Inside Donald Trump's 'adult day-care centre' with the White House aides who control and coerce the President - Washington Post

Inside Donald Trump's 'adult day-care centre' with the White House aides who control and coerce the President

Senator Bob Corker's stinging characterisation of Oval Office life proves close to the mark

Ashley Parker, Greg Jaffe

During the campaign, when President Donald Trump's team wanted him to stop talking about a certain issue - such as when he attacked a Gold Star military family - they sometimes presented him with polls demonstrating how the controversy was harming his candidacy.

During the transition, when aides needed Trump to decide on a looming issue or appointment, they often limited him to a shortlist of two or three options and urged him to choose one.

And now in the White House, when advisers hope to prevent Trump from making what they think is an unwise decision, they frequently try to delay his final verdict - hoping he may reconsider after having time to calm down.

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When Senator Bob Corker, Republican-Tennessee, described the White House as “an adult day-care centre” on Twitter last week, he gave voice to a certain Trumpian truth: The President is often impulsive, impetuous and difficult to manage, leading those around him to find creative ways to channel his energies.

Some Trump aides spend a significant part of their time devising ways to rein in and control the impetuous President, angling to avoid outbursts that might work against him, according to interviews with 18 aides, confidants and outside advisers, most of whom insisted on anonymity to speak candidly.

“If you visit the White House today, you see aides running around with red faces, shuffling paper and trying to keep up with this president,” said one Republican in frequent contact with the administration. “That's what the scene is.”

The White House dismissed Corker's suggestion that administration officials spend their days trying to contain the president. The point was highlighted last week in an unusual briefing by White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, who sought to tamp down reports that he was focused on attempting to control Trump.

“I was not brought to this job to control anything but the flow of information to our president so that he can make the best decisions,” Kelly told reporters. “So, again, I was not sent in to - or brought in to - control him.”

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Kelly also praised Trump as “a decisive guy” and “a very thoughtful man” whose sole focus is on advancing American interests. “He takes information in from every avenue he can receive it,” Kelly said. “I restrict no one, by the way, from going in to see him. But when we go in to see him now, rather than onesies and twosies, we go in and help him collectively understand what he needs to understand to makes these vital decisions.”

Trump is hardly the first President whose aides have arranged themselves around him and his management style - part of a natural effort, one senior White House official said, to help ensure the president's success. But Trump's penchant for Twitter feuds, name-calling and temperamental outbursts presents a unique challenge.

One defining feature of managing Trump is frequent praise, which can leave his team in what seems to be a state of perpetual compliments. The White House pushes out news releases overflowing with top officials heaping flattery on Trump; in one particularly memorable Cabinet meeting this year, each member went around the room lavishing the president with accolades.

Senior administration officials call this speaking to an “audience of one.”

One regular practitioner is Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, who praised Trump's controversial statements made after white supremacists had a violent rally in Charlottesville and also said he agreed with Trump that professional football players should stand during the national anthem. Neither issue has anything to do with the Treasury Department.

Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers wrote in a Twitter post that “Mnuchin may be the greatest sycophant in Cabinet history.”

Especially in the early days of his presidency, aides delivered the president daily packages of news stories filled with positive coverage and Trump began meetings by boasting about his performance, either as president or in winning the White House, according to one person who attended several Oval Office gatherings with him.

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Some aides and outside advisers hoping to push their allies and friends for top postings, such as ambassadorships, made sure their candidates appeared speaking favorably about Trump in conservative news outlets - and that those news clippings ended up on the president's desk.

H.R. McMaster, the President's national security adviser, has frequently resorted to diversionary tactics to manage Trump. In the Oval Office he will often volunteer to have his staff study Trump's more unorthodox ideas. When Trump wanted to make South Korea pay for the entire cost of a shared missile defence system, McMaster and top aides huddled to come up with arguments that the money spent defending South Korea and Japan also benefited the US economy in the form of manufacturing jobs, according to two people familiar with the debate.

“He plays rope-a-dope with him,” a senior administration official said. “He thinks Trump is going to forget, but he doesn't. H.R.'s strategy is to say, 'Let us study that, boss.' He tries to deflect.”

Sam Nunberg, who worked for Trump but was fired in 2015, said he always found him to be “reasonable,” but noted that delaying a decision often helped influence the outcome.

“If the president wanted to do something that I thought could be problematic for him, I would simply, respectfully, ask him if we could possibly wait on it and then reconsider,” Nunberg said. “And the majority of the time he would tell me, 'Let's wait and reconsider,' and I would prepare the cons for him to consider - and he would do what he wanted to do. Sometimes he would still go with the decision I may have disagreed with, and other times he would change his mind.”

Of course, the President chafes at the impression that his aides coddle him or treat him like a wayward teenager. During the campaign, after reading a story in The New York Times that said Trump's advisers went on television to talk directly to him, the candidate exploded at his then-campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, chastising his top aide for treating him like “a baby,” according to Devil's Bargain, a book that chronicles Trump's path to the presidency.

Some aides and advisers have found a way to manage Trump without seeming to condescend. Perhaps no Cabinet official has proven more adept at breaking ranks with Trump without drawing his ire than Defence Secretary Jim Mattis, who has disagreed with his boss on a range of issues, including the effectiveness of torture, the importance of Nato and the wisdom of withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal.

The president appreciates how Mattis, a four-star Marine general, speaks to him candidly but respectfully and often plays down disagreements in public. A senior US official said that Mattis's focus has been on informing the President when they disagree - before the disagreements go public - and maintaining a quiet influence.

Unlike his fellow Cabinet secretaries, Mattis has also gone out of his way not to suck up to the president - a stance made easier perhaps by his four decades in uniform and his combat record.

At the laudatory Cabinet meeting this summer, he was the lone holdout who did not lavish praise on the President. Instead, Mattis said it was “an honour to represent the men and women of the Department of Defence.”

Mattis has also worked to get on Trump's good side by criticising the media for putting too much emphasis on his disagreements with Trump. “I do my best to call it like I see it,” he told reporters in late August. “But, right now, if I say six and the president says half a dozen, they are going to say I disagree with him. You know? So, let's just get over that.”

When he has broken with the president, Mattis has done it in as low-key a way as possible. This month he said it was in America's interest to stick with the Iran nuclear agreement - which Trump called “the worst deal ever” - but voiced the opinion only in answer to questions from the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Corker's quip comparing the White House to a day-care centre on 8 October came in the middle of a feud between him and Trump, who attacked Corker with by tweeting that the retiring senator “didn't have the guts” to run for reelection and had begged for his endorsement. Corker fired back on Twitter and in a New York Times interview, warning that Trump was running the White House like “a reality show” and that his reckless threats against other nations could put the country “on the path to World War III.”

“I know for a fact that every single day at the White House, it's a situation of trying to contain him,” Corker said, adding later that most GOP lawmakers “understand the volatility that we're dealing with and the tremendous amount of work that it takes by people around him to keep him in the middle of the road.”

Trump seems to hold many Republican lawmakers, and some members of his own Cabinet, in similarly low regard. Several people who have met with Trump in recent weeks said he has a habit of mocking other officials in Washington, especially fellow Republicans.

In a meeting at the White House last month with House and Senate leaders from both parties, for instance, Trump upset Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Republican-Kentucky) and House Speaker Paul Ryan (Republican-Wisconsin), by cutting a deal with Democrats. In subsequent days behind closed doors, the president mocked the reactions of McConnell and Ryan from the meeting with an exaggerated crossing of his arms and theatrical frowns.

Former House speaker Newt Gingrich, an informal Trump adviser, scoffed at the suggestion that Trump needs to be managed by his advisers as parents would handle an unruly child.

“He's the President of the United States. Period. Is he an unusual president? Sure. But so was Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt,” Gingrich said. “You guys in the media would have had a field day with them, too.”

Still, Corker's comments underscored the uneasy dichotomy within the West Wing, where criticism of the president's behaviour is only whispered.

“They have an on-the-record 'Dear Leader' culture, and an on-background 'This-guy-is-a-joke' culture,” said Tommy Vietor, who served as a spokesman for former President Barack Obama. “I don't understand how he can countenance both.”

Trump Tells Widow of Fallen Soldier He 'Knew What He Signed Up For,' Congresswoman Says - Associated Press

Trump Tells Widow of Fallen Soldier He 'Knew What He Signed Up For,' Congresswoman Says

Associated Press

(MIAMI) — President Donald Trump told the widow of a slain soldier that he "knew what he signed up for," according to a Florida congresswoman.

Rep. Frederica Wilson said she was in the car with Myeshia Johnson on the way to Miami International Airport to meet the body of Johnson's husband, Sgt. La David Johnson, when Trump called. Wilson says she heard part of the conversation on speakerphone.

When asked by Miami station WPLG if she indeed heard Trump say that she answered: "Yeah, he said that. To me, that is something that you can say in a conversation, but you shouldn't say that to a grieving widow." She added: "That's so insensitive."

Sgt. Johnson was among four servicemen killed in an ambush in Niger earlier this month.

Wilson, a Democrat, said she did not hear the entire conversation and Myeshia Johnson told her she couldn't remember everything that was said when asked it about it later.

The White House didn't immediately comment.Trump has been criticized for not reaching out right away to relatives of the four killed in Niger. On Monday, Trump said he'd written letters that had not yet been mailed. His aides said they had been awaiting information before proceeding.

How Donald Trump's Fortune Fell $600 Million In One Year - Forbes

How Donald Trump's Fortune Fell $600 Million In One Year

By Dan Alexander and Matt Drange

A tough New York real estate market, a costly lawsuit and an expensive presidential campaign all contributed to the declining fortune of the 45th president. After months of digging through financial disclosures and public property records and conducting dozens of interviews, Forbes now estimates POTUS' net worth at $3.1 billion, down from $3.7 billion a year ago. He drops to No. 248 in the ranks of the richest people in America, down from No. 156 in 2016.

The biggest hit was to Trump's real estate portfolio, which is weighted heavily toward New York City. Values of several Manhattan properties, particularly those on or near Fifth Avenue, have dropped, shaving nearly $400 million off his fortune. Some of his golf properties, including ones in Miami, Ireland and Scotland, have also declined in value, as some would-be guests stayed away, apparently offended by the president's politics and bombast. Trump's cash pile is down an estimated $100 million since last year, after he spent $66 million on his campaign and $25 million settling a lawsuit over Trump University. As always, we refined our estimates based on new information uncovered during months of reporting.

A handful of Trump's assets rose in value in the past year, including the hotel-condo tower in Las Vegas that he owns with fellow Forbes 400 member Phil Ruffin and his minority stake in a downtown San Francisco office building, which continues to benefit from the red-hot real estate market there.

After the Caliphate, What’s Next for ISIS? - New York Times

After the Caliphate, What’s Next for ISIS? ISIS 2.0, Experts Say

By MARGARET COKER, ERIC SCHMITT and RUKMINI CALLIMACHIOCT. 18, 2017

Its de facto capital is falling. Its territory has shriveled from the size of Portugal to a handful of outposts. Its surviving leaders are on the run.

But rather than declare the Islamic State and its virulent ideology conquered, many Western and Arab counterterrorism officials are bracing for a new, lethal incarnation of the jihadi group.

The organization has a proven track record as an insurgency able to withstand major military onslaughts, while still recruiting adherents around the world ready to kill in its name.

Islamic State leaders signaled more than a year ago that they had drawn up contingency plans to revert to their roots as a guerrilla force after the loss of their territory in Iraq and Syria. Nor does the group need to govern cities to inspire so-called lone wolf terrorist attacks abroad, a strategy it has already adopted to devastating effect in Manchester, England, and Orlando, Fla.

The Islamic State has lost most of the territory it controlled in Iraq and Syria. It lost the city of Mosul, above, in July.

“Islamic State is not finished,” said Aaron Y. Zelin, who studies jihadi movements at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “I.S. has a plan, and that is to wait out their enemies locally in order to gain time to rebuild their networks while at the same time provide inspiration to followers outside to keep fighting their enemies farther away.’”

Even with the news on Tuesday that American-backed forces said they had captured Raqqa, the capital of the group’s self-declared caliphate, European counterterrorism officials were worrying about sleeper cells that may have been sent out well before the battlefield losses mounted.

In Iraq, where the group that became the Islamic State took root, security officials are bracing for future waves of suicide attacks against civilians. And even if governments are able to head off organized plots like the Paris attacks of 2015, officials around the globe concede that they have almost no way of stopping lone wolf assaults inspired or enabled by Islamic State propaganda that lives online.

“It is clear that we are contending with an intense U.K. terrorist threat from Islamist extremists,” Andrew Parker, the director of Britain’s MI5 intelligence service, said in a speech on Tuesday. “That threat is multidimensional, evolving rapidly, and operating at a scale and pace we’ve not seen before.”

Islamic State fighters captured Raqqa, Syria, in 2014, making it the capital of their caliphate and directing operations from there.

American and European counterterrorism officials acknowledge that they do not know the exact capabilities the Islamic State retains, or how much the appeal of the group’s ideology has been dented by its string of heavy military defeats.

Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, predicted last month that the loss of territory would precipitate a loss of credibility. “We’ll continue to see reduction in territory, reduction in freedom of movement, reduced resources and less credibility in the narrative,” he told a Senate hearing.

Others are less sanguine. They point to a speech by the Islamic State spokesman Abu Muhammed al-Adnani, before his death in an American drone strike last year, urging the group’s followers to fight on as a lean, agile insurgency instead of the bureaucratic juggernaut it had become.

“True defeat is the loss of willpower and desire to fight,” he said. “We would be defeated and you victorious only if you were able to remove the Quran from the Muslims’ hearts.”

Most of the attackers who killed 130 people in Paris in November 2015 were French or Belgian citizens working with the Islamic State. Credit Tomas Munita for The New York Times

The group’s ability to weld religious fervor to the political resentments of disenfranchised Sunni Muslims in Shiite-dominated Iraq already saved it once, when it appeared broken by the American military surge in Iraq in 2007 and 2008.

By the time American forces withdrew from Iraq in 2011, intelligence officials estimated that the Islamic State’s predecessor, then called the Islamic State of Iraq, was down to its last 700 fighters. The group was considered such a minor threat that the reward offered by the United States for the capture of its leader plummeted from $5 million to $100,000.

It took less than three years for those beaten-down and diminished insurgents to regroup and roar across Iraq and Syria, declaring an Islamic caliphate from the Mediterranean coast of Syria nearly to the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. It became both the world’s wealthiest terrorist group, and the most feared.

Even with the loss of most of that territory, the organization is far from defeated, and remains far stronger today than it did when American troops pulled out of Iraq.

A man said to be Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Islamic State’s leader, in an image taken from a militant group’s website in 2014. His whereabouts is unknown, and there have been unconfirmed reports of his death. Credit Tv/Reuters

The group currently has from 6,000 to 10,000 fighters in Iraq and Syria, the United States-led coalition said on Friday. That is eight to 14 times the number it had in 2011.

“That’s the relevant comparison,” said Daniel L. Byman, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center for Middle East Policy, who tracks jihadist groups. “This is a very strong group which has a lot of sympathizers, its ideas are embedded and it has networks. It has a lot to draw on even as it loses its physical territory.”

The group has also developed a powerful social media network that with no physical presence allows it to spew propaganda, claim responsibility for terrorist attacks, and not just inspire attacks but also help plot and execute them remotely.

A large share of its attacks in the West in recent years have been carried out by men who communicated online with ISIS, taking detailed instructions through encrypted messages, but never meeting their terrorist mentors.

The Islamic State has lost ground in Iraq and Syria but still has operations in North Africa and Asia, where a local affiliate was able to hold the town of Marawi, in the Philippines, above, for months. Credit Jes Aznar for The New York Times

The first major attack in the United States claimed by ISIS, a foiled shooting at a Texas community center in 2015, was directed this way, according to a recent assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency.

The Islamic State may also have undercover operatives or sleeper cells outside the Middle East. Senior American officials said last year that the group had sent hundreds of operatives to Europe and hundreds more to Turkey.

And the group has continued to sow chaos even as it has lost territory. In 2017 alone, it has claimed responsibility for three terrorist attacks in Britain that killed 37 people, the Istanbul nightclub bombing on New Year’s Eve that killed 39 people, and strikes in more than seven other countries.

As the group was losing Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, in August, it sent a van tearing through crowds in the heart of Barcelona, killing 13 people and loudly declaring its continued relevance.

Men believed to be Islamic State fighters surrendering to Kurdish officials near Kirkuk, Iraq, after the fall of Hawija, the group’s last major urban stronghold in Iraq, this month. Credit Ivor Prickett for The New York Times

It is also premature to assert that the Islamic State is running out of territory. While its footprint has shrunk in Iraq and Syria, it still controls close to 4,000 square miles along the Euphrates River Valley on both sides of the Iraq-Syria border. American and Iraqi military commanders believe the group’s core leaders have gone to ground in the largely barren areas along the border.

At the same time, ISIS branches in North Africa and Asia are still launching operations, and its camps in eastern Afghanistan remain largely intact, despite recent American airstrikes.

Some areas that were previously declared liberated have seen a return of ISIS fighters. In Libya, where the group was routed from a 100-mile stretch of coastline in late 2016, the militants recently posted a video showing their fighters manning a new checkpoint. And far from its roots in the Middle East, the group continues to grow in other corners of the world, including in the Philippines, where a local affiliate held the town of Marawi for months, and in West Africa, where the militants continue to grow their ranks, encroaching on areas formerly under Al Qaeda’s grasp.

If the Islamic State does decline, other jihadi organizations are poised to fill the vacuum.

Al Qaeda, whose appeal to young fighters had been largely been eclipsed by the tech-savvy new caliphate of the Islamic State, is vying for a comeback.

“The reason that the I.S. gained a big following quickly was that it appealed to the hotheads, those looking for instant gratification,” said Bill Roggio, a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies who monitors terrorist groups. “That caliphate model is all gone, but Al Qaeda remains.”

The older group has been urging followers to pivot from the Islamic State’s focus on the battlefields of the Middle East and instead put an emphasis on attacks in the United States and other foreign lands.

It has also been promoting a younger, charismatic new leader: Hamza bin Laden, 27, the son of Osama.

Xi Jinping: 'Time for China to take centre stage' - BBC News

Xi Jinping: 'Time for China to take centre stage'

BBC China editor Carrie Gracie has a look at the Communist Party messages all over Beijing

China has entered a "new era" where it should "take centre stage in the world", President Xi Jinping says.

The country's rapid progress under "socialism with Chinese characteristics" shows there is "a new choice for other countries", he told the Communist Party congress.

The closed-door summit determines who rules China and the country's direction for the next term.

Mr Xi has been consolidating power and is expected to remain as party chief.

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The congress, which takes place once every five years, will finish on Tuesday. More than 2,000 delegates are attending the event, which is taking place under tight security.

Shortly after the congress ends, the party is expected to unveil the new members of China's top decision-making body, the Politburo Standing Committee, who will steer the country.

Chinese President Xi Jinping speaks during the opening of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China 18 October 2017.Image copyrightREUTERS

Image caption

Mr Xi addressed the delegates at the start of the week-long meeting

Listing China's recent achievements in his three-hour speech, Mr Xi said that "socialism with Chinese characteristics in this new era" meant China had now "become a great power in the world", and has played "an important role in the history of humankind".

The Chinese model of growth under Communist rule is "flourishing", he said, and has given "a new choice" to other developing countries.

"It is time for us to take centre stage in the world and to make a greater contribution to humankind," he added.

Since Mr Xi took power in 2012, China's modernisation and reform has accelerated. But it has also become more authoritarian and controlling, with increasing censorship and arrests of lawyers and activists.

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'Surging ideological confidence'

Analysis by Carrie Gracie, BBC China editor

Xi Jinping is a much more assertive leader than his predecessors. In a long and confident speech, he looked back on his first five years in office, saying the party had achieved miracles and China's international standing had grown.

But the most striking thing in his mission statement was ideological confidence. Recently Party media have talked of crisis and chaos in western democracies compared to strength and unity in China.

Today Xi Jinping said he would not copy foreign political systems and that the Communist Party must oppose anything that would undermine its leadership of China.

In his speech, Mr Xi also:

Described a two-stage plan for China's "socialist modernisation" by 2050, which would see it become more "prosperous and beautiful" through environmental and economic reforms

Warned against separatism - in an apparent reference to movements in Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong - and reiterated the government's principle that Taiwan is part of China

Said China "would not close its doors to the world" and promised to lower barriers for foreign investors

He also introduced measures to increase party discipline, and touched on his wide-reaching corruption crackdown that has punished more than a million officials, report BBC correspondents in Beijing.

Beijing is decked out in welcome banners and festive displays for the congress.

However, the capital is also on high alert. Long lines were seen earlier this week at railway stations due to additional checks at transport hubs.

The congress has also affected businesses, with some restaurants, gyms, nightclubs and karaoke bars reportedly shutting down due to tightened security rules.

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An austerity drive, instituted by Mr Xi, has meant a more pared down congress, with reports this week of delegates' hotels cutting back on frills such as decorations, free fruit in rooms and lavish meals.

Meanwhile, state media have said the Party is expected to rewrite its constitution to include Mr Xi's "work report" or political thoughts, which would elevate him to the status of previous Party giants Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping.

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Some see Mr Xi as accruing more power than any leader since Mao, and the congress will be watched closely for clues on how much control now rests in the hands of just one man, says the BBC's John Sudworth.

Mr Xi has tightened control within the Party and also in Chinese society, but continues to enjoy widespread support among ordinary citizens.