Epstein Secrets

gan his campaign for president he had almost no friends in politics. The only two actual politicians with whom Trump was close were Rudy Giuliani and Chris Christie, and both men were in their own way peculiar and isolated. And to say that he knew nothing— nothing at all—about the basic intellectual foundations o

The day after the election, Trump’s close advisers—suddenly eager to be part of a process that almost everybody had ignored—immediately began blaming Christie for a lack of transition preparations. Hurriedly, the bare-bones transition team moved from downtown Washington to Trump Tower. This was certainly s

political experience. Christie, like most Trump allies, fell in and out of favor. In the final weeks of the campaign, Trump contemptuously measured Christie’s increasing distance from his losing enterprise, and then, with victory, his eagerness to get back in. Trump and Christie went back to Trump’s days t

law, carefully displacing as little air as possible: the massive and domineering older man, the reedy and pliant younger one. In the revised death-of-Chris-Christie story, it is not the deferential Jared who strikes back, but—in some sense even more satisfying for the revenge fantasy—Charlie Kushner himself who h

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

City. And Mar-a-Lago. And Trump SoHo. Both Chris Christie and Rudy Giuliani—each a self-styled expert on th

as going to throw him in the soup. Manafort was going to roll. And it wasn’t just Russia. It was Atlantic City. And Mar-a-Lago. And Trump SoHo. Both Chris Christie and Rudy Giuliani—each a self-styled expert on the DOJ and the FBI, and ever assuring Trump of their inside sources—encouraged him to take the view t

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

An Obama guy will be acting attorney general. I said you’re not going to get Rudy’—Trump had again revived a wish for his loyalists Rudy Giuliani or Chris Christie to take the job—‘“because he was on the campaign and will have to recuse himself, and Chris Christie, too, so those are masturbatory fantasies, get t

2-96, 298 chemical weapons, 183-84, 190-93, 265 Cheney, Dick, 27 China, 6-8, 39, 100, 193-94, 211, 226, 228, 258, 267, 269-70, 297 Chopra, Deepak, 80 Christie, Chris, 16, 24-25, 30-31, 210, 242, 279 Christoff, Niki, 78 Churchill, Winston, 50 Circa news website, 159, 257 Clapper, James, 41, 214-15 Clinton, B

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