Anonymous letter

 The Donald J. Trump administration will be remembered as among the

most tumultuous in American history.  Future historians will record the

volatility of the president`s decision-making as well as the internal

struggles of a government forced to grapple with it.  They will write that

his advisers came to find him unfit for the job.  He couldn`t focus on

governing and he was prone to abuses of power from ill-conceived schemes to

punish his political rivals to propensity for undermining vital American

institutions.



The president still lacks the guiding principles needed to govern our

nation and fails to display the rudimentary qualities of leadership we

should expect of any commander in chief.  In “The Times” op-ed, I wrote of

a quiet resistance of Trump appointees at the highest levels trying to

manage his rash impulses.  We wanted the administration to succeed and

supported significant components of the president`s agenda.  But we were

alarmed by his unstable behavior in public and in private.



Those who tried to steer him away from self-destructive impulses were not

the so-called deep state, I wrote, but the steady state.  This idea was

assailed by the president.  But the notion his team is working to protect

him from himself has since become one of the defining narratives of the

Trump administration.  Indeed, it was a hallmark takeaway from special

counsel Robert Mueller`s report on the investigation into Russian

interference in the 2016 presidential election.



The president`s efforts to influence the investigation were mostly

unsuccessful, Mueller wrote, but that is largely because the persons

surrounding the president declined to carry out orders or recede to his

requests, close quote.



This included the president`s demand that White House counsel Don McGahn

fired the special counsel, a request McGahn rebuffed for fear it would

trigger what he regarded as a potential Saturday night massacre and lead to

Donald Trump`s impeachment.  It probably would have.



President Trump should not be shocked that wary aides and cabinet members

saved his presidency.  My colleagues have done so many times.  He should be

worried.  We all should be worried that these reasonable professionals are

vanishing.



The president is chafed by those who dared to challenge him.  He`s targeted

and removed many of these officials.  From Secretary of State Rex

Tillerson, to Chief of Staff John Kelly, one by one.  Others have grown

tired of the charade and left of their own accord.



With every dismissal and departure of a level-headed senior leader, the

risks to the country grow and the president is validated by a shrinking

cadre of advisors who abet or encourage his bad behavior.  We are already

seeing the consequences.  Through a toxic combination of amorality and

indifference, the president has failed to rise to the occasion in

fulfilling his duties.  In these pages, I will underscore what Americans

should actually be concerned about when it comes to Trump and his

administration.








To be clear, there is no seditious plot inside the administration to

undercut the president.  The steady state is not code for a coordinated

scheme to sabotage his policies or worse, oust him from office.  I use

“resistance” in quotes because it`s neither the right`s fear of a deep

state gone rogue, or the left`s conception of an active subversion

campaign.



Trump`s critics who are rooting for an actual resistance have let their

imaginations run wild with the idea of public servants frustrating the

fears of government to bring down Trump.  If this kind of conspiracy

exists, it`s news to me and it would be disturbing.  Public service is a

public trust.  Any government employee with such a nefarious end goal

should be condemned.  Instead, the early steady state formed to keep the

wheels from coming off the White House wagon.  When presidential appointees

started conferring about their shared concerns with the nation`s chief`s

executive, it was not in the dimly lit smoke filled back rooms of

Washington.  It was done informally, in weekly phone calls around the

margins of meetings.



People who compared notes in the workday and in the normal course of

business realized that the administration`s problems were more than

fleeting.  They were systemic, they emanated from the top.  Two traits are

illustrative of what brought the steady state together: the president`s

inattentiveness and his impulsiveness.  Both will be documented in this

book.



But coming to terms with these characters for the first time had a powerful

impact on the people serving in the administration.  Take for instance the

process of briefing the president of the United States, which is an

experience that no description can fully capture.  In an administration,

advisers – in any administration, advisers would rightfully want to be

prepared for such a moment.



This is the most powerful person on earth that we`re talking about.  But

before a conversation with him, you`d want to make sure you`ve got your

main points lined up in a crisp agenda you`re about to present.  You`re

about to discuss life and death matters with the leader of the free world,

a matter of utmost sobriety and purpose.



The process does not unfold that way in the Trump administration.

Briefings with Donald Trump are of an entirely different nature.  Early on,

briefers were told not to send lengthy documents, Trump wouldn`t read them.

Nor should they bring summaries to the Oval Office.  If they must bring

paper, then PowerPoint was preferred because he`s a visual learner.  OK,

that`s fine, many thought of themselves, leaders like to absorb information

in different ways.



Then officials were told that PowerPoint decks needed to be slimmed down.

The president couldn`t digest too many slides.  He needed more images to

keep his interest, and fewer words.



Then they were told to cut back the overall message, on complicated issues

such as military readiness to the federal budget, to just three main

points.  Eh, that was still too much.  Soon, West Wing aides were

exchanging best practices for success in the oval office.



The most salient advice, forget the three points.  Come in with one main

point and repeat it over and over again, even if the president inevitably

goes off on tangents, repeat until he gets it.  Just keep steering the

subject back to it.  One point, just that one point, because you cannot

focus the commander in chief`s attention on more than one gosh darn thing

over the course of a meeting, OK?



Some officials refused to believe this is how it worked.  Are you serious,

they asked, quizzing others who briefed the president?  How could they dumb

down their work to this level?  They were facilitating presidential

decisions on major issues, not debates about where to go out for dinner.



I saw a number of appointees as they dismissed the advice of the wizened

hands and went in to see President Trump, prepared for robust policy

discussion on momentous national topics, and a peppery give-and-take.

Those people invariably paid the price.



What the “F” is this, the president would shout, looking at a document one

of them handed him?  These are just words, a bunch of words, it doesn`t

mean anything.



Sometimes he would throw the papers back on the table.  He definitely

wouldn`t read them.



One of the hardest culture shifts took place in the National Security

Council.  NSC staff were accustomed to producing long winded classified

memos, but if the aim was to educate this new commander-in-chief, they

couldn`t submit a 50-page report entitled something like integrated

national strategy for Indo-Pacific Partnership and Defense and expect him

to read it and then discuss it.  That would be like speaking Aramaic to

Trump through a pillow.  Even if he tried very hard to pay attention, which

he didn`t, he wouldn`t be able to understand what the hell he was hearing.



It took a lot of trial and error for West Wing stands to realize there

needed to be a change in the White House briefing process.  Until that

happened, officials walk out of briefings frustrated.  Quote, he is the

most distracted person I have ever met, one of the president`s security

lieutenant confessed.  Quote, he has no F-ing clue what we are talking

about.



More changes were ordered to cater to Trump`s peculiarities.  Documents

were dramatically downsized and position papers became sound bites.  As a

result, complex proposals were reduced to a single page or ideally a

paragraph, and translated into Trump`s winners and losers tone.



Others discovered if they walked into the Oval Office with a simple graphic

Trump liked it would more than do the trick.  We might hear about it for

days in fact.  He would hold onto the picture waving it around in meetings.

Did you see this?  You can believe this?  This is beautifully, something

truly special.



Dan, he might summon the White House`s social media guru who sits just

outside the Oval Office.  Dan, let`s tweet this out, OK?  Here`s what I

want to say.  That way the public would get to share his excitement, too.



One graphic that left Trump spellbound was intended to explain certain

government and industrial relationships.  The basic depiction of

interlocked gears likely pulled from clip art showed how different levels

of the government bureaucracy depended on parts of the private sector.  The

president was so mesmerized he showed it off to Oval Office visitors for no

apparent reason, leaving us and them scratching our heads.



Another time, he became enamored with a parody poster in the style of the

“Game of Thrones” with the words “sanctions are coming” overlaid on the

photo of the president.  This was meant to be a teaser for forthcoming Iran

sanctions.  Trump was elated and tweeted the image out to his followers at

once, resulting in a cycle of memes mocking the graphic.



Seeing this type of behavior was both educating and jarring to the

burgeoning steady state.  It was a visceral lesson we weren`t just

appointees of the president, we were glorified government baby-sitters.

The feeling of unease was cemented by having to deal with the president`s

penchant for making major decisions with little forethought or discussion.

These “five-alarm fire drills,” as I call them, seemed like a curse.  When

Trump wanted to do something, aides might only get a few hours notice from

him before he announced it.



They then launched a frenetic response effort, a race against the clock to

reshape his views before the tweet out.  This could up end entire workdays.

Over time, the last minute warnings actually came to be seen as a luxury.

It`s better to have a few hours or minutes for that matter to intervene

than have no opportunity at all to convince Trump to hit the brakes on some

whacky or destructive idea.  He`s less inclined today to preview his

decisions.



Here`s how it might play out in the early days of the administration.  The

president sees something on television, he doesn`t like it.  It makes him

think maybe I should fire the secretary of commerce or we should pull out

of that treaty, it`s really a terrible treaty after all.  He might tee up a

tweet, then he bounces it off the next aide he talks to who`s stunned to

discover the terrible idea is tip of brain for the president of the United

States and might be on the brink of becoming reality.



The aide finds the president disinterested in thinking through the

consequences.  We`re going to do this today, OK, tell Sean to get ready.

He wants Press Secretary Sean Spicer prepared to defend it to the death.



Staff throw up the bat signal, calling a snap meeting or teleconference.

He`s about to do something, one warns the group, explaining what the

president is about to announce.  He can`t do this.  We`ll all look like

idiots and he`ll get murdered for it in the press, the other explains.

Yes, well, I`m telling you, he`s going to do it unless you get to it fast,

the first warns.  Can you cancel your afternoon?



Officials rush back to the White House.  The delicate Oval Office schedule

is shattered to make way for an unexpected intervention, and top agency

executives scrap meetings with foreign leaders, press conferences and

briefings to join the gathering.  The conversation with the president is

tense.  He wants to do what he wants to do.  Consequences be damned.



It isn`t beneath him to attack his own family members, too.  Jared, you

don`t know what you`re talking about, OK?  I mean, seriously, you don`t

know.



After some dire warnings, everyone will get subpoenaed.  This will cost you

dearly with working class voters.  This will put Americans in harm`s way.

He might show signs of reconsidering.



Refusing to admit error, the president insists he still wants to go with

his original plan, but he backs off temporarily or agrees to a less

dramatic measure, averting disaster for the moment.



These mini crises didn`t happen once or twice at the administration`s

outset.  They became the norm with after shocks that could be felt for

days.  Some aides were so worn down by the roller coaster of presidential

whims that they started encouraging him to hold more campaign rallies,

putting aside the fact it wasn`t campaign season.



The events had the dual benefit of giving Trump something fun to do and

also getting him out of town where he would hypothetically do less damage.

More public events were put on his schedule allowing frayed nerves back in

Washington the chance to recover.





I know that`s a question many of you are asking.  Why

didn`t anyone leave?  God knows it would have been easy.  We all have draft

resignation letters in our desks or on our laptops.



That`s the half teasing half true advice you get on day one in the Trump

administration or immediately following Senate confirmation.  Be sure to

write your resignation letter.  You may need it at a moments notice or

less.  Some of us did consider resigning on the spot in the aftermath of

the Charlottesville, Virginia, conflagration.



One journalist reported a cabinet member saying he would have

written a resignation letter, taken it to the president and shoved it up

his – the sentiment was shared but in the end no one angrily stormed out.

There was no protest resignation.



Why do people stay?  A close friend asked me at the time.  You should all

quit, he`s a mess.



That`s why I responded, because he`s a mess.  It was true for a lot of us.

We thought we could keep it together.  The answer feels more hollow than it

used to.  Maybe my friend was right.  Maybe that and the aftermath of

Charlottesville, maybe that was a lost moment when a rush to the exits

would have meant something.