Dancing With Angels, Playing With Fire: Another Harrowing Week in the White House

Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney told the world yesterday what many already know: Donald Trump is a criminal who will dare anyone to do something about it.

In a hastily called press briefing in the White House Brady Briefing Room, Mulvaney announced Trump was going to host the G-7 conference of nations at his Doral Country Club next year—in defiance of the emolument clause, which states the president can’t make money off of his office. Mulvaney then conceded Trump’s desire to investigate rival Joe Biden was part of the reason Ukraine aide was held up.

“But to be clear, what you just described is a quid pro quo,” a reporter said.

“We do that all the time with foreign policy,” Mulvaney replied. “And I have news for everybody: Get over it. There’s going to be political influence in foreign policy…. Elections have consequences.”

Baltimore Democratic Congressman Elijah Cummings saw things differently.

“When we’re dancing with the angels,” the late Congressman said, “the question will be asked, in 2019, what did we do to make sure we kept our democracy intact?”

Cummings died Thursday due to complications from long-term health problems.

Some question whether upon his own demise Mulvaney will be blessed to dance with the angels or will find himself involved elsewhere.

Meanwhile President Trump doesn’t have the luxury of worrying about a fiery afterlife; the last seven days have been hot enough. On October 13 it was announced that he was withdrawing American forces from Northern Syria, abandoning our Kurdish allies there. That move spiked a round of furor Trump didn’t anticipate. He angered veterans, the Democrats, our allies and even members of the GOP. The Kurds helped defeat ISIS, but Trump seemingly didn’t care. He defended his actions in Turkey and Syria. From the Oval Office he mocked the Kurds while dismissing the fact the U.S. went back on its word to an ally.

“He has blood on his hands,” a GOP member of Congress told me.

Trump spent the last week trying to mitigate the disaster, but few of his minions sprang to his aid. The usually reliable Kellyanne Conway has been absent, so Trump had to dig deep to find help. Last Friday that meant a rare appearance from Nosferatu himself, Stephen Miller.

Gesticulating wildly on the North Lawn while talking about the “Deep State” and trying to explain how great Trump is, the senior advisor made little sense. But it’s hard to get angry with a guy who uses spray-on hair and always looks like he’s been overlooked for a grade school kickball team, so we mostly ignored him.

I got the first question on Miller and promptly asked him about the safety on our border from ISIS escapees due to Trump’s withdrawal from Syria. That led to a long monologue I ultimately had to tune out while I contemplated lunch.

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin was another matter. He showed up in the Brady Briefing Room to announce Trump had some sanctions in mind that would devastate Turkey. I got the first question with Mnuchin and asked him when the planned sanctions would kick in and did the president take any responsibility for the violence in Syria. He didn’t say anything definitive about a timetable and of course said the president had nothing to do with the violence: It was everybody else’s fault and the Kurds needed to shoulder the weight in their own fight.

By Friday afternoon Trump was leaving the White House for a wild and woolly rally and dropped in on 125 or so members of the press on the South Lawn for another edition of Chopper Talk. Completing the trifecta, I got the first question to Trump. I asked him about reports that some of our own special forces had been targeted by the Turks. Would that mean sanctions would kick in? Trump said he’d have to look into it.

By the time the wacky weekend rolled around there were dead Kurds everywhere in Northern Syria, a convoy with citizens and journalists had been shelled and our allies, members of the military and the GOP were yelling at Trump.

Still, he got what he wanted. The talk about the impeachment inquiry was relegated to the back burner, even if just for a day.

“To him it was worth it,” a former—and decidedly disgusted—Trump staffer told me.

As a concession to the growing grumbling within his own party, Trump over the weekend vowed to destroy the Turkish economy and, with the gravitas of a cartoon villain, announced sanctions would be implemented. “Don’t be a tough guy. Don’t be a fool,” he said to the Turkish leadership. When Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s president, received the letter threatening him with economic destruction, he reportedly and promptly threw it in the garbage can. I might have framed it and hung it on the wall for a continued source of amusement, but who am I?

John Bolton claimed Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal attorney, engaged in shadow diplomacy in Ukraine and was a “hand grenade” that threatened everyone.

On a terrifying Tuesday the Democrats debated each other while Trump tried to fend off attacks on the two fronts of his own making: impeachment and Syria.

He wasn’t succeeding on either front and the feeling of despair was palpable from the administration officials who reached out to me.

“You know we have problems when John Bolton is the voice of reason,” I was told, on background, by a senior administration official.

The mind-numbing spectacle of a government falling apart is something few if any thought we would ever see in the United States.

But here we are, and there are many on the president’s staff who know it. For some of them, the omnipresent bunker mentality has given way to a festering feeling of fatality that only threatens to grow like an aggressive cancer. Those who still work in the West Wing and who, unlike Mulvaney, haven’t had an abundant diet of Presidential Kool-Aid are few and far between, but they, along with the Kool-Aid drinkers, are becoming weary. And two senior administration officials (again, speaking on background) admit Trump’s biggest enemy is himself. The self-inflicted wounds are becoming obvious and harder to hide or excuse.

In the Democratic debate, Bernie Sanders called Trump the “most corrupt president in the history of this country.” Amy Klobuchar said, “I’d like to hear from him about how leaving the Kurds for slaughter, our allies for slaughter, where Russia then steps in to protect them, how that makes America great again.’”

Kamala Harris, trying to coin a phrase, said, “Dude gotta go.”

Joe Biden called Trump “erratic” and a man “knows not a damn thing about foreign policy.”

All of Trump’s character flaws came into focus in living color on Wednesday afternoon. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Steny Hoyer and others showed up to speak with the president about the Syrian debacle. They left a short time later, saying they’d witnessed a “meltdown.”

Trump took to Twitter to plead his case that it was Pelosi and the Democrats who melted down. Sources who work for Trump not only said the president was lying, but they were upset with Trump’s vitriol. “Pelosi was right,” one of those closest to the meeting told me as this person shook their head. “It’s tiring.”

The president is imploding in front of us. “If he rolled out of the Oval Office doing cartwheels, screaming ‘Whooo whoo I’m cuckoo for cocoa puffs, I wouldn’t be surprised,’ a former White House staffer told me.

As tiring as Trump’s schtick is, he has no other cards to play. Deflect, defend and soldier on through a shit storm of his own making—that’s how Donald Trump has led his life. He projects an image of a man who doesn’t care what others think of him. But the sad truth is he obviously wants to be liked, accepted and loved.

He’s just too insecure to give up control, too much of a narcissist to accept help, too suspicious of others to trust anyone and too ignorant to effectively govern.

He’s a man to pity—but for the fact he controls and is in the midst of destroying the country that allowed him to thrive untethered to reality in the first place. He’s never gone a day without food, electricity and plush comfort. The life of a Kurd means little to him. The life of immigrants and pretty much everyone else are mere objects to be manipulated to his own twisted ends.

Late Thursday afternoon Trump puffed himself up with pride for negotiating a brief truce in the Turkish invasion of Syria so the Kurds could flee. He seemingly forgot he’d started the mess in the first place.

When Mulvaney stood before the world Thursday and announced elections have consequences, he was telling the truth. But most people didn’t think the consequences would be the end of the democracy our ancestors fought so hard to establish.

The hard truth is Trump can’t stop himself—even if he wants to do so.

Catch him if you can.