Epstein Secrets

virtual policy, it has also been more open to the media than any White House in recent memory. In the beginning, I sought a level of formal access to this White House, something of a fly-on- the-wall status. The president himself encouraged this idea. But, given the many fiefdoms in the Trump White House that came

heeding Senate leader Mitch McConnell’s prescription that “this president will sign whatever is put in front of him,” while also taking advantage of the White House’s lack of political and legislative experience and outsourcing as much policy as possible to Capitol Hill. In the early weeks of the administration, P

om he had never met before, for positions whose importance Trump did not particularly understand. Ailes, a veteran of the Nixon, Reagan, and Bush 41 White Houses, was growing worried by the president-elect’s lack of immediate focus on a White House structure that could serve and protect him. He tried to impres

cific ideas about how to turn his themes and vitriol into policy, nor a team that could reasonably unite behind him. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019969 In most White Houses, policy and action flow down, with staff trying to implement what the president wants—or, at the very least, what the chief of staff says the preside

ction meant nobody had to deal with the latter issue. As the campaign came to an end, Trump himself was sanguine. He had survived the release of the Billy Bush tape when, in the uproar that followed, the RNC had had the gall to pressure him to quit the race. FBI director James Comey, having bizarrely hung Hi

thirty, Ryan called the president to say he was short fifteen to twenty votes and needed to pull the vote. Bannon, backed by Mulvaney, who had become the White House’s Hill operative, continued to urge an immediate vote. A defeat here would be a major defeat for the Republican leadership. That suited Bannon just fin

ore and more seemed to be. Meanwhile, virtually everybody believed that a large measure of the fault lay in Reince Priebus, who had failed to create a White House that could protect the president from himself—or from Bannon or from his own children. At the same time, believing that the fundamental problem lay i

early Trump supporter. (Meadows’s wife had a particular place of regard in the Trump camp for continuing a campaign swing across the Bible Belt over Billy Bush weekend.) Nearly as much as winning the presidency itself, removing Ryan—indeed, humiliating him—was an ultimate expression of what Bannon sought to

lic enemy; they expected nothing of him. But Priebus and Spicer HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_020089 they regarded as functionaries, and their job was to support the White House’s goals, which included their goals and interests. Spicer, ever ridiculed in the media for his cockamamie defense of the White House and a seeming dum

ce his exit from the White House six weeks before—he was on a crash all-sushi diet. “That building,” said his friend David Bossie, speaking about all White Houses but especially the Trump White House, “takes perfectly healthy people and turns them into old, unhealthy people.” But Bannon, who Bossie had declared

and, 30, 76 Bannon and, 1-8, 31-32, 35, 52-53, 59-65, 93, 122, 146-47, 158, 187, 190-91, 232-37, 289, 301, 308-10 Bannon firing and, 173-83, 298-300 Billy Bush tape and, 13-14, 34 business and finances of, 17-18, 36-37, 39, 99, 100, 102, 240, 252-53, 277-79 business councils and, 87-89, 298 cabinet appointme