Archives for May 2017

Rachel Manteuffel: “A story about President Trump’s bodyguard Keith Schiller… was accompanied by a photograph of the two of them walking on White House grounds. The bodyguard was holding a stack of papers, and, according to the caller, on the outside of those papers was a yellow sticky note that said ‘Jim, Mad Dog, Mattis’ and had a phone number.”

“This of course sounds impossible. Way more care than that is taken around the president, right? The Secret Service is good at secrecy, generally. So I thanked the guy for the call and dubiously pulled up the photo in question. With the monitor turned 90 degrees and the photo blown up, indeed, I could make out a number and what might be “Jim, Mad Dog, Mattis,” if you have better eyesight than mine even when I squint.”

“I called. I got the voice mail. It was him.”

“The White House refused to say Monday whether it would comply with congressional requests to produce possible recordings of conversations between President Trump and White House visitors,” The Hill reports.

Facing repeated questions from multiple news outlets, White House press secretary Sean Spicer went back to the same line: “The president has made it clear what his position is.”

“Spicer’s response heightened a standoff between the executive and legislative branches that could complicate the process to replace Comey.”

“Rattled by President Donald Trump’s increasing frustration with the staff guidance he’s getting and by the administration’s unforced errors, White House officials are desperately hoping the president’s first foreign trip beginning on Friday offers a chance to reboot what’s become a damaging narrative,” NBC News reports.

“Preparations for the trip come as Trump’s inner circle appears to be shrinking, fueling paranoia inside the West Wing among a fatigued staff battered by a drumbeat of reports suggesting some senior staffers are on the chopping block.”

“While some kind of shake-up appears nearly inevitable at this point, insiders caution it doesn’t seem imminent — at least, not right now.”

For members: Trump’s Legislative Agenda Is Essentially Dead This Year

Politico: “White House chief of staff Reince Priebus issued a stern warning at a recent senior staff meeting: Quit trying to secretly slip stuff to President Trump. Just days earlier, K.T. McFarland, the deputy national security adviser, had given Trump a printout of two Time magazine covers. One, supposedly from the 1970s, warned of a coming ice age; the other, from 2008, about surviving global warming, according to four White House officials familiar with the matter.”

“Trump quickly got lathered up about the media’s hypocrisy. But there was a problem. The 1970s cover was fake, part of an Internet hoax that’s circulated for years. Staff chased down the truth and intervened before Trump tweeted or talked publicly about it. The episode illustrates the impossible mission of managing a White House led by an impetuous president who has resisted structure and strictures his entire adult life.”