White House Chronicle

News Analysis With a Sense of Humor

The Woman Behind Trump’s Overnight Truth Social Raging

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President Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, likes to say that his administration is the most transparent in history. Possibly, she is right.

That is, if you think letting it all hang out is the kind of transparency Leavitt has in mind.

Certainly, it all hangs out in a way we have never seen in Washington. Trump has turned the Oval Office into a kind of television studio where he insults the press, talks to foreign leaders and, on occasion, berates them (Ukraine, South Africa and Canada) in front of the press.

Then there is the president’s late-night posting on Truth Social, when a meteor shower of invective, scorn, misinformation, disinformation, self-adulation, and allegations, interspersed with policy declarations, reveals him unedited. In those posts, he has urged colonizing Greenland, taking over Canada and, recently, adding Venezuela as the 51st state.

All of it set about with capital letters, exclamation points and AI-generated pictures — some of the most offensive ones have included Trump as Jesus, the Obamas as apes and, more recently, Illinois Gov. JD Pritzker gorging on an enormous hamburger.

The insults keep coming, accusing enemies and even his predecessors of being weak, having low IQs and, of course, being “losers.” In this scathing and self-aggrandizing stream, some are even traitors, including former President Barack Obama. Arrest him!

It is a bravura performance without equal. It is also hugely popular with diehard devotees of the president. His account on Truth Social has 12.5 million subscribers. One night recently, there were 55 posts — some clearly composed and some forwarded from right-wing sources, alleging conspiracies, malfeasance or trumpeting Trump.

Journalists assigned to read them have called them variously rampages, rants, wild sprees and storms. But read them, they must.

This is Trump in a stream of consciousness, unvarnished, and an essential source of news because what the president of the United States says is news.

Traces of varnishing have been appearing: The number of spelling mistakes, bizarre word formations and grammatical errors has gone down, even as the volume has accelerated.

The Wall Street Journal has revealed the unseen hand on the keyboard. It is the hand of Natalie Harp, the president’s personal assistant, an influential but unsung force in the White House.

Harp, according to the Journal, scours fringe news and social media for repostable comments and produces AI-generated illustrations. She then hands them to Trump. He selects and adds them to his own comments, and a post is born.

Sometimes the posting is feverish. The night the Iran War began, there were more than 90 posts.

Harp, 34, is the epitome of a Christian conservative, coming from a religious family in California and attending two Christian-right universities, Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego and Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va. She came to Trump’s attention when she was reporting and hosting for the ultra-conservative television network One America News. He asked her to join his presidential campaign.

Don’t think that Trump and Harp’s overnight spewing is wasted. He has all those followers on Truth Social, but his real strength is that the mainstream media is obliged to quote some of his comments daily.

What Trump says on Truth Social is also heard around the world. It isn’t just journalists who follow it; nations have to pay attention. In capitals from Tehran to Moscow, London to Beijing, Trump-raging is essential reading.

The Trump Show, for that is what it is, is a radical departure from how presidents have traditionally communicated with the public. Trump posts directly, sometimes without regard for how his words will be received.

It used to be that speeches were the window through which the world could see how an American president was thinking. They were crafted, agonized over, passed around, redrafted and sometimes delivered with last-minute handwritten additions or subtractions by the president.

They were policy documents for the present and the future. With Trump, it is the improvisations that inform or confuse.

Presidential speeches through the years have given us history’s milestones, whether it was Washington’s Farewell Address, Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address or FDR’s First Inaugural Address.

Who can forget the speeches of JFK in Berlin, Reagan at the Berlin Wall or Obama in Cairo?

With Trump, it is the firehose delivery that is remembered, especially in overnight posts. Transparent?

Democratic Graybeards Detail Tools Trump May Use To Negate Midterms

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After two long, dark years, there is an optimism afoot among Democrats, many independents, and a few old-school Republicans that the clouds will part and the sun will shine brightly again on Nov. 4.

Most votes in the midterms will be counted, and Democrats believe the House will have flipped Democratic with a decent majority. They are daring to hope that the Senate, too, will be theirs. The Trump presidency, its opponents hope, will be firmly marked “lame duck.”

Better, they hope the years of Trump raging, as they see it, outside of his constitutional authority and acting illegally, will be over.

It is fantasized that he will be trussed and restricted from authoritarian governance; that his claims of having a mandate will have been repudiated.

But Trump isn’t a man who takes reversals easily. So there is widespread fear that he will find some way to negate the results of the Nov. 3 ballot, and that Nov. 4 will see him crowing, declaring victory, and being more determined than ever to act as an authoritarian.

Two of the most revered and admired members of the hierarchy of the Democratic Party, Tim Wirth, who represented Colorado for 12 years in the House before entering the Senate, and Richard Gephardt, who represented Missouri for 26 years in the House and rose to become majority leader, have been studying the emergency powers they fear might be used to obstruct the midterms.

The Democratic graybeards state: “Over the past several months, we have been examining the structure of presidential emergency authorities, particularly Presidential Emergency Action Documents (PEADs) and related to continuity of government provisions. These authorities have existed for decades. What has changed is the context in which they might be used.”

It is these documents, and how they might be used with new intent by Trump and his allies, that alarm the senior Democrats.

They point out that the cadre of Trump loyalists who supported his claim that he won the 2020 election are seeking ways to overcome the Democratic victory in the midterms.

Wirth and Gephardt state: “Actors involved in efforts to contest the 2020 election remain active and are again discussing the use of a national emergency to justify federal intervention in election administration.

“At the same time, federal law enforcement has been used directly in relation to contested election processes, and the president has called for federal control over aspects of voting while describing domestic opponents in terms that go well beyond ordinary political language.”

Wirth and Gephardt wonder if “taken together” these developments raise the question of “whether emergency authorities of uncertain scope, capable of rapid implementation and subject to limited oversight, could be brought to bear in a domestic political context before Congress or the courts can respond effectively.”

Clearly, the former members of Congress believe the administration will find pretexts to either subvert the vote, challenge the result, or set aside the entire election on emergency grounds.

The first moves are underway to limit mail-in voting and not to count mail ballots that arrive after Election Day. Before Congress, the SAVE America Act will impose what its opponents say are excessive voter identification requirements, including proof of citizenship, supposedly to prevent non-citizens from voting. No evidence that this is a problem has been produced.

Trump has added to the uncertainty in one statement, suggesting that his administration is so successful that no election is needed. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt walked that back, but the intimation lingers.

My belief is that in no way will there be a smooth transfer of power if the Democrats win the midterms, and that the full apparatus of emergency powers could be employed to negate the result.

The president has produced an extraordinary convulsion in the country, and it is unlikely to be corrected as easily as by the midterm elections.

Trump, who can widely be inconsistent in what he says, even in the same speech, remains consistent in his claim that the 2020 election was fraudulent. No evidence of this has ever been found despite exhaustive investigations, but he remains firm on that allegation.

He will at least make that claim about the midterms if the results go against him.

Of course, a lot happens in a single month of the Trump administration, and there are seven months until the elections.

What is certain is that if the Democrats triumph in the midterms, Trump will use every tool of the executive to frustrate the new Congress. A wild elephant is a dangerous creature when antagonized.

Washington Press Corps Is Swollen, but the News Evades It

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The Trump administration — with the power of the White House being felt from the universities to the Kennedy Center — isn’t the only top-heavy institution in Washington. The media is top-heavy, too.

While statehouses around the country go uncovered and local courts go about their business without the light of press scrutiny — a frightening reality — the White House and Congress receive more general coverage than they have ever had.

The press briefings at the White House are tightly packed with more standing than sitting. Droves of reporters roam the halls of Congress.

Washington, in media terms, is a two-ring circus.

This doesn’t mean that either the administration or Congress is being better covered. Here, more is less.

The politics that bitterly divide the country have also crippled the old camaraderie between those who made the news and those who reported it.

In the Capitol, reporters thought to have strong political views are favored accordingly. The old repartee, the fun, has gone. Access, the coinage of Washington, is only for those who are subservient.

The White House is a daily pitched battle between the press in general and the administration. Information doesn’t change hands in that atmosphere.  The White House press staff, led by the gladiatorial Karoline Leavitt, abuses and baits the press. It responds with barbs. It’s “Saturday Night Live” every day of the week.

The trend of over-coverage of Washington has been building for a long time, but it has accelerated in Trump’s second term. From day one, it has been a news gusher, a Roman candle of shining, and some dark things to write about.

Incessant coverage has also been driven by technological advances, enabling fast product delivery at minimal cost. When the entry threshold is low, many will avail themselves.

What is harder to get is the real news, what is really happening.

No more do reporters, as I did once, stroll through the West Wing. No more do high officials brief reporters confidentially. And, worse for governance, no longer do members of the administration or Congress seek input from the media.

John Sununu, President George H.W. Bush’s chief of staff, once told me, “What you tell us is as valuable as what we tell you.” The exchange of information, once seen as vital, is no more.

One phenomenon of the new media ecosystem is that magazines have started daily feeds dedicated to what is or isn’t happening in Washington and what has been triggered from Washington, such as the unrest in Minneapolis.

Weekly magazines and a few monthlies are now reporting daily. They are an inbox coagulant. These include Newsweek, The Economist, The New Yorker, The Spectator, The Atlantic, The American Prospect and many others. Even Vanity Fair often files daily.

Add to these the British newspapers that now treat the United States as part of their universe. The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Daily Express, The Daily Mail and The Daily Mirror all have daily American news feeds and virtual editions.

Then there are the non-commissioned combatants, the bloggers, some of whom are favored by the White House and hold White House press passes. No wonder you can’t get a seat when Leavitt’s daily briefing is underway.

It is theater. It is the greatest daily show on earth. The jugglers and the clowns are at work, tossing and catching, and somersaulting. Catch Leavitt on the high wire. Watch CNN’s Kaitlin Collins try to bring her down.

This lack of communication from officialdom extends across the Washington spectrum. Television producers have tired of inviting Cabinet secretaries and members of Congress to come on their programs only to get talking points. That is one reason so much cable television consists of reporters talking about the news they covered or the news they chased but didn’t catch.

As the late Arnaud de Borchgrave, the world-traveling Newsweek correspondent, once told me, “When you and I were young reporters, we wanted to be foreign correspondents. Now everyone wants to cover politics.”

True, and good luck with that.

Political Fear Stalks Law, Education, Journalism, Migration

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Something new has entered American consciousness: fear of the state.

Not since the Red Scares (the first one followed the Russian Revolution and World War I, and the second followed World War II and the outbreak of the Cold War) has the state taken such an active role in political intervention.

The state under Donald Trump has a special interest in political speech and action, singling out lawyers and law firms, universities and student activists, and journalists and their employers. It is certain that the undocumented live in fear night and day.

Fear of the state has entered the political process.

Presidents before Trump had their enemies. Nixon was famous for his “list,” which was mostly journalists. His political paranoia was always there, and it finally brought him down with the Watergate scandal.

Even John Kennedy, who had a soft spot for the Fourth Estate, took umbrage at the New York Herald Tribune and had that newspaper banned for a while from the White House.

Lyndon Johnson played games with and manipulated Congress to reward his allies and punish his enemies. With reporters, it was an endless reward-and-punishment game, mainly achieved with information given or withheld.

The Trump administration is relentless in its desire to root out what it sees as state enemies or those who disagree with it. It includes the judicial system and all its components: judges, law firms and advocates for those whom it has disapproved. If an individual lawyer so much as defends an opponent of the administration, that individual will be “investigated,” which, in this climate, is a euphemism for persecuted.

If you are investigated, you face the full force of the state and its agencies. If you can find a lawyer of stature to defend you, you will be buried in debt, probably out of work, and ruined without the “investigation” turning up any impropriety.

One mighty law firm, Paul, Weiss, faced with losing huge government contracts, bowed to Trump. It was a bad day for judicial independence.

The courts and individual judges are under attack, threatened with impeachment, even as the state seeks to evade their rulings.

Others are under threat and practice law cautiously when contentious matters arise. The price is known: Offend and be punished by loss of government work, by fear of investigation, and by public humiliation by derision and accusation.

The boot of the state is poised above the neck of the universities.

If they allow free speech that doesn’t accord with the administration’s definition of that constitutional right, the boot will descend, as it did on Columbia.

Shamefully, Columbia caved to try to salvage $400 million in research funds. Speech on that campus is now circumscribed. Worse, the state is likely emboldened by its success.

Linda McMahon, the education secretary, has promised that with or without a Department of Education, the administration will go after the universities and what they allow and what they teach, if it is antisemitic, as defined by the state, or if they are practicing diversity, equality and inclusion, a Trump irritant.

One notes that another university, Georgetown, is standing up to the pressure. Bravo!

At the White House, press secretary Karoline Leavitt has decided to usurp the White House Correspondents’ Association and determine who will cover the president in the reporters’ pool — critical reporting in the Oval Office and on Air Force One.

Traveling with the president is essential. That is how a reporter gets to know the chief executive up close and personal. A pool report from a MAGA blogger doesn’t cut it.

Trump has threatened to sue media outlets. If they are small and poor, as most new ones are, they can’t withstand the cost of defending themselves. ABC, which is owned by Disney, caved to Trump even though its employees longed for the case to be settled in court. Corporate interests dictated accommodation with the state.

Accommodate what they have, and they will. Watch what happens with Trump’s $20 billion lawsuit against CBS’ “60 Minutes. The truth is obvious; the result may be a tip of the hat to Trump.

Nowhere is fear more redolent, the state more pernicious and ruthless than in the deportation of immigrants without due process, without charges and without evidence. ICE says you are guilty, and you go. Men wearing masks double you over, handcuff you behind your back and take you away, maybe to a prison in El Salvador.

Fear has arrived in America and can be felt in the marbled halls of the giant law firms, in newsrooms and executive offices, all the way to the crying children who see a parent dragged off by men in black, wearing balaclavas, presumably for the purpose of extra intimidation.

The Trump Way Comes to The Washington Post

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As Juliet might have said, “O America, America, wherefore art thou America?”

What has become of us when the president, Donald Trump, who opposes big government, wants the government to have its hand in everything, from the operation of The Kennedy Center to the regulatory commissions, to gender identification, to traffic control in New York City, to the composition of the White House press pool?

Under the pretext of cutting three shibboleths (waste,  fraud and abuse), Trump is moving to bring everything he can under his control, to infuse every apparatus of the country with the Trump brand, which emerges as a strange amalgam of personal like and dislike, enthusiasm and antipathy.

He likes the brutal Russian dictator Vladimir Putin — he who orders assassinations outside of Russia and causes his opponents to fall out of windows — so much so that he is about to throw Ukraine under the bus. Short shrift for people who have fought the Russian invader with blood and bone.

He has a strange antipathy to our allies, starting with our blameless neighbor Canada, our supply cabinet of everything from electricity to tomatoes.

He shows a marked indifference to the poor, whether they are homeless in America or dying of starvation in Africa.

He and his agent, Elon Musk the Knife, have obliterated the U.S. Agency for International Development, ended our soft-power leadership in the world and handed diplomatic opportunities to China; while at home, housing starts are far behind demand, the price of eggs is out of sight, and necessary and productive jobs in government are being axed with a kind of malicious pleasure.

The mindlessness of Musk’s marauders has cut the efficiency he is supposed to be cultivating. It is reasonable to believe that government worker productivity is at an all-time low.

If there is a word this administration enjoys it is “firing.” The Trump-Musk duopoly relishes that word. It goes back to the reality television show “The Apprentice,” when its star, Trump, loved to tell a contestant, “You’re fired!”  Now a catchphrase from a canceled TV program is central to the national government.

Meanwhile, the extraordinary assemblage of misfits and socially challenged individuals in Trump’s Cabinet — and, it must be said, who were confirmed by the Republicans in the Senate — are doing their bit to disassemble their departments, fixing things that aren’t broken, breaking things because they hated their authors or because revenge is a policy. Look to the departments of Defense, Justice, Health and Human Services and Homeland Security — really all the departments — and you’ll find these hearties at work.

There is a quality of cruelty that is alien to the American ethos, that is un-American, running though all of this. When everything that isn’t broken is fixed, we may lose:

—Our standing in the world as the beacon of decency.

—Our role as a guarantor of peace.

—The trust of our allies.

—Our place as the exemplary of constitutional government and the rule of law.

—Our leadership in all aspects of science, from space exploration to medicine to climate.

Nowhere is the animus of Trump and its lust to control more evident than its hatred of the free press. The free flow of news, fact, and opinion, already damaged by the economic realities of the news business and its outdated models, is an anathema to Trump. A free press is a free country. There is no alternative.

This week, the White House and the press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, moved to destroy the norm of decades in the press room, where the press corps collectively through its elected body, the White House Correspondents’ Association, has assigned seats. The association also decides who will be a part of the small rotating group of journalists and photographers — the pool — who accompany the president. It has been effective and is time-honored.

Now Leavitt, a Trump triumphalist, will choose the pool and favor the inclusion of podcasters and talk-show hosts who are reliably enthusiastic about the president.

At The Washington Post — the local newspaper of government — editorial pages are to be defenestrated. The Post, which has had for decades the best editorial columnists in the nation, is to be silenced. Its owner, the billionaire Jeff Bezos, has told the editorial staff that going forward they will write only about personal liberties and free markets.

It is the end of an era of great journalism, the dimming of a bright light, the encroachment of darkness in the nation’s capital.

A newspaper can’t be perfect, and The Washington Post certainly is far from that. But it is a great newspaper, and its proprietor has been manipulated by the controlling fingers of the Trump machine: A machine that values only loyalty and brooks no criticism. A machine that is unmoved by the nation’s and world’s tears. A Romeo who doesn’t hear Juliet.