Very few people unload on Trump to his face. We suspect the family does it occasionally. We know what happened when Pelosi unloaded on Trump at her last meeting with him, standing up, saying: “With you, all roads lead to Putin.” We do not believe Trump spoke to her in person again. There are people who are just bigger than Trump and can tell Trump to go to hell and not care about it, Tillerson, Mattis, etc. lose more than they gain by being around Trump.
But not many staff ever got in Trump’s face and had it out with him. Gary Cohn did, though. Cohn is Jewish and the incident in Charlottesville shook him up badly. But his anxiety was made much worse by Trump’s statements. Recall this? From Politico’s report on a new book forthcoming, “Frankly We Did Win This Election’: The Inside Story of How Donald Trump Lost.”
The White House tried in vain to focus cable networks and newspaper reporters on the first words of his statement instead of the final phrase—“on many sides”—that he’d ad-libbed and then repeated. But the obvious question they couldn’t answer was how the president could put any blame on the peaceful counter-protesters. His remarks seemed to justify the white supremacist violence, and Trump’s silence over the next 24 hours unnerved even those around him.
Back at Trump Tower in New York two days later, Trump had a news conference scheduled to discuss the nation’s infrastructure. Responding to questions about Charlottesville, he again blamed the counterprotesters. “You had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides.”
Perhaps we didn’t appreciate it then as much now, but now it’s obvious. Trump wouldn’t care if they were yelling for Hitler and gas chambers and trying to mow down all the counter-protesters, so long as they vote for Trump or think Trump’s great, he likes them. It is literally the only quality in the world that matters to Trump. Do you like him and praise him? Or do you not like him and criticize him? That’s the only thing Trump needs to know. The White Nationalists were Trump supporters. They had to be very fine white nationalists.
Gary Cohn, Trump’s senior economics advisor, went off on Trump in an Oval Office meeting:
Cohn told Trump that his lack of clarity had been harmful to the country and that he’d put an incredible amount of pressure on people working in the White House. He told Trump that he might have to quit. No one backed Cohn up. Others in the room, including Pence, remained quiet.
Cohn returned to his office after the meeting broke up. Following a few minutes behind, Pence climbed the flight of stairs and appeared at the threshold of Cohn’s door.
“I’m proud of you,” Pence told him, safely out of earshot of the president.
Cowardly Pence. But we should probably also note that on the most important professional day of his life, on the day he did the most important thing he’d ever do for his country, Pence chose to be loyal to the Constitution, not Trump. Pence wouldn’t have been in the Senate that moment if Pence had been driven out of office earlier. Still, it was cowardly to not support Cohn in the meeting. Maybe that’s why Trump thought that Pence would do his bidding.
Cohn left the White House in 2018.
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Peace, y’all
Jason
[email protected] and on Twitter @JasonMiciak