Epstein Secrets

ress secretary, Sean Spicer— whose personal mantra would shortly become “You can’t make this shit up’—to argue his case in a media moment that turned Spicer, quite a buttoned-down political professional, HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019919 into a national joke, which he seemed destined to never recover from. To boot

l they couldn’t control: the Republican National Committee, which was run by Priebus, his sidekick, thirty-two-year-old Katie Walsh, and their flack, Sean Spicer. Instead of being all in, the RNC, ultimately the tool of the Republican establishment, had been hedging its bets ever since Trump won the nomination

political professional, HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019919 into a national joke, which he seemed destined to never recover from. To boot, the president blamed Spicer for not making the million phantom souls seem real. It was the first presidential instance of what the campaign regulars had learned over many month

t something. Everything. The billionaires had to rethink. So did everyone in the Trump orbit. The campaign staff, now suddenly in a position to snag West Wing jobs—career- and history-making jobs—had to see this odd, difficult, even ridiculous, and, on the face of it, ill-equipped person in a new light. He

he newly appointed deputy chief of staff, Katie Walsh, Reince Priebus’s deputy at the RNC, and together they had peeled off to inspect the now vacant West Wing. The carpet had been shampooed, but little else had changed. It was a warren of tiny offices in need of paint, not rigorously cleaned on a regular ba

was often blamed on lower minions and permanent executive branch staff, culminating in late February with an all-hands meeting of staffers called by Sean Spicer—cell phones surrendered at the door—during which the press secretary issued threats of random phone checks and admonitions about the use of encrypted

taff. Bannon was disloyal (not to mention he always looks like shit). Priebus was weak (not to mention he was short—a midget). Kushner was a suck-up. Spicer was stupid (and looks terrible too). Conway was a crybaby. Jared and Ivanka should never have come to Washington. His callers, largely because they

and the stage in his own house. He regularly berated Spicer for his ham-handed performances, often giving his full attention to them. His response to Spicer’s briefings was part of his continuing belief that nobody could work the media like he could, that somehow he had been stuck with an F-Troop communic

as not only known by people outside the White House for the alacrity with which it returned calls and for the ease with which it seemed to accomplish West Wing tasks, it also seemed to be comprised of people who liked each other and who were dedicated to a common goal: eliminating as much friction as possibl

n Sachs, too, that in the middle of a Republican-controlled Washington and a virulent, if not anti-Semitic (at least toward liberal Jews), right-wing West Wing, the Kushner-Cohn Democrats appeared to be ascendant. Part of the credit went to Kushner, who showed an unexpected tenacity. Conflict averse—in the K

nal into a joke figure standing at the White House door. In his daily out-of-body experience, as a witness to his own humiliation and loss for words, Spicer understood after a while—although he began to understand this beginning his first day on the job when dealing with the dispute about the inaugural au

he also wanted it because again and again the response surprised him—and, as though every time was the first time, he could not modify his behavior. Sean Spicer caught the brunt of the daily drama, turning this otherwise reasonable, mild-mannered, process-oriented professional into a joke figure standing at t

e House—Jared, Ivanka, Hope Hicks, and an increasingly ambivalent Dina Powell and Gary Cohn on one side, and almost everyone else, including Priebus, Spicer, Conway, and most clearly Bannon, on the other—were most distinguished by their culpability in or distance from the Comey-Mueller calamity. It was, a

Republican Party had now become the symbol of its civil war. On that Monday, the president’s son-in-law appeared at the microphones in front of the West Wing to preview his statement to Senate investigators about the Trump campaign’s connections to Russia. Having almost never spoken before in public, he no

l influence with the president, but important members of the staff saw them as having this juice, and hence believed that they were the true north of West Wing advancement and power. Curiously, for all their callowness, Jared and Ivanka had become quite a fearsome presence, as feared by others as the two of