Since Donald Trump took office, there has been a pretty steady stream of leaks coming out of the White House and being reported in various news outlets (something White House press secretary Sean Spicer says is being looked into), according to The Hill. Some have to do with policy or official matters, like the president’s phone call with Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, but others are focused on Trump’s behavior in the White House and his interactions with staff. The Huffington Post reports that some people believe the leaks are coming from a place of concern. “I think it’s a cry for help,” Elizabeth Rosenberg, a counterterrorism expert at the Treasury Department under Obama, told the Huffington Post. She said the leakers’ motivation is “incredulity, and the need to share it.”
Though Ron Kaufman, who worked in George H.W. Bush’s White House, told the Huffington Post that the leaks aren’t unusual (“There’s always leaks,” he said), if they are true, they paint a fascinating picture of not only what it’s like to work for Trump but also what it’s like for the president himself in the White House.
It seems to be a struggle to keep Trump from watching too much news — like CNN. The Associated Press reports that, though his advisers do try to roll back the amount of news he digests during the day, it’s harder to do so once he retires for the night: “There are no limits when the president returns to the residence. During another recent telephone conversation, Trump briefly put down the phone so he could turn up the volume on a CNN report. When he returned to the call, he was complaining about ‘fake news.’”
Sean Spicer gets regular feedback. President Trump makes sure Spicer knows how he feels about the day’s news and Spicer’s own work, according to The New York Times. “[Trump] often has to wait until the end of the workday before grinding through news clips with Mr. Spicer, marking the ones he does not like with a big arrow in black Sharpie — though he almost always makes time to monitor Mr. Spicer’s performance at the daily briefings, summoning him to offer praise or criticism, a West Wing aide said.”
Trump wants briefing materials to be short. The Huffington Post reports, “The commander in chief doesn’t like to read long memos,” according to a White House aide who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “So preferably they must be no more than a single page. They must have bullet points but not more than nine per page.”
Trump wants the Oval Office to be on visual display as much as possible. “Visitors to the Oval Office say Mr. Trump is obsessed with the decor — it is both a totem of a victory that validates him as a serious person and an image-burnishing backdrop — so he has told his staff to schedule as many televised events in the room as possible,” The New York Times reports. “He will linger on the opulence of the newly hung golden drapes, which he told a recent visitor were once used by Franklin D. Roosevelt but in fact were patterned for Bill Clinton. For a man who sometimes has trouble concentrating on policy memos, Mr. Trump was delighted to page through a book that offered him 17 window covering options.”
And he’s very particular about towels. The Huffington Post reports more from the unnamed White House aide, who stated, “He’s registered a complaint about the hand towels aboard Air Force One, the White House aide said, because they are not soft enough.”
He also seems fixated on the looks and appearances of those who work for him. Axios reports that Trump not only likes to hire people who "look the part" (for example: he considered both Mitt Romney and Rex Tillerson for secretary of state because they “looked like a secretary of state”) but also is very particular about how everyone surrounding him dresses. One source told Axiom, “You’re always supposed to wear a tie. If it’s not a Trump tie, you can get away with Brooks Brothers. But I’d suggest Armani,” noting that Trump prefers wide ties to thin ones.
As for women, Trump reportedly has a pretty sexist dress code: Axiom reports that “Trump likes the women who work for him ‘to dress like women,’ says a source who worked on Trump’s campaign. ‘Even if you’re in jeans, you need to look neat and orderly.’ We hear that women who worked in Trump’s campaign field offices — folks who spend more time knocking on doors than attending glitzy events — felt pressure to wear dresses to impress Trump.”
Axiom also reports that Trump’s staff knew the president would be angry about Spicer’s appearance during his first press briefing. “It’d be one thing to wear a pinstripe that fit him perfectly,” a source told Axiom. “But, it was like, he had a gap in his collar. I was like, ‘Oh God, he’s going to get reamed.'”
There seems to be some confusion about the lights. According to accounts shared with The New York Times, “Aides confer in the dark because they cannot figure out how to operate the light switches in the cabinet room. Visitors conclude their meetings and then wander around, testing doorknobs until finding one that leads to an exit. In a darkened, mostly empty West Wing, Mr. Trump’s provocative chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, finishes another 16-hour day planning new lines of attack.”
Trump spends much of his time at home alone. Once he leaves the West Wing offices every day, the president is usually pretty isolated. “Usually around 6:30 p.m., or sometimes later, Mr. Trump retires upstairs to the residence to recharge, vent and intermittently use Twitter,” The New York Times reports. “With his wife, Melania, and young son, Barron, staying in New York, he is almost always by himself, sometimes in the protective presence of his imposing longtime aide and former security chief, Keith Schiller. When Mr. Trump is not watching television in his bathrobe or on his phone reaching out to old campaign hands and advisers, he will sometimes set off to explore the unfamiliar surroundings of his new home.
But people he works with can expect to receive calls at odd hours. “The president, who says he's sleeping four or five hours a night, is dialing up associates late at night and early in the morning, before he returns to the West Wing,” the Associated Press reports. “He recently reached House Speaker Paul Ryan while the Wisconsin Republican was in the middle of an early morning workout.”
And according to leaks shared with the Huffington Post, Trump made a 3 a.m. call to his national security adviser, retired lieutenant general Mike Flynn, to ask for clarification on whether a “strong” or “weak” dollar is good for the economy. (Flynn wasn’t sure, and recommended Trump speak with an economist, according to the article.)
Some of Trump’s staff allegedly don’t like or respect him too much. Former White House correspondent Marc Ambinder shared a series of tweets this week saying as much. Ambinder first noted that Obama’s staff respected, trusted, and liked him. Whereas “Trump’s staff (from my conversations with a few) don’t like him. Many don’t seem to respect him, though some do. Some feel bad for him.” He continued, “The lack of respect shown to [Trump] by his senior staff at times (through leaks, etc.) is real, damaging, and inevitable.” Ambinder concluded with the statement: “Many senior Trump folks want him to succeed, but fear he doesn’t have the capacity to. Fairly unprecedented.”
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And they reportedly have to tread carefully when countering Trump’s ideas or actions. Politico reports information from a source who frequently talks to Trump, saying, “Aides have to push back privately against his worst impulses in the White House, like [Spicer’s first press briefing, in which he focused on the size of the inauguration crowd, and which aides and advisors objected to], and have to control information that may infuriate him.”
Politico’s source said that members of Trump’s staff have to be careful when saying no to the president, which “has to be done.” The source said, “You can’t do it in front of everyone. He’s never going to admit when he’s wrong in front of everyone. You have to pull him aside and tell him why he’s wrong, and then you can get him to go along with you.”
