Day 338: Trump Aides Struggle to Muzzle Trump

It should be no surprise that one of the most difficult tasks for White House aides to accomplish is getting Donald Trump to shut his trap.

Trump’s press conferences have been catastrophic disasters.

Take, for instance, in the days leading up to his inauguration, where he spoke next to a stack of papers. As we noted on Day -8, Trump said:

“I want to thank everybody. So this is all — just so you understand, these papers — because I’m not sure that was explained properly. But these papers are all just a piece of the many, many companies that are being put into trust to be run by my two sons that I hope at the end of eight years, I’ll come back and say, oh, you did a good job. Otherwise, if they do a bad job, I’ll say, ‘You’re fired.’”

Further evidence of Trump’s poor performance came in February when he decided to hold an impromptu press conference. On Day 29 we characterized it as follows:

Donald Trump’s press conference yesterday — the one where he berated the media; claimed he gets to be the arbiter of what is and isn’t fake news; paradoxically declared that intelligence leaks are real but the news reporting them is fake; asked a black reporter if members of the Congressional Black Caucus were friends of hers; bragged about his electoral college victory; lied about the size of that victory; stammered an absurd explanation when called out on that lie; assessed worthiness of reporters’ questions by their ratings; praised Putin’s intelligence for aggressive military maneuvers near the U.S. military; opined that anti-Semitism done in his name is actually being done by his opponents in an attempt to fool the media; screamed that drugs are cheaper than candy; explained, unexplained and reexplained who, when and how people from his staff did or did not speak to Russian operatives; praised Mike Flynn after proclaiming Flynn lied to Mike Pence; and said “Russia is fake news” — was an unprecedented, unmitigated, unhinged disaster.

Then there was Trump — who just days before had to walk back his infamous “on many sides” argument regarding the protests in Charlottesville, Virginia — getting off track during an infrastructure press conference and tried to again absolve violent white nationalists of wrongdoing. On Day 209 we described that, simply:

Never before has a president defended such action. Until now.

There’s a pattern of Trump going off the rails and doing irreparable damage to his reputation. That left the White House in a quandary as Trump was set to head to Mar-a-Lago on Friday. Before he left, they determined it would be best for Trump to privately sign the tax bill and avoid a bombardment of questions from the media that would invite Trump to stick a foot in his mouth. That plan quickly unraveled when the press vowed not to run any photographs of the bill signing taken by the White House photographer.

Eventually, the White House relented and the press was quickly ushered into the Oval Office. Sensing their moment, they lobbed questions, some of which Trump fielded. While Trump called an infrastructure bill “easiest” to do, his aides moved in to literally block additional questions.

The President’s mood was bright and he seemed eager to answer a few questions. Aides appeared on higher alert than normal, with Chief of Staff John Kelly and other aides attempting to kick reporters out and get the President on Marine One to Mar-a-Lago.

As reporters kept pressing Trump, aides moved closer and closer to the Resolute Desk, gently prodding reporters and photographers to leave the Oval Office. With the President still talking, chief economic adviser Gary Cohn and other officials stood in front of the desk, all but blocking Trump’s view.

Finally, White House chief of staff John Kelly also joined in and asked the press to leave, saying: “Helicopter is running out of gas,” referring to Marine One that was waiting to take the President to Air Force One.

Just like that, Trump was gone, and for the first time in 16 years a president failed to deliver an end-of-the-year press conference.

338 days in, 1124 to go

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