White House aides prayed for rain. Inclement weather would mean President Donald Trump would have to take the motorcade to the waiting plane to Florida. That would mean he couldn’t take the helicopter from the South Lawn to Joint Base Andrews, which meant he wouldn’t walk in front of a few dozen waiting reporters who would of course ask him about Special Counsel Bob Mueller’s indictments of 13 Russians for meddling in the 2016 elections.
“If anyone knows a rain dance,” a senior White House official said in the hallway around midday Friday. She didn’t finish the sentence.
The weather didn’t cooperate with the White House’s hopes. But the President did. At least for that moment.
This is the daily reality of White House staff members at this moment. Their best hope of averting a crisis — of the legal, political, foreign policy, public relations and familial varieties — is hoping the weather report scuttles an airlift from the South Lawn. In conversations with more than a dozen White House officials and outside advisers, they describe the mood as being grim. Many inside are looking for a way out. Roughly half of them compared it to what they felt when Trump fired FBI Director James Comey last May. None would speak for attribution lest they be seen as publicly disloyal to the President.
The weekend began with what many considered a victory of the smallest order. The typically chatty President bypassed the reporters to board his waiting helicopter without saying a word about the Mueller indictments. Trump ignored the shouted questions and climbed into the green-and-white helo. (First Lady Melania Trump traveled separately to Andrews Air Force Base, a development her staff attributed to scheduling convenience but which inevitably raised questions about her reaction to the latest reports of the President’s infidelities, including one published hours earlier.)
The presidential silence was short-lived, however.
As soon as Trump was in the air, aboard a Marine helicopter that reaches speeds of 150 miles per hour and has anti-missile systems at the ready, the President unleashed the first of 22 tweets to come between Friday afternoon and Sunday night. “The results of the election were not impacted. The Trump campaign did nothing wrong – no collusion!” the initial tweet read, incorrectly stating what the filings actually said — especially for him. It was merely the prelude to what would be many, many tweets that the President would send in obvious frustration with the chaos surrounding him.
Russia started their anti-US campaign in 2014, long before I announced that I would run for President. The results of the election were not impacted. The Trump campaign did nothing wrong - no collusion!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 16, 2018
White House aides braced for what they expected to become a longer-than-normal three-day weekend.
Even by Trumpian standards, the President’s weekend in Florida was a class apart. In angry, sometimes profane and occasionally misspelled outbursts, the President gave the world a glimpse into what was going through his head at a moment certain to draw scrutiny for generations. It also brought to light what it’s like to work for this Leader of the Free World who is increasingly feeling isolated.
Already, the week had been a bad one. There were rumors, then reports, that a top deputy on the Trump campaign was ready to plead guilty in Mueller’s probe. A school shooting in Parkland, Florida, left 17 dead not far from the President’s private Mar a Lago club. The President scheduled a Friday evening visit to the community, although White House officials worried that it was a fraught situation for what most aides recognize is figure who doesn’t exactly exude compassion in public.
Then, on Friday, there came a one-two punch: another blockbuster report about Trump’s infidelities, and the indictments of 13 Russians and three Russian-based organizations on criminal charges that they meddled in the United States’ 2016 election. The White House, including the President, tried to keep the New Yorker reportabout affairs out of the spotlight, but they couldn’t do much about the indictments. According to the court filings, the Russians arranged rallies backing Trump, met with the then-candidates’ allies and advisers and spent millions on social media impressions. The Special Counsel also announced an American had pleaded guilty to helping the Russians do this.
The President immediately declared victory as if he were playing a game of “Not It” in the schoolyard. In a rare, all-caps official White House statement, there came the proclamation: “NO COLLUSION.” White House aides tried, half-heartedly, to talk him out of the statement. They did not succeed. It was, after all, the President’s prerogative to say what he wanted.
It’s easy to understand why the President was digging for any good news. So far, his 2018 has been a series of setbacks. A popular and competent senior West Wing staffer, Rob Porter, was forced from his job after news organizations revealed allegations of abuse from two ex-wives. Another, speechwriter David Sorensen, also lost his gig under similar circumstances.
The exits reveled the extent to which White House staffers were working without security clearances, including two of the President’s most valued advisers: daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner. (Changes in vetting were released on Friday to almost no widespread interest.)
The Special Counsel, no matter how many times the President says otherwise, is nowhere near ending the investigation into the 2016 elections. And reports keep emerging about purported infidelities, including payouts to adult actresses and affairs that took place early in his marriage to the First Lady, and irregular spending from his record-breaking inaugural committee, including to a friend of the First Lady who is working as an unpaid adviser in the East Wing.
Then there were the repeated political defeats. On immigration, the Senate last week roundly rejected the President’s preferred plan and then left town. Congress is showing lukewarm interest in the President’s grand plan for infrastructure. Courts are slowing down the President’s order to end protections for young people who came to the United States illegally as children. And Republicans’ odds of holding their majorities in the House and Senate are fading with each Trump misstep. House Speaker Paul Ryan, in Florida to meet with the President, didn’t come to speak with reporters after the session.
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