Another time adviser national security adviser called his attempt to request foreign assistance in the election unacceptable. A Homeland Security adviser has called some of his actions “deeply disturbing”. A major advocate for communication has put his mental state in doubt. A former participant in aide and reality show called him racist.
For a president who tests loyalty above almost all other attributes – but who is not necessarily known for returning in kind – the flaws of officials and confidants who knew him well are not only political but personal.
Campaign and administration officials say their goal at the convention is to portray Trump as unsafe to work for the American people, and hope to ignore the accusations Democrats have made about their own events that he ignored the coronavirus pandemic and is generally unfit and uninterested in being president.
Part of her argument will rely on testimonies from all-day Americans who have benefited from Trump administration policies and from those who work closely with Trump, including the man who manages his Twitter account, Dan Scavino.
Yet many others who have worked with Trump, or have known him all his life, offer a very different view – one where competence is lacking and coldness fades.
That includes Miles Taylor, a political nominee who served on the Homeland Security department from 2017-2019 and last week announced he would support Trump’s rival Joe Biden. In making his announcement, Taylor recalled uneasy experiences with the president during his tenure, including accusing Trump of repeatedly using his office for political gain and of demonstrating heartlessness, such as when Taylor said Trump appeared to support it. use of tear gas on migrants along the US-Mexico border.
It also includes Maryanne Trump Barry, Trump’s sister and a retired federal appeals judge, who is heard in new recordings calling her brother “cruel” and complaining about his presidency.
“It’s the phonony of everything. It’s the phonony and this cruelty,” she said in the recordings, made by Mary Trump, author of a recent bombshell book about the president and his niece.
“His goddamn tweet and lies, oh my God,” she said elsewhere in the recording. “I talk too freely, but you know. The change of stories. The lack of preparation. The lie. Holy shit.”
Trump himself has ordered the dismissal of people who once worked for him by framing the criticism as sour grapes from people who cannot handle the heat. He called Taylor a ‘lowlife’ and in a statement on Saturday he sought to project similar nonchalance over his sister’s infamy.
“Every day it’s something different,” he wrote, “who cares.”
In reality, it sometimes feels like every day another friend or co-worker hires Trump, often dramatically and in many cases in conjunction with the sale of her new book.
All White Houses confront themselves with the early narrative memoirs as an interview of an awful aide. But Trump, who is famous for asking for loyalty, has not appeared to inspire much confidence in those who quit or were fired from his administration.
Those officials do not only consist of holders of the Obama administration, staff forced to testify under oath, or career intelligence and justice department officials whom Trump has named as part of the so-called “deep state.” . “
There is a long list of Allied-turned-critics that includes several of the men and women who have been hand-picked by Trump to lead agencies across the federal government.
Many of the sharpest criticisms have come from the national security realm, including former National Security Adviser John Bolton, former Secretary of Defense James Mattis and former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. In varying degrees of severity, all have described Trump as unserious about the job and a threat to American security.
Others have focused on Trump’s character, including Omarosa Manigault Newman, once a participant in “The Apprentice” who came to the White House as director of communications for the Office of Public Liaison. Manigault Newman claimed she was fired because she knew too much about a possible audio recording of Trump saying a racial epithet.
Even some of Trump’s closest friends are asked to report on his state of mind. In a new book on the relationship between Trump and Fox News, CNN chief media correspondent Brian Stelter reports that Sean Hannity – one of Trump’s closest friends and a loud public booster of his agenda – has described the president in private as “batshit crazy.”
In her appearances on cable television, and during her subsequent gaggles with reporters on the White House rampage, Conway often pointed to Trump’s character as a defense against democratic attacks, calling him an advocate for women, a study commander and a hot boss.
There is little chance that Conway will join forces with her former opponents of the West Wing in criticizing the president, and so far she is still reachable to speak at this week’s convention. Yet her president escapes the president with a trustworthy supportive voice from the building, someone who used her stature with the president to defend him in sometimes logically defensive ways – even if others who know him offer a different story.
.
