How Trump undercuts his staff again and again

Extract from The Guardian

The undercutting follows a familiar sequence: a Trump official is sent in front of the media to give a message – then Trump swoops in and says the opposite

HR McMaster and the White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, field questions from reporters during a press briefing at the White House Tuesday in Washington DC. Photograph: Win McNamee/Getty Images

Adam Gabbatt in New York

Wednesday 17 May 2017 05.16 AEST Last modified on Wednesday 17 May 2017 06.11 AEST

Among the many bizarre twists and sometimes terrifying turns of the Trump presidency, one pattern has stood out: Trump’s continued undermining of key administration figures, senior advisers and communications staff.
The undercutting follows a familiar sequence. A Trump official – frequently the beleaguered press secretary, Sean Spicer – is sent in front of the media to give a response or message.

Then the president swoops in and says the opposite.
Here’s a rundown of some of the White House’s mixed messages.

• The story: ‘Trump gave classified intelligence to Russia.’
• Staff: ‘This story is false.’
• Trump: ‘I wanted to share’ information and I had an ‘absolute right’ to do it.

On Monday evening, the Washington Post reported that Trump had “revealed highly classified information” to the Russian foreign minister and ambassador during a White House meeting. The president allegedly shared information that had been given to the US by an ally, who had not given consent for it to be shared with Russia.
The White House clicked into gear and dispatched a series of officials to refute the report. The national security adviser, HR McMaster, was careful with his rebuttal: “At no time were any intelligence sources or methods discussed, and no military operations were disclosed that were not already known publicly,” he said.
But McMaster still insisted the story, “as reported, is false”.
“I was in the room. It did not happen,” he said.
The deputy national security adviser, Dina Powell, who was also in the meeting, echoed McMaster’s denial.
“This story is false. The president only discussed the common threats that both countries faced,” Powell said on Monday night.
But on Tuesday morning, the president directly contradicted them.
“As president, I wanted to share with Russia (at an openly scheduled WH meeting) which I have the absolute right to do, facts pertaining to terrorism and airline flight safety,” Trump tweeted.

• The story: James Comey’s firing.
• Staff: Comey was fired at the suggestion of the deputy attorney general and the attorney general.
• Trump: I’d already decided to fire him; it was related to ‘this Russia thing’.

Donald Trump fired the FBI director, James Comey, on the afternoon of 9 May. The White House issued a statement, attributed to Spicer, which was extremely clear on how the president came to that decision.

“President Trump acted based on the clear recommendations of both Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions,” the statement said.
That night, Spicer, after hiding in some bushes in the White House grounds, gave the same reason, according to the Washington Post.

“It was all him,” Spicer said of Rosenstein, as a reporter repeated his answer back to him. “That’s correct – I mean, I can’t, I guess I shouldn’t say that, thank you for the help on that one. No one from the White House. That was a DoJ decision.”

On Wednesday morning, the media had begun to wonder whether Comey’s investigation into possible collusion between Trump associates and Russia influenced the decision.
Up stepped Vice-President Mike Pence to deny that.
“That was not what this was about,” Pence said.
“The president accepted the recommendation of his deputy attorney general to remove James Comey from his position.”
Trump’s deputy press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, speaking to NBC, stuck to the same line.
“Someone who had done a thorough review and someone who has the respect and reputation that the deputy attorney general has, he took that seriously,” Huckabee Sanders said.
“He took the recommendation seriously. And he made a decision based on that.”
So far so good. Except on Thursday, Trump himself gave an entirely different reason from his three colleagues and the White House itself.
“I was going to fire Comey. My decision. I was going to fire Comey. There’s no good time to do it, by the way. I was going to fire regardless of recommendation,” Trump said in an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt.
“And, in fact, when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said: ‘You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made up story, it’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should’ve won.’”

• The story: how to deal with North Korea.
• Staff: softly, softly.
• Trump: could be ‘major, major conflict’.

The 85th anniversary of the founding of North Korea’s army was on 25 April. There was concern about the country launching more missile tests, and the US had dispatched a fleet of warships to the region.
The events prompted a flurry of interviews with US military officials regarding US policy toward North Korea. Originally, the message seemed designed to calm fears of conflict between the two countries.
On 26 April Adm Harry Harris, the top US commander in the Pacific, said that the deployment of the American Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense missile defense system to South Korea was to bring North Korea leader Kim Jong-Un ‘to his senses, not to his knees’.
The same day, the White House briefed US senators on North Korea policy. CNN reported that there was “little learned” during that meeting, and that no new direction had been suggested by the Trump administration.
But two days later, in an interview with Reuters, Trump came up with a potential new direction of his own.
“There is a chance that we could end up having a major, major conflict with North Korea. Absolutely,” Trump said.

• The story: More nuclear weapons. Or not.
• Trump: we need more nukes.
• Staff: there will be no more nukes.
• Trump: ‘Let there be an arms race.’

On 22 December, the then president-elect cast aside both the New Start nuclear arms treaty – an agreement between the US and Russia to reduce their numbers of nuclear weapons – and the decades of bipartisan US efforts to limit the number of nuclear arms, and sent the following tweet:

Donald J. Trump

✔ @realDonaldTrump

The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes

2:50 AM - 23 Dec 2016

The tweet appeared to be in response to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, calling for Russia to “strengthen the military potential of strategic nuclear forces” a day earlier. Whatever the inspiration for Trump’s comment, fear spread that Trump – not renowned for restraint – could be setting the US on a path toward nuclear war.
Trump’s then communications adviser, Jason Miller, popped up to try and allay those worries, and to attempt to walk back the suggestion that the US would be bulking up its arsenal.
“President-­elect Trump was referring to the threat of nuclear proliferation and the critical need to prevent it,” Miller said.
Crisis averted. Until 24 December, that is, when Trump contradicted Miller’s line.
“Let it be an arms race. We will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all,” Trump said, according to the Morning Joe host Mika Brzezinksi.
While the messaging from the Trump administration is frequently mixed, muddled, and contradictory, one pattern is crystal clear: if Trump’s aides say one thing, their boss is quite likely to say another.