The tortured self-justification of one very
powerful Trump-loathing anonymous Republican.
By Olivia Nuzzi
One
afternoon this year, a Washington Republican wove through packs of tourists on
the Mall and considered, as he often did, the collapse of America. How would
all of this appear from a distance? He looked at the monuments, lucent in the
sun, and pictured them disfigured by centuries of neglect and carnage. “Do you
ever think about how, 2,000 years from now, people are going to do what we’re
doing right now how they do it in the Forum in Rome?” he said. “Unless it’s
destroyed, the ruins of the Jefferson Memorial and the Lincoln Memorial” — he
gestured over there and over there, where the future ruins would be crawling
with Jetsons — “they’ll have their headsets, which will probably be a chip in
their brain.”
While
growing up in a coastal suburb, he first visited Washington on a class trip. “I
don’t think it was very inspiring,” he said. “I’m a pretty cynical person.” He
was not raised in a political family. (“I’m like Athena, sprung from the head
of Zeus,” he joked.) But he loved history, and he decided he wanted to arrive
here someday, work for someone powerful, contributing to what will become
history tomorrow. “Did I become a Republican in high school because I agreed
with them? Was it because I was a contrarian, or did I think it was cool?” he
said. “Who knows. It’s academic at this point, anyway.” He registered as a
Republican, and as soon as he could, he took on jobs with mainstream
conservatives, which felt, at the time, a world away from the fringe movements
and personalities of the day, though he did observe them with interest.
He was of
the Establishment but never deluded about the righteousness of his chosen side.
George W. Bush, for instance, couldn’t earn his support because of “how badly
he had fucked up” the Iraq War. “I still don’t think Republicans have been held to account completely for
that,” he said. The election of the country’s first Black president gave life
to right-wing extremism, and over eight years, polarization and negative
partisanship — or hatred of the other side — accelerated as it hadn’t since the
Gingrich revolution. By the end of the Obama administration, the party sounded
more like Glenn Beck than Barry Goldwater, and although mainstream
conservatives liked to pretend that the “crazies” said little about them, there
was no denying that a fear of such people motivated much decision-making in
Washington. This transformation all but invited what happened next.
The idea that he won is still shocking. He’s a permanent
scar on the face of our country.
Yet, eyes
open, the Republican hadn’t anticipated a moral inconvenience like Donald
Trump. “We were still fundamentally sane until Trump became the nominee,” he
said of his party. Like just about everybody else, he didn’t believe Trump’s
campaign was serious at first and didn’t believe he would win the Republican
nomination. “I was one of those idiots. I remember telling family members there was zero percent chance,” he said.
“When he
became the nominee, I almost quit.” But he didn’t.
Instead, when the test came, he found it was possible — easy, even — to put up
with what he didn’t agree with and didn’t want to be associated with in order
to climb and survive in Washington.
He
figured the era of Trump’s dominance of his party would be over in November
2016 when Hillary Clinton won the election, as most polling and most so-called
experts suggested she would. That wasn’t so far away, and he was “too
pragmatic” to leave a big job that he had worked hard to get, and that he liked
having, over something that was only temporary. “You could just tough it out
for a few months,” he said, recalling his thinking then. “I thought he would
lose! I mean, everyone thought he would lose. The idea that he won is still
shocking. This is a man who is so completely alien to what this country — the
best principles of what this country is about. When I think about the fact that
a hundred years from now, people will look back and say, ‘How the fuck did they
think this was normal?,’ it makes me sad for the country. He’s a permanent scar
on the face of our country.”
When
people look back and say that, the “they” to whom they’ll be referring will
include this Republican and others like him. Even as he likes to see himself as
a passive player, unable to do much beyond enable the president, he knows that
much is true. He understands that being carried along in the stream of narrow
self-interest is what brought Trump to the presidency in the first place and
has kept him there for almost four years. Officially, there’s little daylight
between the party and the president, and this Republican works for one of the
most powerful people in the country, which means, looked at in one way, that
he’s working for Trump, too. “If you ask the average well-informed observer,”
he said, “I think they would say most every Republican is working for him.”
This
Republican works for one of the most powerful people in the country. Read that
sentence again. Does it mean anything to you? When you think about it, it could
mean almost anything, couldn’t it? He might work in the White House. He might
be the vice-president. Or he might just work for the vice-president. He might
be a member of the president’s Cabinet. Or he might work for a member of the
president’s Cabinet. He might work on the president’s reelection campaign or
for the Republican National Committee. He might be in congressional leadership
or a member of the leadership’s staff. The chairman of a powerful congressional
committee or the chair’s chief. The director of the deep state or the
director’s intelligence agent. Someone you’d recognize or someone you’ve never
heard of.
And
that’s the idea, that the characterization of the source is so unspecific it
barely even registers with the average reader. That you absorb the quote but
think nothing of whom it came from. Newspapers and magazines (including this
one) grant fuzzy veils of attribution: There are the many White House officials
and senior White House officials, administration officials and senior
administration officials, a group that includes, at a minimum, hundreds of
people (most famously “Anonymous,” the author of the New York Times op-ed and subsequent book about the
president’s enemies within his own ranks). And then there are even vaguer
titles, like “Republican official” or “Republican operative” or even just “a
Republican,” which could describe millions of people. Lindsey Graham is “a
Republican.” Myles, my cousin who studies at Georgetown, is “a Republican” too.
Although
Trump used to call New York tabloids under false names to plant
positive stories about himself, he has often claimed that anonymous sources
don’t exist. “I think
writers make it up,” he told me as he sat behind the Resolute desk.
“Generally, generally. Not in all cases, but generally.” (In response, I asked
if the anonymous sources he cited himself were made up. He changed the subject
without answering the question.) And why wouldn’t he sow such doubts?
Blind-quote giving is older than Trump, but the dysfunctional dynamics that
give rise to the practice have flourished during his administration. People
want to influence policy, and Trump’s flexible belief system means they have
cause to think they’ll be successful. Or they want to take credit for, or
distance themselves from, something the White House has done. Or they want to
weaken an enemy or puff someone up to deflect attention from themselves. Or
they want to maintain good relations with reporters or keep up an image of
sanity while publicly sacrificing nothing. For as long as Trump has been a fact
of life in our politics, Washington Republicans have had an open invitation to
vent anonymously in the media, where they reveal how they actually feel and
what they really think but can’t express with their names attached if they want
to keep the status they’ve earned.
You’ve
read the stories that result from what these mysterious hordes of Republicans
have to say about the pickle they’ve gotten themselves into with this
president. The split between the official line and the whispered one is so
dramatic that the phenomenon of rampant quiet discontent has been a subplot of
the entire administration. There have been so many of these stories, in fact,
you’ll likely recognize the formula: Trump does or says something at odds with
conservative principles or common sense or basic decency; Republicans in
positions of power are asked to respond, and they do their best to offer the
usual nonresponse responses; but Republicans whose identities remain secret
tell reporters that, in private, everyone is mad at the president, they think
he’s an idiot, he’s screwing up, whatever. Liberals and moderate media critics
get together to roll their eyes at this grand display of cowardice, enabled by
reporters like me who live for drama and are thus part of the problem, while
the president’s supporters cry fabulism or conspiracy or both. My own
self-serving justification for granting anonymity to Republicans connected to
or able to provide insight into this White House is simple: If the choice is
between being lied to on the record or told the truth “on background” (the
technical term for anonymity), I will choose the truth every time — even though
every time I choose the anonymous truth, I make it easier for this system of
secrecy to continue. Actually, that’s too generous. It’s more truthful to say
I’m part of a system that enables political leaders to have it both ways, to
indulge in ugliness and irresponsibility and to distance themselves from their
own actions. The press provides the alibi as it prosecutes the case.
As he
continued along the Mall, the Republican received a text from a New York Times reporter.
He was being summoned as a source. “I do remember the first time I leaked
something. It was almost inadvertent,” he said. “It ended up on the front page
of a pretty big paper, and I remember thinking, Oh wow, you’re playing
with live bullets now.” In the age of Trump, he knows that certain
reporters are calling in search of BBs. “They want that kind of quote, a quote
pointing out how awful this White House is,” he said. And he has learned how to
craft a good one. When I called recently to ask what he thought about Trump’s
altering his campaign operation, he compared it to “changing the kind of
surfboard you’re going to use in a tsunami.” But the content of the quote
itself is almost beside the point. What really makes the words pop is their
capacity to sting the subject, the unanswerable question of who uttered them,
and the suggestion of conflict among the very people who, the cliché goes, are
supposed to have fallen in line behind the man who brought them all to power.
It’s easy
to see what makes these quotes work for us in the media, and for readers, but
what makes them worth giving? “One part of it is catharsis. I think that can be
a dangerous reflex just in general, giving in to catharsis,” the Republican
said, explaining what he gets out of engaging in behavior that would probably
get him fired were anyone to find out. “Some of it is actual anger that the
White House has fucked up something again.” And besides the adrenaline rush of
covertly influencing the public record, he’s fascinated by the media itself. He
paused. “It’s fun.” He paused again and then, with a shrug, said, “I don’t
know. I don’t put a
lot of thought into it.”
Republicans
approve of Donald Trump’s performance as president by a wide margin
— some-where in the range of 87 percent,
though Trump would have you believe that number is a shockingly consistent 96 percent. In public and on
the record, Republicans in Washington are, with rare exceptions, an official
part of this majority. For lawmakers, to do anything but prove loyalty at all
costs is to run the risk of being heckled out of office, another casualty of a
presidential cyberbullying purity crusade. And for officials whose identities
are defined by the principals they serve — like this Republican — the choice
can look like abiding almost anything to maintain proximity to power (“Everyone
loves power,” as he put it) or defecting to the Never Trump wilderness. (“Those
people are delusional grifters,” he said. “Trump is going to lose, and the
Democrats are going to look at those assholes and say, ‘Get the fuck out of
here, you Bush-loving warmongers.’ ”)
But that
logic suggests an almost total indifference to policy and ideology, and the
Republican insists that he isn’t indifferent, not entirely. He thinks Trump is
“lazy,” “an awful person,” and “an idiot,” among other things. But he’s also
against tax hikes and the Green New Deal. He believes in small government, in
Washington staying out of the way. In fact, before the coronavirus pandemic, he
thought the government’s managing to survive a failed executive was “almost a
vindication of Republican principles” because most people, in his view, found
they could get along just fine without a functioning federal government. Now,
of course, “even small-government conservatives would say there’s a pretty big
role for the federal government in our society,” he acknowledged.
“You’re
not either a MAGA person or a Democrat,” he said. “There are some Republicans
who think you should stick around and prevent the worst stuff from happening
because he is the president, however odious that is, and it’s not gonna change
until he’s voted out of office. If you just completely leave the field, you’re
abdicating responsibility.” But he doesn’t actually believe that’s true. Not
totally, anyway. “It’s definitely self-serving,” he said. “I mean, once you
grow up, life is all about contradictions.” So he chose to become one. He
exists now in a zombielike state somewhere between commitment and defection,
his outward-facing self spiritually dead but his new identity not yet fully
born. Or, put another way, he lives what you could call a lie.
“I
remember thinking Reince Priebus is like Marshal Pétain, and the RNC is like
Vichy France,” he said of the 2016 campaign. When Election Night finally came,
he went to a party with other members of the conservative Establishment who
agreed with the assessment. Nobody wanted Trump to win. (“Fuck, no,” he said,
when I asked if he had voted for Trump, though he wouldn’t disclose whom he did
vote for.) Everyone had made peace with the idea of four years of Clinton. When
the results came in, “it was like a funeral,” he said. But for whom? Unlike
when Trump won the nomination, this Republican didn’t consider quitting his job
or leaving his party when Trump won the presidency. “What else am I gonna do,” he said,
“go sell
printer paper?” The alternatives were probably just as bleak during the primary,
but back then, the power calculus wasn’t as clear. If Trump had lost the
election, would those who had quit the party be praised for their foresight or
shunned as deserters? Now, the power was there for the taking.
It’s definitely self-serving. I mean, once you grow up,
life is all about contradictions.
Most
days, in the crack of separation between his own aims and the aims of the
president, the Republican can find a way to live with himself. Most days,
feeling no connection to the White House, he can do his job and achieve a state
of blissful denial, thinking little about whom his actions are really in
service of. “Most days, he doesn’t factor into it,” he said, explaining the
cognitive dissonance. “Trump’s pretty disengaged day to day. He has
subcontracted most of what his administration actually does to actual
Republicans who work on traditional Republican issues. That’s the story of his
presidency. This is fundamentally a pretty lazy guy who likes to watch a lot of
TV, likes to call up his buddies on the phone and bitch about why the
government isn’t really working for him.”
But other
days, during periods of crises or threat or — less common — unified effort, the
interests of this White House and every Republican outside it fuse together.
“It’s not sustainable in times like that,” he said, which “feels really bad” on
a personal level. “There are times when we are all working directly, and those
times felt bad.” Though, if he’s being honest, not entirely bad. “They can also
be kind of fun,” he said, adding that standing against a common enemy — in
those cases, Nancy Pelosi, congressional Democrats, and the entirety of the
#Resistance — is the whole game for people like him. “I still enjoyed that,” he
said, “That’s the bread and butter of what Republicans do.”
He knows
that other anonymous Republicans walk among him. But “it’s been a long four
years” since that Election Night funeral, he said, and every mourner had to
make his or her own choice. “A certain segment went and got jobs in the
administration. A certain segment wanted to keep suckling off the teat of the
RNC and all that,” he said. He doesn’t talk much about Trump’s faults with
those people anymore. “If you don’t like Trump, but you like money, and you’re
willing to be vocal about how we need to reelect him, there’s a lot of money to
be made this year.” Politics is a business, just like anything else, and the
more sacrifices you’re willing to make, the better business is. Besides, he
said, “it’s hard to go up against the president of your own party — even if
he’s not really a Republican.”
As
election day nears, with a pandemic raging and a vacant Supreme Court seat in
the balance, these stories are bound to become more frequent, if that’s even
possible, and the reaction to the stories is bound to grow more exasperated.
(If the president is a stupid sociopath endangering the lives of everyone
around him, why would anyone fear crossing him more than they fear what he
could do to the country given another four years in office? And so on.) This
particular anonymous Republican has been a source in many of the stories, and
he’ll probably be a source in many more. So he has fashioned an intellectual
argument that he even sort of believes for why they’re a public service.
“If they
have any value, and that’s highly questionable, it’s that the unprecedented
frequencies with which anonymous Republicans harshly criticize Trump and this
White House continually remind the public what an aberration Trump is,” he
said. “Trump is a first-term president with consistently high approval ratings
among Republicans, and the fact that he has engendered so little loyalty among
D.C. Republicans should remind the public that this current era is not normal.
That’s definitely the overarching rationale.” But it’s not as though there is a
long-term strategy to undermine the president. Not with this Republican,
anyway. More often, the quotes he gives are formed as a gut reaction to “the
White House’s incompetence,” which “offends me,” he said.
But if
you can avoid the inconvenient facts of the mass deaths and the economic
collapse brought on by the virus, he believes Trump’s presidency is proof of
the Founders’ genius. “His laziness is a good thing for the country,” he said,
“because he wants to do things, but he doesn’t have the work ethic to actually
see them to fruition.” The few examples of the president getting anything done,
he said, involved people besides Trump doing everything themselves with his
blessing, as with immigration. “That’s been the one thing where they’ve
actually harnessed the government to implement their will. If Trump cared about
all this other stuff, too, it’d be a lot worse.”
So where
does all of this leave him on November 3? As the date creeps closer, the
likelihood that Trump will lose and take down the Republican Party with him seems
greater and greater. That’s a scary thought for this Republican to consider.
“It’s going to be so bad. The party will be finished,” he said. “But maybe we
deserve it?” And it seems as if the smell of death at the front of the herd has
triggered in some survival instincts for the long winter ahead. There will be
life after Trump, and those who endured his cannibalistic reign have more
immediate worries than what people 100 years in the future will think of them.
“If he loses in November, all the rats are gonna say that they were only
working for him to save him from himself, which is bullshit. Everyone loves
power. Everyone likes to feel important,” the Republican said. To observe the
early signs of the partywide effort to distance from Trump has been satisfying.
“It vindicates how I’m operating,” he said. “I want to have my cake and eat it
too. And that’s how they feel.”
But
eating cake for four years takes its toll. There has to be some meaning in all
of this, doesn’t there? Maybe he could come up with a quote to distill the
moment. “You know how people say a scar or flaw makes something more beautiful
or gives it more character? What if Trump is that for America?” No. He
retracted the statement. Even anonymously, he didn’t want to bullshit. Come to
think of it, it was the only time he didn’t have to. Reading those words over,
he said, “I actually gagged.”
*This
article appears in the October 26, 2020, issue of New York Magazine. Subscribe Now!
