Does Trump Want to Fight for a Second Term? His
Self-Sabotage Worries Aides
Advisers
and allies say the president’s repeated acts of self-destruction have
significantly damaged his re-election prospects, and yet he appears mostly
unable, or unwilling, to curtail them.
President Trump has told
advisers that no matter what he does, he cannot get “good” stories from the
news media, people familiar with the conversations say.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
By Maggie Haberman and Annie Karni
·
June 17, 2020
In a recent meeting with his top
political advisers, President Trump was impatient as they warned him
that he was on a path to defeat in November if he continued his incendiary
behavior in public and on Twitter.
Days earlier, Mr. Trump had sparked
alarm by responding to protests over police brutality with a threat that “when
the looting starts, the shooting starts.”
Mr. Trump pushed back against his
aides. “I have to be myself,” he replied, according to three people familiar
with the meeting. A few hours later, he posted on Twitter a letter from his
former personal lawyer describing some of the protesters as “terrorists.”
In
those moments, and in repeated ones since then, the president’s customary
defiance has been suffused with a heightened sense of agitation as he confronts
a series of external crises he has failed to contain, or has exacerbated,
according to people close to him. They say his repeated acts of political
self-sabotage — a widely denounced photo-op at a church for which
peaceful protesters were forcibly removed, a threat to use the American
military to quell protests — have significantly damaged his re-election
prospects, and yet he appears mostly unable, or unwilling, to curtail them.
Mr. Trump doesn’t want to be seen as a
“loser,” a label he detests, in the campaign against former Vice
President Joseph R. Biden Jr. And some advisers believe Mr.
Trump’s taste for battle will return in the fall, when the general election
fight is more engaged.
But for now, they said, the president
is acting trapped and defensive, and his self-destructive behavior has been so
out of step for an incumbent in an election year that many advisers wonder if
he is truly interested in serving a second term.
Rather than focus on plans and goals
for another four years in office, Mr. Trump has been wallowing in self-pity
about news coverage of him since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic,
people who have spoken with him said. He has told advisers that no matter what
he does, he cannot get “good” stories from the press, which has often been his
primary interest. “These people,” Mr. Trump has growled to advisers about
reporters, throwing an expletive between the two words.
He has complained that nothing he does
is good enough, bristling at criticism that he hasn’t sufficiently addressed
the death of George Floyd, a black man killed by the police in Minneapolis. The
remarks he made about Mr. Floyd when he attended the launch of the SpaceX
spacecraft should have been enough, the president told aides.
Mr.
Trump has also become consumed, once again, with leaks from the White House,
demanding that officials find and prosecute those responsible for information
getting out about his trip to the bunker beneath the White House during
unruly protests. And while he has shown enthusiasm for resuming his trademark
rallies, he has not seemed excited about the possibility of governing for four
more years, people close to him said. He has set up villains to blame if he
loses — China’s mishandling of the coronavirus, the shutdown of the economy,
and Democrats who he has told advisers will “steal” the election from him.
Aides acknowledged that he has always
had difficulty controlling his behavior, which goes far beyond the bounds of
traditional presidential conduct. His penchant for using racist language — such
as the tweet about shooting looters — is something that has long defined and
undercut his presidency. But his recent behavior and remarks, and his inability
to move beyond them, strike advisers as different from his usual aberrations.
The New York Times interviewed more
than a dozen people who speak or interact with the president frequently,
including current and former White House aides, campaign advisers, friends and
associates. Most spoke on condition of anonymity to candidly discuss internal
White House affairs, and to avoid retribution. They would like to see him win
again, but say they’re struck by how his demeanor has shifted during this
latest dire threat to his presidency.
Representative
Peter King, a New York Republican, said the serious challenges facing the
country had thrust Mr. Trump into uncharted territory. “This is not something
he’s used to,” Mr. King said in an interview.
“Mueller, in a way, was easy,’’ Mr.
King added, referring to Mr. Trump’s forceful pushback to the Russia inquiry
conducted by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III. “It was a variation of
what he’s had to deal with his whole career. He’s always fighting, and there’s always
at least 40 or 50 percent of people who start out on your side.”
But right now, Mr. King said, “this is
different.”
In a statement, a White House
spokeswoman, Alyssa Farah, said, “The president is fully committed to serving a
second term and building on and adding to his first-term accomplishments for
the American people.”
One
official, who would speak only about the administration’s planning, claimed
policy staff members were told just this week to come up with initiatives for
2021 and beyond.
With the Russia investigation and
impeachment, White House officials and others said, Mr. Trump was eager to
fight, and did so fairly effectively. Now, they see his behavior as
self-defeating, and his bursts of both anger and self-praise as futile against an invisible enemy
like the virus and a protest movement he’s shown little sympathy for.
“He is the modern L.B.J., where
everything has gone wrong and none of his skill sets are effective at what’s
gone wrong,” said Anthony Scaramucci, who served as the White House
communications director for one of the briefest periods on record — 11 days. Though he has since publicly denounced the
president, Mr. Scaramucci has known Mr. Trump personally for years and remains
friendly with some White House officials.
Nothing Mr. Trump has tried so far, Mr.
Scaramucci said, has changed the narrative about his presidency, or shoved
broader concerns about racism and the spread of the virus aside in news
coverage.
“That’s why I know he doesn’t like the
job,” Mr. Scaramucci said.
With less than five months until
Election Day, Mr. Trump has seemed mostly unable, and unwilling, to make the
modifications to his behavior that he was periodically able to make at key
moments in 2016: agreeing to pick Mike Pence, a demure and religious
conservative he had no previous relationship with, as his running mate, and
quieting his Twitter feed in the immediate run-up to Election Day.
This past weekend, Mr. Trump eventually
made what allies called a wise political move in abruptly announcing he
would change the date of a rally his aides had planned
for him in Tulsa, Okla., on Juneteenth, a holiday honoring the end of slavery
in the United States. Even that was done in an ad-hoc fashion as Mr. Trump
failed to tell aides about the change before tweeting it.
Representative Tom Cole, Republican of
Oklahoma, said Mr. Trump’s campaign compared favorably to a previous Republican
incumbent who lost a re-election effort, President George H.W. Bush.
“I saw a lot more lethargy in the 1992
Bush campaign than I see in this one,” Mr. Cole said.
Still,
the president has made public statements suggesting his mind is on life outside
the White House.
Speaking at a recent Rose Garden event
about an improvement in hiring, Mr. Trump mentioned a boom in the construction
of recreational vehicles, then paused before sounding a wistful note, saying:
“I may have to buy one of those things, drive around town. Maybe I’ll drive
back to New York with our first lady in a trailer.”
It was only in April that the
seriousness of the twin health and economic crises caused by the coronavirus
fully set in with Mr. Trump, several current and former aides said, adding that
they were no longer confident he was enthused about presiding over the
difficult task of pulling the country out of a recession, with few moments of
glory.
For Mr. Trump, the high of winning the
presidency has rarely been matched by the duties that come with the position,
current and former advisers said.
Most presidents have no sense of what
the job is actually like until they’re in it. But for Mr. Trump, who never
served in government and spent years as a television entertainer, the gaps in
his knowledge are vast.
“In private, Trump was interested in
winning the presidency,” said Sam Nunberg, who worked on Mr. Trump’s campaign
in 2015 and was an adviser to him before it. “Over a three-year period between
2012 until 2014, he was focused on the details and even the minutiae of the
primary and the general election process. It was always clear that Trump wanted
to be elected president. But the reality of being president was never
discussed.”
In 2016, Mr. Trump repeatedly offered
policy suggestions in speeches. He has yet to lay out what he would do with a
second term.
Inside
the White House, some staff members described the president as lonely, with few
people he enjoys talking to, and several staff members said morale was at its
lowest point since the early weeks of the administration.
The
West Wing in which Mr. Trump has been in virtual lockdown since March lacks a
clear sense of urgency or purpose, recent visitors say. Mark Meadows, the
fourth White House chief of staff, has complained that he had no idea how
fractious and unwieldy the climate was until he got there, according to
multiple people familiar with his conversations.
Mr. Trump seems to like his newest
fighter, the White House press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, but officials said
she spends most of her time with the president and little time with the staff.
On days when she gives briefings for reporters, she spends hours preparing,
frustrating some colleagues. She has also moved several people out of their
jobs in the press and communications shop, while hiring her husband’s cousin,
Chad Gilmartin, for the office.
Republicans in Washington have
concluded that Mr. Trump cannot win re-election from behind the Resolute Desk,
and they hope that restarting the president’s rallies — beginning on Saturday
in Tulsa — will offer a distraction.
Mr. King said the last time he spoke
with Mr. Trump, just before the killing of Mr. Floyd, the president sounded
positive about his re-election prospects. “We were talking about something
else, and he said, ‘How’s it going out there, how am I doing?’” Mr. King
recalled. “It was very upbeat. The tone of his voice was, he expected me to
tell him he was doing well.”
Mr. Trump seems cognizant that his
political fortunes have shifted, although he has not assumed responsibility for
the change. In an interview with Fox News last week, he made the rare
acknowledgment of a reality he hasn’t willed away.
“If I don’t win, I don’t win,” Mr.
Trump said. “I mean, you know, go on and do other things.”
He
added, “I think it would be a very sad thing for our country.” (HA! HA!)
