Most prominent within the EOP are three organizations.
Closest to the president is the White House Office that includes top staff in charge of media relations, congressional relations, policy planning, and executive branch appointments. The president’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB), employing 529 people, performs a variety of “prime ministerial” functions for the president. These include composing his annual budget proposal, improving management in the executive branch, recommending vetoes, and “legislative clearance”—determining which policy ideas from the executive branch go to Congress as presidential proposals.
Two other major EOP organizations are the National Security Council that meets regularly to assess and manage security threats to the nation. Its statutory members include the president, vice president, and the secretaries of the Departments of State, Defense, and Energy, along with other officials invited by the president. The head of the council’s staff, the national security advisor, is a top presidential aide who also attends all meeting of the council.
Beyond the EOP lie the fifteen departments of the president’s cabinet. The Department of Health and Human Services, with its administration of the massive Social Security (retirement income), Medicare (retiree health care), and Medicaid (health care for the poor), has the largest budget. The Department of Defense has the largest number of employees. The Departments of Justice and Treasury deal with law enforcement and financial management, respectively, and are two of the oldest departments. The other departments have authority over particular areas of domestic policy: Veterans Affairs, Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, Commerce, Education, Energy, Homeland Security, Agriculture, and Interior. All told, the cabinet departments employ about 4,214,000 employees. Most do not work in Washington, DC, but in regional field offices spread throughout the United States.
This is a big management challenge, far greater and more complex than Donald Trump’s personal business enterprises. Trump also has to contend with an imposing list of presidential leadership roles that all modern presidents since Franklin Roosevelt (1932–1945) have undertaken. Clinton Rossiter enumerated these back in 1956: leader of the executive branch, Congress, public opinion, armed forces, international leader of free nations, and ceremonial head of state (Rossiter 1956).
That is a lot to unpack and for any one president to undertake. In understanding a presidency, though, it is best to start with the president himself. His personality and individual behaviors cast great influence on the American government and international relations. What do we know about Donald Trump’s personal traits that will help us understand his presidency?
An individual’s personality is an OCEAN. That’s an acronym for the “five-factor personality model” that is widely used in psychology. In this theory, people are characterized by their personal manifestations of the traits of (O) openness to experience, (C) conscientiousness, (E) extroversion, (A) agreeableness, and (N) neuroticism.
Those open to experience are original, creative, intellectual, and have wide interests in contrast to those with commonplace, simple, and conforming habits. Conscientious people are thorough, dependable, precise, and hardworking, unlike those who are lazy, careless, distractible, and irresponsible. Extroverted people are energetic, talkative, assertive, and outspoken as opposed to those who are low-key, reserved, and shy. Agreeable people are trusting, moderate, and considerate, unlike those who are stubborn, ruthless, demanding, and uncooperative. Neurotic people are moody, tense, self-conscious, and have trouble controlling their impulses in contrast to calm, relaxed, and secure individuals (Rubenzer and Faschingbauer 2004, 7–16).
How does Trump rank regarding these traits? Psychologist Dan P. McAdams assessed Trump’s personality in the midst of the candidate’s 2016 presidential campaign. By 2016, Trump had been in the public eye for more than thirty years, forging a well-known personality. McAdams described Trump thusly: “Across his lifetime, Donald Trump has exhibited a trait profile that you would not expect of a U.S. president: sky-high extroversion combined with off-the-chart low agreeableness” (McAdams 2016). What motivates this volatile combination? According to McAdams, anger: “Anger can fuel malice, but it can also motivate social dominance, stoking a desire to win the adoration of others. Combined with a considerable gift for humor (which may also be aggressive), anger lies at the heart of Trump’s charisma. And anger permeates his political rhetoric” (McAdams 2016). Trump, per McAdams, also has low openness to experiences.
This does not, however, predict disaster due to Trump’s personality. McAdams notes that Trump’s long experience as a “deal maker” may make him a flexible and pragmatic decision maker, and his ideological flexibility may prove to be an asset in negotiating with Congress and foreign governments. But the looming problem is Trump’s low agreeableness, which has already put him in the midst of several fights early in his presidency—with the media, with Democrats, and with James Comey, the fired FBI director.
Trump’s traits closely resemble those of “dominator” presidents, so classified by Steven Rubenzer and Thomas Faschingbauer in their landmark study of presidential personality (Rubenzer and Faschingbauer 2004). The dominators of presidential history were Andrew Jackson, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon: “They were exceptionally bossy, demanding, domineering, manipulative; none was even tempered. All acted assertively, were self-centered and egotistical, stubborn and hardheaded and thought highly of themselves” (Rubenzer and Faschingbauer 2004, 83). Trump seems to share many of these traits. He has even installed a portrait of Andrew Jackson, whom he admires, in the White House.
How might a dominator like Trump govern? His dominator predecessors all ranked low on personal character, high in neuroticism, and very low on openness and agreeableness. Since Trump shares these traits, his presidency is likely to continue to be a jarring ride.
Trump’s aggressiveness and frequent tweets have produced many controversies over the truthfulness of his assertions. The media challenges many of his statements as factually untruthful. The Washington Post’s fact checking has identified numerous instances of “false and misleading claims” during his first six months in office. Many of his tweets—limited to 140 characters—understandably “lack context.” An example is a June 5 tweet in which he refers to his immigration executive order as a “TRAVEL BAN” despite the fact that his administration previously had stated that the order was not a travel ban (Washington Post 2017a). On April 29 he tweeted, “We have an all-time record for the biggest increase in the stock market.” In fact, the early months of George W. Bush’s presidency witnessed a larger increase than occurred in 2017 (Washington Post 2017a).
Trump’s embellishments of the factual record have long been part of his approach in business. In his 1987 book The Art of the Deal he described it this way: “The final key to the way I promote is bravado. I play to people’s fantasies. People may not always think big themselves, but they can still get very excited by those who do. That’s why a little hyperbole never hurts. People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole. It’s an innocent form of exaggeration—and a very effective form of promotion” (Trump 1987, 58). Given the nation’s polarized politics, not everyone views Trump’s exaggerations as innocent. The low agreeableness and character of the dominator are evident in such behavior, portending a bumpy path for Donald Trump in the White House.
There were indeed some bumps along the way for Trump from Election Day on November 8 to his inauguration on January 20, 2017. Trump’s loss of the popular vote by a 2.1 percentage point margin while winning the Electoral College ignited considerable public controversy. Democratic “blue America” responded with outrage, public demonstrations, demands for recounts, legal challenges to Trump electors, and pleas to Trump state electors to disregard their state’s popular vote when electing the next president.
Despite the turbulence, the transition period offered Trump important opportunities. Martha Joynt Kumar, a transition scholar, notes that “an effective transition buys a new administration the chance to take advantage of the opportunities that exist at the beginning of an administration and to reduce the number of inevitable hazards. The benefits range from the direction of government to the reputation a president establishes in the early days” (Keegan 2015).
Actual transition planning had begun months earlier than Election Day. The Trump and Clinton campaigns were beneficiaries of the Presidential Transitions Act of 2010, which for the first time allowed the campaigns to run transition operations with government support months before Election Day. On May 6, once he had locked up the 2016 Republican nomination, Trump asked his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to start planning the transition. Three days later, the candidate announced that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a 2016 rival for the GOP nomination who later endorsed Trump, would head the transition effort. By October, the transition staff numbered more than 100 and included many policy experts added to compensate for a dearth of them on the campaign staff (Restuccia and Cook 2016).
On November 11, Trump instigated a big shakeup of the transition staff. He ousted Chris Christie and many of his transition subordinates, apparently dissatisfied with the pace of the transition and Christie’s involvement in the “Bridgegate” corruption scandal in his home state. The change was abrupt, with the Christie-appointed staffers quickly shown the exit and in one case at least, locked out of the transition office (Dilanian and Jaffe 2016). Vice President–elect Pence took over supervision of the transition. A steady announcement of major administration appointments resulted in the ensuing weeks.
Trump’s top appointees proved to be diverse in background but less demographically diverse than those of his predecessor, Barack Obama. Trump’s cabinet included only three women—Betsy DeVos at Education, Elaine Chao at Transportation (secretary of labor under George W. Bush and spouse of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell), and UN ambassador Nikki Haley. Trump’s rival for the 2016 GOP nomination, physician Ben Carson, became the only African American in the cabinet as secretary of housing and urban development. Alexander Acosta, dean of Florida International University law school, became the first Latino member of Trump’s cabinet as secretary of labor.
Retired generals populated Trump’s national security team. Defense Se cre tary James Mattis, a retired four-star army general and former commander of the US Central Command, directed US forces in the Middle East from 2010 to 2013. A retired four-star Marine Corps general, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly had headed the US Southern Command from 2012 to 2016. Kelly eventually succeeded Reince Priebus as White House chief of staff. National Security Advisor H. R. McMaster, a retired three-star army general, pioneered innovative battlefield tactics during the Iraq war. Trump’s reliance on the generals reflected his stout praise of the US military during the 2016 campaign, an allegiance probably born of his happy years as a teenage student at New York Military Academy. Unlike cabinet appointments, the national security advisor does not require Senate confirmation.
Before McMaster, a particularly controversial appointment was three-star general Mike Flynn as the president’s national security advisor, who heads a presidential staff of national security analysts. Flynn had endorsed and campaigned for Trump after being fired as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency under Obama. Flynn was dismissed by Trump in mid-February after Vice President Pence asserted that Flynn had failed to disclose important information about Flynn’s meeting with the Russian ambassador in Washington.
A successful appointment as director of national intelligence went to former GOP senator Dan Coats of Indiana. The director sits on the president’s cabinet and National Security Council. Representative Mike Pompeo of California received appointment to the important non-cabinet post of CIA director. Both Coats and Pompeo served on their chamber’s Select Committee on Intelligence and have established “hawkish” positions on national security issues.
Trump’s diplomatic appointments brought far less relevant experience to their new jobs than did the generals. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, like Trump, had no prior governmental experience. He began a lengthy career in international business as an engineer and rose to become chief executive officer of the Exxon international corporation. UN ambassador Nikki Haley was in her second term as South Carolina governor when appointed to her position, which carries cabinet rank. It was initially unclear how these appointees would shape the nation’s overseas diplomacy.
In contrast to Trump’s populist pronouncements on the campaign stump, his economic policy appointees hailed from Wall Street and the conservative Washington establishment. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin worked for Goldman Sachs for seventeen years and later for other New York investment firms. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross was founder and president of the W. L. Ross and Company investment firm. Investment banker Gary Cohn became the president’s chief economic advisor and chair of his National Economic Council. The chair of the president’s Council of Economic Advisors, Kevin Hasset, came from the American Enterprise Institute, a beltway think tank populated by many establishment conservatives. Another conventional Washington nominee was David Shulkin as secretary of veterans affairs. Shulkin had served as undersecretary of health in that department in the Obama administration.
Three members of Congress also entered the Trump cabinet. Montana representative Ryan Zinke became the first Montanan to serve as interior secretary. Physician and Georgia representative Tom Price took charge of the massive Department of Health and Human Services, the department with the largest annual budget. Price had authored a GOP alternative to Obama’s Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and became a central player in Trump’s efforts to restructure federal health-care programs. Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the first senator to endorse Trump’s 2016 candidacy, took the reins of the Department of Justice as attorney general. Sessions’s approach to justice issues marked a stark departure from Obama administration positions.
Three other cabinet appointees had considerable governmental experience, if not Washington experience. Energy Secretary Rick Perry had served two terms as GOP governor of Texas. As a 2016 presidential candidate, he had called for the abolition of the department but recanted that position upon being nominated to the post. Sonny Perdue, former Republican governor of Georgia, became secretary of agriculture. Oklahoma attorney general Scott Pruitt was named head of the Environmental Protection Agency, a regulatory body he had frequently criticized and litigated against in court on behalf of his state.
Most nominees were not welcomed by Democratic senators. Minority Leader Charles Schumer (NY) sought to slow down the confirmation process as his partisan colleagues scrutinized nominees thoroughly during confirmation hearings. Democrats temporarily boycotted confirmation hearings for Price and Mnuchin, arguing that their financial backgrounds needed further investigation. Two other appointees encountered particularly turbulent Senate confirmations and very close—though successful—confirmation votes: Sessions and DeVos.
The Sessions nomination became entangled in allegations of racial bias during his service as attorney general of Alabama. The controversial Trump executive order on immigration, subject to enforcement by the Justice Department, also drew much controversy to the Sessions nomination. Sessions nevertheless gained approval in party line votes in the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Senate floor.
Democrats challenged DeVos about her lack of background on education issues and her past advocacy of school choice or “vouchers” for private schools. She would be the first secretary of education who had never attended, taught in, or sent her children to public schools and so faced tough questions at Senate hearings. A party line vote in the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee sent her nomination to the floor. Vice President Pence as president of the Senate had to break a 50–50 vote on the Senate floor to get DeVos confirmed. Moderate Republican senators Lisa Murkowski (AK) and Susan Collins (ME) voted against DeVos, citing concerns over her support for public education.
What do these top nominees reveal about Trump as president? His esteem for the generals led him to delegate decision-making authority over military strikes to his commanders shortly after he took office. A Pentagon spokesman stated in early March, “This was an authority that was delegated by the president, through the secretary of defense to the Central Command commander to carry out” (Greenwood 2017). Obama, in contrast, maintained thorough operational control over military strikes.
The same tendency to delegate was not evident initially with his diplomatic appointments. Secretary of State Tillerson kept an unusually low profile in the early months of the administration. The initial Trump budget proposed severe cuts in the State Department budget while significantly boosting military spending. The president often took the initiative in stating major themes of his foreign policy in speeches both domestic and overseas and, of course, in his evening tweets. At times he contradicted the policy statements of UN ambassador Haley.
Trump’s economic policies, aside from trade, very much reflected conventional Republican thinking. In late April, Steve Mnuchin and Gary Cohn released a one-page outline of the administration’s tax plan. Its reductions in marginal personal income tax rates, estate taxes, and the corporate income tax reflected long-established GOP goals. On trade, Trump withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiated by Obama. He continued to criticize Germany and China for their huge balance of trade surpluses with the United States while also pledging to renegotiate the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to get better terms from Canada and Mexico.
Trump’s “justice agenda” coincided with Jeff Sessions’s priorities, auguring new restrictions on immigration, more aggressive immigration enforcement, and a steady stream of conservative judicial nominees. Tom Price at HHS quickly became a major player in the high-profile attempt to repeal or revise Obama’s Affordable Care Act. The other domestic cabinet secretaries proved to be lower-profile figures during the administration’s first months, reflecting their departmental agendas’ reduced standing among the administration’s priorities.
The administration proved very slow in making lower-level executive branch appointments. These include the four top levels of each cabinet department (secretary, deputy assistant secretaries, and undersecretaries), ambassadors to foreign nations, and heads of independent agencies and members of regulatory commissions. As of late July 2017, Trump had nominated only 146 individuals for the 570 key appointed positions requiring Senate confirmation. Of these, a meager 46 had been confirmed and taken office. By late May in his first term, Obama in contrast had nominated 368 persons with 203 already confirmed. The average time between nomination and confirmation for Trump appointees was 45 days, compared to 37 for Obama appointees (Washington Post 2017b).
The president blamed the slow pace of confirmations on Senate Democrats, who “used procedural measures to force the full length of time allowed for nearly all nominees, slowing down the process considerably” (Kopan 2017). The lengthy appointment process for top officials helped to slow the selection of appointees for positions below them in their organizations. That does not, however, explain fully the slow pace of nominations. Trump the outsider lacked an established network of Washington allies who could suggest nominees and facilitate their administration approval. Trump’s transition had also been slow off the mark, further delaying nominations. Laggard nominations blunted the impact of the “Trump revolution” in Washington by missing the available momentum during his early months in the White House.
A major locus of media-centered drama during Trump’s early presidency has been the turbulence surrounding the operations of his White House staff. Unlike Obama, George W. Bush, and most recent presidents, Trump eschewed a “gatekeeper” who would limit access to the president and thus add shape and contour to the administration’s agenda. Though Reince Priebus, 2016 national GOP party chair, became White House chief of staff, it quickly became clear that Trump would operate independently in communicating with the public—often by smartphone tweets—and pursuing his personal presidential agenda. Trump in effect became a media freelancer within his own administration.
Trump daily granted presidential access to a wide variety of staff people. His Oval Office is often populated by many underlings, in marked contrast to the more introverted Obama, who kept the office quiet and access to it tightly regulated by his chief of staff. Time magazine sketched this portrait of the Trump Oval Office in April 2017:
In a few minutes, President Donald Trump will release a new set of tweets, flooding social-media accounts with his unique brand of digital smelling salts—words that will jolt his supporters and provoke his adversaries. Nearly a dozen senior aides stand in the Oval Office, crowding behind couches or near door-length windows. This is the way he likes to work, more often than not: in a crowd. He sits behind his desk finishing the tasks of the day, which have included watching new Senate testimony about Russian involvement in the 2016 presidential election, by signing orders in red folders with a black Sharpie. (Scherer and Miller 2017)
Trump’s at times volatile temperament, in combination with the loose organizational structure of his White House, led to an atmosphere of fear, spawning many leaks from his staff. This led to a steady stream of media stories as Priebus, senior counselor Steve Bannon, counselor Kellyanne Conway, daughter Ivanka and her husband, senior advisor Jared Kushner, were portrayed as constantly jockeying for position. The “who’s up, who’s down” media stories provided an at times annoying distraction for the administration. The appointment of John Kelly as chief of staff, replacing Priebus at the end of July, potentially augured a more orderly flow of information and staff to the president.
Trump’s first press secretary, Sean Spicer, formerly the press spokes-person for the Republican National Committee, was a particular target of rumors. Trump, ever concerned about personal appearance, early on directed him to get new suits and at times was reported to be quite critical of Spicer’s press conference performances. But Spicer had the toughest job in Washington. At times the press office would provide a rationale for an administration action only to have that rationale contradicted by a presidential tweet.
The challenges facing the White House press office crested during a Trump-generated administration crisis, the firing of FBI Director James Comey. Spicer and his assistant press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, initially stated that the president had “no choice” but to fire Comey based on a memo written by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. According to Spicer, the firing was really Rosenstein’s doing—“all him” (Sale-tan 2017). Shortly afterward, Trump in an interview contradicted them, claiming that he had long intended to fire Comey “regardless” of what the Justice Department recommended, terming Comey a “showboat” and “grandstander” (Pramuk 2017). The White House had shifted from “no drama Obama” to “constant drama Trump.” In July, Spicer resigned upon learning that Anthony Scaramucci, a Wall Street investor with no experience in media relations, would become his boss as White House director of communications. Scaramucci’s 250-hour tenure in the position ended when his profanity-laden interview with journalist Ryan Lizza led to his dismissal by the new chief of staff, John Kelly. The position of communications director remained vacant for weeks after the dismissal.
Trump kept the White House atmosphere charged through his treatment of his staff associates. “Trump prefers a management style in which even compliments can come laced with a bite, and where enduring snubs and belittling jokes, even in public, is part of the job,” according to the Washington Post (Parker 2017). This “dominator” behavior is remarkably similar to that of Lyndon Johnson, who frequently scorned his staff, at times meeting with an aide while sitting on the toilet (Frady 2002). Having one’s staff scampering like scared rabbits has its costs for a president. Fear of one’s boss can prevent important but unwelcome information from coming his way and promotes unhelpful leaks. Both problems seem likely to persist in Trump’s White House.
In the midst of White House turbulence, a pattern of “creeping normality” in presidential operations did begin to appear after the administration’s abnormally tumultuous initial weeks. Trump’s term began with a controversial ban on immigration from seven Middle Eastern countries that quickly was overruled by federal courts and withdrawn. This was an executive order, an official presidential directive about how executive branch officials are to conduct their duties. The orders have the status of law unless rescinded by a later president or voided by federal courts. The ban had not been vetted by the Department of Homeland Security or Department of Defense but had been the quick work of White House aides Bannon and Stephen Miller. It was eventually withdrawn and a revised order promulgated, again voided by the courts and headed to the Supreme Court for final resolution later in 2017. The Supreme Court preliminarily reinstated the travel ban in June 2017 but required broader exemptions from the ban for relatives of individuals living in the United States (Barnes 2017).
The New York Times assembled a panel of thirteen experts from academe and government to assess the “normality” of the Trump administration’s actions during its first two months in office. They rated a majority of the first month’s actions, fifteen of nineteen actions, as abnormal and twelve of these as abnormal and particularly important. The abnormal and highly important actions included the immigration executive orders and an executive order for a border wall with Mexico, secret conflict of interest waivers for White House aides, appointing daughter Ivanka as a White House advisor, and the slow pace of administration appointments. Most of the abnormal and important actions, however, involved statements by the White House and by Trump himself. They included harsh criticism of the press by the president and his aides, including enunciation of the concepts of “alternative facts” and “fake news.” Remarkable presidential tweets made the list as well: Trump claimed that “millions” of fraudulent votes were cast of Election Day 2016, asserted that Obama had ordered wiretaps of Trump’s phone, criticized federal judges for their immigration decisions, and tweeted frequently and provocatively about foreign affairs.
In Trump’s second month, White House operations began to better resemble the normal operations of previous presidencies. A series of important policies were announced and pursued in a conventional way. These included the administration’s budget proposal, tax plan, and introduction of the American Health Care Act repealing Obamacare. Also more ordinary were Trump’s announcement that NATO was no longer “obsolete,” his reversal of his previous intent to label China a “currency manipulator,” and a cruise missile strike on Syria. Amid these more conventional behaviors, however, Trump continued his often rash and intemperate tweets and invited a major controversy by firing FBI director Comey (Bui, Miller, and Quealy 2017).
Another unusual aspect of the early Trump presidency was its handling of ethics questions. During the 2016 campaign, candidate Trump made several promises to clean up the Washington “swamp.” His “Contract with the American Voter” included promises to place a five-year ban on White House and congressional officials becoming lobbyists, a lifetime ban on White House officials lobbying for foreign governments, and a complete ban on foreign lobbyists raising money for US elections. Several such reforms would be included in the “Clean Up Corruption in Washington” act that he would submit to Congress (“Donald Trump’s Contract” 2016).
Candidate Trump nevertheless received criticism regarding several ethics issues arising from his distinctive financial position and holdings. Presidential scholar Barbara Perry noted in 2015 that he “stands out because he is not just a businessman. He’s the Flo Ziegfeld or P.T. Barnum of politics. He’s an impresario. He’s genuinely unique” (Schouten 2015). His uniqueness was defined by his net worth, which he claimed was $10 billion during the campaign but was estimated at $3.5 billion in 2017 by Forbes magazine (Forbes 2017).
How does a person with such extensive financial holdings prevent his investments from influencing his presidential decisions? Walter Schaub, director of the Office of Governmental Ethics, argued that nothing short of total divestiture would erase the ethical concerns created by Trump’s wealth. Divestiture “would mean the sale of all of the president’s assets, with their value conveyed to a blind trust—and an investment portfolio of which he and his family would have no knowledge or control” (Hopkins 2017).
Trump would have none of that. In January, he announced arrangements that he claimed addressed the ethical concerns surrounding his wealth. Trump agreed to give up his position as an officer of the Trump organization, pledging no communication with it beyond regular receipt of profit and loss statements. His sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, along with company executive Alan Weisselberg would take over management of the organization. The president-elect also canceled all pending international deals with his organization. His lawyer, Sherri Dillon, argued, “President Trump can’t unknow he owns Trump Tower,” and he “should not be expected to destroy the company he built” (Harwell 2017).
Schaub and other ethics experts termed Trump’s approach totally inadequate. Richard Painter, ethics counsel in the George W. Bush White House, worried that “the setup will not prevent Trump from knowing his business’ sources of revenue or block him from receiving income from the trust” (Harwell 2017). Might foreign governments try to curry favor with Trump by staying at his hotels? In April, the nonprofit group Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington filed suit in federal court arguing that Trump’s arrangement violated the Constitution’s “emoluments clause.” Article I, Section 9, Clause 8 states, “No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.” Two lawsuits, including one by the attorneys general of Maryland and the District of Columbia, were filed claiming that because of his continuing business interests, Trump is violating the foreign emoluments clause of the Constitution (Davis 2017). Does the clause apply to the president? It remains a potentially vexing issue for the Trump administration. Should a future Democratic Congress seek to impeach Trump, this might be one of the charges used against the president.
Trump as candidate and president has not released his income tax returns, making him the first candidate to not release them since 1976. Trump’s refusal also was a personal change of course. In 2012, Trump called on GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney to release his tax returns and in 2015 indicated he would release his tax returns. Then repeatedly in early 2016, the candidate indicated that he would release his tax returns as soon as the audit they were undergoing was completed. This remains his current position (Holmes 2017).
Trump’s nondisclosure is particularly striking given the breadth and complexity of his financial holdings. Disclosure would provide a field day for inquisitive journalists. It might also clarify the financial ethics of the president and perhaps quiet his critics on the issue. One such critic, Lisa Gilbert of Public Citizen, a nonprofit created by Ralph Nader, asserted, “Without complete returns, we won’t know whether he owes money to foreign governments or their leaders, how much he has given in charitable contributions, how much (if anything) he has personally paid in taxes and what some of his assets really are” (Gilbert 2017).
Liberal MSNBC host Rachel Maddow drew ratings by publicizing a few pages of Trump’s 2005 tax return that she had obtained, indicating he paid taxes of $35 million on an income of $150 million, a tax rate of 25.3 percent. Trump’s tax rate was notably larger than the 19.6 percent rate paid by President Obama in 2015 (Roff 2017). Trump’s bigger tax picture may never be revealed.
Ethics controversies also touched two Trump relatives now working in the White House: daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner. Kushner has a salaried job as senior advisor who has taken an oath of office and turned management of his financial affairs over to family members, though federal law bars presidents from hiring relatives to cabinet or agency jobs. A federal judge, in permitting Hillary Clinton to work in her husband’s White House, ruled that it doesn’t apply to White House staff jobs (Zarroli 2017).
Ivanka, however, has an office in the White House advising her father but has taken no oath of office or compensation. Like her father, who continues to own the Trump Organization while it is managed by two of his sons, Ivanka continues to own her fashion and jewelry business. Government ethics specialist Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis, termed the Trump administration’s arguments that conflict-of-interest rules don’t bind the president or his daughter “disheartening. . . . My biggest concern is that this is yet another erosion of government ethics standards in this White House” (Northam and Geewax 2017).
Though President Trump promised strong ethics standards in his administration, he engendered controversy by granting “ethics waivers” to 17 White House staff members, including four former lobbyists. To “drain the swamp” of Washington, Trump prohibited senior officials hired into the executive branch from working on “particular” government matters that involve their former clients or employers for two years. Yet he waived that prohibition for some top employees. The employees included Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, counselor Kellyanne Conway, and former lobbyists working in the offices of the National Economic Council headed by Gary Cohn. In addition, a “blanket waiver” was granted to all White House staff communicating with the media, including former Breitbart media head Steve Bannon. The exemptions granted by Trump were unusually speedy and numerous. Obama granted only 17 such waivers during his eight years in office (Gold 2017).
The Trump administration’s unusual ethics arrangements call into doubt his promise to “drain the swamp” in Washington. Trump, however, did attempt to follow through on two ethics promises. On January 28, 2017, he issued an executive order that required that new executive branch employees pledge that they would not lobby the particular agency they worked at within five years of the end of their employment there. The order does allow Trump to grant waivers to exempt individuals from the ban. The order further required new appointees to agree to a lifetime ban on lobbying for a foreign government. Waivers can also be issued for this ban (DeCosta-Klipa 2017). Despite these rules, however, the administration has appointed dozens of former lobbyists to “work for the agencies that they sought to influence” (Gold and Eilperin 2017).
Trump has yet send to Congress his “Clean Up Corruption in Washington” legislation, which presumably would include his promised five-year ban on White House and congressional officials becoming lobbyists after leaving office and lifetime ban on White House officials lobbying on behalf of a foreign government. He also has taken action to dilute one ethics disclosure provision in federal law. On February 14, he signed his first legislation, which repealed part of the Dodd-Frank financial regulations act that was to go into effect in 2018. It would have forced all oil, gas, and mineral companies on the US stock exchange to detail any payments they made to foreign governments. Trump’s secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, the former CEO of oil and gas company Exxon-Mobil, supported repealing the legislation. Trump argued the repeal would help to create energy jobs in the United States (Yu 2017).
The repeal indicates Trump’s concerns about business success and jobs can overcome previous regulations requiring public disclosure of corporate activities. It’s not clear, however, how that contributes to “draining the swamp.” The tensions already evident between Trump’s roles as international businessperson and government reformer are certain to be evident throughout his time at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Trump’s ethics controversies received far less media attention than the ongoing revelations and investigation into the relationships of the Trump campaign and administration with the Russian government. From the evening of his surprise election victory on November 8, the topic of Trump and his campaign’s relations with the Russian government and diplomats has seldom been far from the headlines. The controversy has several themes.
First, what exactly was the role of Russian hackers and the Russian government in the 2016 US election? Second, what relationships existed between Russian hackers, businesses, and the Russian government and Trump’s campaign and transition staff and presidential administration? Third, what contact did Trump himself have with Russians during the campaign and since his inauguration? It’s important to note that the constant stream of media stories about Trump and Russia include many from “unnamed sources” whose reliability was unclear. Some of the stories, noted later in this chronology, turned out to be false or publicly unverified.
The context for these controversies begins with public disclosure of thousands of damaging emails by the Hillary Clinton campaign during the summer and fall of the 2016 campaign. The CIA later stated that Russian officials, at the direction of President Putin, had given the emails to the WikiLeaks organization, which then publicized the stolen electronic correspondence (Reuters Staff 2017). The embarrassing disclosures certainly did not help the Clinton campaign. Other later media reports indicated that Russian military intelligence sent phishing emails to 100 local US election officials before the 2016 voting (Mindock 2017).
On July 27, 2016, days after the disclosure of thousands of Clinton campaign emails, candidate Trump called on Russia to release more of them: “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you’ll be rewarded mightily by our press” (CBC 2017). On August 14, Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign chair, resigned in the wake of a New York Times report that he had received $12.7 million US in undisclosed payments from a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine. Manafort denied the allegations (Kramer, McIntire, and Meier 2016).
Amid growing reports of Russian election interference, the Obama administration on December 29, 2016, expelled 35 Russian diplomats. One day later, Trump praised President Putin for not retaliating against the United States. At President Trump’s first press conference, he decried as “fake news” reports of a secret Russian dossier containing compromising information about him. The dossier’s contents, disclosed on the BuzzFeed website, have yet to be reliably verified (Bensinger, Elder, and Schoofs 2017).
A major controversy erupted on February 13 when National Security Advisor Mike Flynn resigned amid allegations that he made improper overtures to Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak before Trump took office. The firing offense, however, was that he had misled Vice President Pence on the nature of those contacts. On March 2, Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from any role in investigating Russian activity. He did this in response to reports that he had twice met with Ambassador Kislyak, though Sessions indicated he had those meetings in his capacity as a senator. President Trump issued a stunning tweet on March 4 charging the Obama administration with wiretapping Trump Tower in Manhattan. FBI Director James Comey, at a congressional hearing on March 20, indicated he had no evidence supporting Trump’s tweet. Comey did, however, confirm that an active FBI investigation was examining links between the Russian government and Trump associates as part of a broader investigation of Russian interference in the election.
On May 9, Trump fired James Comey, creating great public controversy about the dismissal and the reasons for it. The firing was peremptory and surprised Washington. The public announcement fell upon Comey without prior warning while he was addressing Los Angeles FBI agents. He learned of his dismissal via television. The administration had no replacement for Comey ready. The White House press secretary Sean Spicer issued a statement claiming that “President Trump acted based on the clear recommendations of both Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions” (Taylor 2017).
The president then contradicted this explanation in a media interview two days later. Trump indicated he intended to fire Comey regardless of the recommendation he received from Rosenstein and Sessions, stating, “I was going to fire regardless of the recommendation. . . . And in fact when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story, it’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won” (Hains 2017). Trump’s statements fueled speculation that he may have engaged in obstruction of justice by impeding the FBI Russia investigation. Yet Trump in the interview indicated he wanted that investigation “speeded up” because it was damaging his presidency. His statements contradicted the earlier White House statements about the decision, damaging the credibility of his press secretary.
The next day, Trump aggravated the controversy with an aggressive tweet: “James Comey better hope there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!” This led to a flurry of media speculations about whether a White House taping system exists. With this tweet and the firing of Comey, Trump unwittingly encouraged comparisons between this incident and the “Saturday night massacre” of 1973 when an embattled Richard Nixon fired Archibald Cox, the Watergate special prosecutor, and his attorney general and deputy attorney general, both of whom refused to fire Cox. Democrats were quick to issue Watergate analogies, terming Trump “Nixonian” (Watson 2017).
Reports then surfaced that Trump asked Comey in a private meeting to end an investigation into fired National Security Advisor Mike Flynn’s ties with Russia (Barrett, Nakashima, and Zapotosky 2017). Comey himself had initiated some of these leaks. This again raised the specter of a possible obstruction of justice by Trump in attempting to abort an ongoing FBI investigation. The president, however, has legal authority to fire an FBI director and to direct him in his duties.
Was this another Watergate? Bob Woodward, a Washington Post reporter who broke that story, thought not: “This is not yet Watergate—no clear crime. . . . Now that doesn’t mean, you know, that we know where this is going. There’s a tremendous amount of smoke.” Woodward noted that Watergate involved a former White House counsel, John Dean, describing how Nixon had “corruptly and illegally led the obstruction of justice,” but “there is no evidence at this point that President Trump is involved in collusion here” (Fox News 2017).
On May 17, a week after Comey’s firing, Deputy Attorney General Ron Rosenstein appointed a special council with broad authority to investigate Russian influence in the 2016 election, Trump campaign, and Trump administration. Robert Mueller, a former FBI director with a reputation for integrity, took charge of the investigation as special counsel. He was empowered to issue subpoenas and to recommend charges, though criminal charges cannot be filed against a current president. Trump responded by tweet that he was the target of a “witch hunt” by his political opponents.
By this time, multiple congressional committees—House Intelligence, Senate Intelligence, House Oversight, and Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism—were investigating the Russian role in the 2016 election and, by implication, in the Trump transition and administration (LoBianco 2017). On June 8, former FBI director James Comey testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Comey charged that Trump’s assertions that the FBI was poorly led and in disarray as “lies, plain and simple.” He further stated, “It’s my judgment that I was fired because of the Russia investigation. I was fired in some way to change, or the endeavor was to change, the way the Russia investigation was being conducted.” He indicated that Trump, at a private dinner on January 27, had stated to him, “I need loyalty.” The president at a private meeting on February 14 had said to him regarding the FBI investigation of Mike Flynn, “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.” The president, however, told Comey in a subsequent phone call “that if there were some ‘satellite’ associates of his who did something wrong, it would be good to find that out” (CNN 2017).
Was this obstruction of justice? That is in the eye of the beholder. It may signal such intent, but it was not accompanied by direct orders or, apparently, a series of subsequent actions to obstruct the ongoing FBI investigation. Further, the president had the legal right to order an investigation closed and probably cannot be prosecuted for criminal offenses, though Trump’s behavior might encourage charges of impeachment for “high crimes and misdemeanors.” Impeachment is a political process, not required to apply only to violations of the law. More conclusive evidence about the possible obstruction charge was not forthcoming at the time.
Comey, however, did corroborate Trump’s previous claim that Comey had three times told Trump that he was not under investigation by the FBI. He also stated, “There have been many, many stories based on—well, lots of stuff, but about Russia that are dead wrong.” Specifically, he stated in reference to a February 14 New York Times story asserting that Trump’s campaign and members of his administration had been in regular contact with Russian intelligence officials, “in the main it was not true.” The night before Comey’s testimony, CNN had claimed that Comey would contradict Trump’s assertion that he had been told three times by Comey that he was not under investigation. The next day, the network retracted the false story (Easley 2017).
Trump in response claimed, via tweet, “total vindication” from Comey’s testimony, although his lawyer, Mark Kasowitz, indicated the administration was contemplating legal action against Comey for leaking information to the media. The next day Trump told the press he was willing to testify under oath that he did not ask for “loyalty” or ask Comey to drop the Flynn investigation (Borchers 2017). That future possibility will be up to the ongoing investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
Neither Trump nor Comey enhanced their reputations during this episode. Trump’s behavior was unpresidential and threatened to get him into further legal problems. The president is unlikely to prepare adequately, and thus testimony under oath could trap him in a number of contradictory statements (Allen 2017). Comey’s leaks of memos detailing his meetings with Trump were unauthorized disclosures of information vital to an ongoing investigation by Special Counsel Mueller. Trump’s lawyers accused Comey of illegal leaks. George Washington law professor Jonathan Turley summarized it well: “The greatest irony is that Trump succeeded in baiting Comey to a degree that even Trump could not have imagined. After calling Comey a ‘showboat’ and poor director, Comey proceeded to commit an unethical and unprofessional act in leaking damaging memos against Trump” (Turley 2017).
The Russia controversy flared again in June 2017 with the disclosure that Donald Trump Jr. had a meeting with a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower during the presidential campaign. Trump Jr. agreed to a meeting at the behest of acquaintance and music promoter Bob Goldstone, who promised that a Russian “government attorney” had compromising information regarding Hillary Clinton. Trump Jr. responded in an email that “if it’s what you say, I love it,” and he agreed to a meeting. The meeting on June 9, 2016, included Trump Jr., campaign director Paul Manafort, and Jared Kushner along with Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya and three other Russians.
Though Veselnitskaya reportedly began the meeting with a general mention of overseas donations to the Clinton campaign, most of the 20-minute meeting, according to Kushner and Trump Jr., concerned changing US policy on Russian adoptions. Kushner later testified before a Senate committee that he found the meeting of no interest and texted an assistant to call him so he could leave immediately. His testimony revealed few contacts with Russians; Kushner asserted there was never any campaign collusion with Russians. Trump Jr. termed the encounter a “nothing meeting” and claimed no further contact with any of the Russians (Kushner 2017; Kinery 2017).
At best this incident revealed very bad judgment by Donald Trump Jr. and showcased his inexperience and questionable competence as a campaign operative. More experienced campaign consultants indicated they would never have met with any Russian officials in such a situation. The striking aspect of the incident was Trump Jr.’s desire to potentially collude with Russians and ignorance of the ethical dangers in such a course of action. The revelation gave new impetus to the Trump-Russia scandal narrative, which seemed destined for a long life.
After Trump’s first six months in office, the three questions at the heart of the Russia probe remain unresolved, perhaps to be answered by Robert Mueller’s investigation. The extent of Russian election interference in 2016 is not yet known. The relations between Russian interests and the Trump campaign, transition, and administration remain unclear. Trump’s personal role with Russians during this time, despite his denials, has yet to be clarified. Speculation spiked again with the disclosure that former campaign manager Paul Manafort’s home had received an FBI dawn raid with a “no knock” warrant on July 26. Like the lengthy Whitewater investigation during Bill Clinton’s presidency, the Russia inquiry seems likely to extend far into Trump’s tenure in the White House.
Donald Trump’s initial months in the presidency have produced much sound and fury and a flurry of executive orders and memoranda changing previous policies. His direction of foreign policy, examined in detail in another chapter, has been controversial. It’s important to note that these Trump initiatives are easily overturned by a presidential successor. Much scarcer are important changes in law passed by Trump’s Republican Congress.
Trump’s three White House predecessors—Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama—all issued executive orders and memoranda changing previous policies, much like Trump. These can be and have been steadily overturned by rival successors. Executive orders and memoranda in areas such as energy, environment, and international funding of abortions have flip-flopped over the years. Clinton and Bush overturned policies of their GOP predecessors and Trump and Bush overturned Democratic policies. Trump’s record with these actions is unexceptional. Yet because so much of Obama’s legacy was wrapped up in executive orders and memoranda, Trump has a much richer array of targets than did his predecessors.
His three predecessors, who, like Trump, had supportive partisan Congresses during their early months in office, could all claim early and important legislative achievements. By August of his first term, Clinton had signed into law the Family and Medical Leave Act, the Motor Voter Registration Act, and an ambitious deficit reduction plan. George W. Bush had signed a massive $1.35 trillion tax cut into law. Barack Obama likewise signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and a large $831 billion Economic Recovery Act into law and had gained Senate approval of Sonya Soto-mayor as a Supreme Court justice. Aside from his successful appointment of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, Trump had no comparable legislative accomplishments on his record.
Richard Neustadt, an eminent presidential scholar, argued that the presidency is a “weak” institution since so much presidential success depends on the consent of other governmental and nongovernmental actors (Neustadt 1990, ix–x). It is up to the president to engage in “self-help” because no one shares the president’s perspective. The best form of self-help, Neustadt argues, is to think of power “prospectively” and “husband” one’s power prospects because that power will be needed and used in the future (1990, xi). Early blunders, Neustadt argued, are particularly costly for a president: “A blunder is worse than a crime” (1990, xvi).
Presidential scholar George C. Edwards III notes that the current era of the “permanent campaign” for partisan advantage between elections makes presidential governance difficult: “In sum, the tendencies of the permanent campaign are for civility to lose out to conflict, compromise to deadlock, deliberation to sound bites and legislative product to campaign issue” (Edwards 2016, 211). New administrations start with the “arrogance of ignorance” and frequently make mistakes. Attempts by presidents to dominate government thus are not successful: “The political system is too complicated, power is too decentralized, and interests are too diverse for one person, no matter how extraordinary, to dominate” (203). A better approach, he argues, is for a president to pursue a strategy of “quiet negotiation” (211).
Trump’s early record is a testament to how weak the presidency can be if the office is not handled well initially by its occupant. Trump’s approach to the presidency so far is pretty much the opposite of that counseled by Neustadt and Edwards. Trump embraces the “permanent campaign” in office, trafficking in and relishing conflict in his public statements and personal tweets. He and his White House staff have very limited experience with Washington governance. Predictable results are errors due to arrogance and ignorance. Contradictory statements and factual errors emerge from the White House with unsettling frequency.
Trump’s personality seeks the domination of others, which is no recipe for success in a system of separated powers. Quiet negotiation—indeed, any form of quiet—is seldom the president’s approach to his job. Trump and his White House focus daily on battles with political opponents, with little apparent consideration of the president’s future power prospects.
This approach is particularly unhelpful in an era of “revelation, investigation and prosecution” as defined by political scientists Benjamin Ginsberg and Martin Shefter: “Taken together, the expanded political roles of the national news media and the federal judiciary have given rise to a major new weapon of political combat: revelation, investigation and prosecution. The acronym for this, RIP, forms a fitting political epitaph for the public officials who have become its targets” (Ginsberg and Shefter 2002, 36–37). This phenomenon, now focused on Trump, can have ominous systemic consequences: “Electoral verdicts can now be reversed outside the electoral arena. . . . Today elected officials subjected to RIP attacks often find that their poll standings (today’s substitute for an organized popular base) can evaporate overnight and their capacity to govern disappear with them” (213). By persisting in his Twitter battles, Trump risks an RIP fate that effectively overturns his election. Several media, governmental, and judicial rivals are challenging his hold on the presidency.
Let’s finally return to those aspects of the presidency noted at the beginning of this chapter. Trump’s daily focus on colorful conflicts displaces the quiet negotiations that can make the presidency operate effectively. The National Security Council, Defense, and State Departments have long functioned on the basis of quiet negotiation. The Office of Management and Budget, handling the president’s budget proposal and legislative program, focuses on consultations with Congress often far from the media spotlight. Cabinet officers likewise go about their business without seeking the bright light of constant publicity. President Trump, with his outsized media presence and penchant for constant quarrels, often removes himself from the more constructive routines of government. As Neustadt and Edwards indicate, there’s a big price to be paid for that.
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