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THE BIG IDEA: President Trump has described himself as “a loyalty freak” and told interviewers that it is the trait he cares about most when hiring an employee. “We could use some more loyalty, I will tell you that,” he said at the Boy Scout Jamboree last week.
James Comey testified under oath that Trump pressed him to pledge his loyalty during a one-on-one dinner in January, and he believes his refusal to do so led to his termination. Even though he says he has contemporaneous notes validating the former FBI director’s account, the president denies it. But he also says that it would not have been inappropriate if he had. “I don’t think it would be a bad question to ask,” Trump told Fox News in May. “You know, I mean, it depends on how you define loyalty.”
That begs the question: How does the president define loyalty? Trump seems to hold a black-and-white view: You’re either with him or against him. There is no in between.
Trump’s die-hard supporters see themselves as members of what counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway has taken to calling “the October 8th coalition.” These are the people who steadfastly stood by Trump last fall on the day after The Washington Post published a videotape of him boasting crudely about being able to get away with groping women because he’s a celebrity.
When Trump ousted Reince Priebus on Friday, a senior White House official explained that the president has questioned the depth of his chief of staff’s loyalty ever since that day. Trump has often noted that Priebus, as chairman of the Republican National Committee, suggested that he drop out of the race when the 2005 “Access Hollywood” interview emerged. The senior official told my colleagues that Priebus’s advice was “a stain he was never going to remove: The scarlet ‘A.H.’”
— But make no mistake: Being a member of the “Oct. 8th coalition” does not actually ensure that the president will have your back.
Just ask the “beleaguered” Jeff Sessions, who that weekend was a Trump surrogate in the spin room after a debate in St. Louis. Asked by a reporter from the conservative Weekly Standard whether the behavior Trump described on tape would be sexual assault if it actually took place, the Alabama senator replied: “I don’t characterize that as sexual assault. I think that’s a stretch.” The reporter, John McCormack, followed up: “So if you grab a woman by the genitals, that’s not sexual assault?” Demonstrating that he was willing to walk on glass for Trump, Sessions actually replied: “I don’t know. It’s not clear … how that would occur.” (He later walked this back.)
Trump rewarded Sessions with his dream job, but their relationship ruptured just three weeks after the attorney general took office. The president told reporters on March 2, the day Sessions recused himself from matters involving the Trump campaign, that he should not do it. “Sessions had already decided to step aside. But he had not consulted his boss … an action that would trigger a deep-seated anger that has seethed to this day,” Sari Horwitz and Robert Costa write in a story for today’s paper. “Trump confided to White House officials that he felt more exposed than ever to his critics with Sessions ceding control of the Russia investigation … That first flush of anger has never subsided. … For four months, Trump has rarely spoken to his attorney general, and when he has, it has been perfunctory.”
Sessions was not just the first senator to endorse Trump but the only one to back him before he became the presumptive GOP nominee. The president last week claimed falsely that Sessions only got behind him because he was drawing such big crowds in Alabama. And he’s tried repeatedly to push him toward resigning so that he doesn’t need to fire him.
Just how insistent is Trump on absolute loyalty? Sessions allies inside the White House are now afraid to speak up too vocally on his behalf lest they get on the president’s bad side. “Two key Sessions allies in the West Wing — senior policy adviser Stephen Miller and deputy chief of staff Rick Dearborn, who worked for Sessions in the Senate — have avoided becoming caught in the drama and instead have focused on their own responsibilities,” Sari and Bob report. “‘They’re … making clear that while they will always be close to Sessions, they’re Trump guys now,’ said one White House official, describing the dynamic. ‘It’s what they have to do in this environment. The president is not going to change his mind, and Stephen and Rick know that if they spoke up, it wouldn’t do much.’”
The same goes for White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon, a longtime friend who promoted Sessions when he ran Breitbart News. “But Steve is in a delicate position where he can’t put everything on the line to save him,” a White House official said. “So they have a good relationship, but it’s not like Steve is able to be vocal.”
Chris Christie, who sat with Trump when the “Access Hollywood” story broke, nevertheless got purged as head of the transition team just one month later. “I’m still supporting Donald,” the New Jersey governor said the weekend the tape came out. “Obviously, I’m disappointed by what happened and, you know, disappointed in some respects by the response initially. But I’m still supporting him.”
The Washington Examiner ran a profile last week of Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus. Conway, who was Trump’s campaign manager before becoming a top aide in the White House, pays tribute in the piece to Debbie Meadows for boarding a “Women for Trump” bus with 10 other congressional wives in the wake of the video. “We will always remember how tenacious and loyal Mark and Debbie Meadows were, especially after Oct. 7. They’re definitely members of what we call the ‘Oct. 8th coalition,’” Conway said. “In the final month, beginning with her boarding that bus — in the face of a great deal of pressure to do otherwise — tells you something about their tenacity and loyalty.”
Conway’s effusive praise for the congressman is amusing when compared to Trump’s broadsides against him this spring. The president ripped him by name during an appearance on Capitol Hill in March, and then on Twitter, after the Freedom Caucus opposed an early draft of Paul Ryan’s American Health Care Act because it didn’t go far enough to repeal Obamacare. He even dispatched his budget director to threaten one member of the group. “The president asked me to look you square in the eyes and to say that he hoped that you voted ‘no’ on this bill so he could run [a primary challenger] against you in 2018,” Mick Mulvaney told Rep. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.).
– One upshot: Loyalty is situational for Trump. He’s loyal when it is a means to an end that he wants. Consider the case of White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci. The former hedge fund executive raised money for Scott Walker and Jeb Bush during the GOP primaries. In the summer of 2015, on Fox Business, he called Trump a “hack politician” and said his rhetoric was “anti-American.”
During his debut in the press room, The Mooch called this “one of the biggest mistakes that I made because I was an unexperienced person in the world of politics.” Trump “brings it up every 15 seconds,” he added. “I should have never said that about him. So, Mr. President, if you’re listening, I personally apologize for the 50th time for saying that.”
Trump excused him:
— Another irony is the degree to which Priebus was actually quite loyal to the president. Trump never forgot his suggestion that he consider dropping out of the race after the “Access Hollywood” tape came out, but he appointed him chief of staff anyway. Priebus made his suggestion privately and continued to express public support for Trump. “Nothing has changed in regard with our relationship,” Priebus said during a conference call on Oct. 10. “We are in full coordination with the Trump campaign. We have a great relationship with them. And we are going to continue to work together to make sure he wins in November.”
Priebus stuck his neck out for a mercurial boss and endured indignities big and small over the past six months. Don’t forget the strange Cabinet meeting last month when every secretary went around the room heaping praise on Trump as cameras rolled. “On behalf of the entire senior staff around you, Mr. President, we thank you for the opportunity and the blessing that you’ve given us to serve your agenda,” Priebus said.
Even on his way out the door, Priebus made a surreal appearance on Sean Hannity’s show Friday night to, for all intents and purposes, defend Trump’s decision to get rid of him. “I think actually going a different direction, hitting a reset button, is actually a good thing, and the president did that,” Priebus said, insisting that he chose to resign. “I’m going to be on Team Trump all the time.”
