Disarray in the Trump White House? It was worse than you know, Reince Priebus says

Published: Feb 14, 2018 10:24 p.m. ET
By Mike Murphy Editor

President Donald Trump’s White House may appear to be chaotic from the outside, but it was even worse on the inside, former chief of staff Reince Priebus said.

“Take everything you’ve heard and multiply it by 50.”
Reince Priebus

That’s according to the upcoming book “The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency,” by Chris Whipple, which will be published in March.

Priebus gave Whipple detailed accounts of the first six months of the Trump administration, and an excerpt of the book was published Wednesday by Vanity Fair.

Priebus, who resigned in July, disputed an account in Michael Wolff’s White House tell-all book “Fire and Fury” that he once called Trump an “idiot.”

“I still love the guy. I want him to be successful,” Priebus said.

But Priebus’ account of his time in the West Wing is of one crisis after another, starting literally on his first day with the inauguration crowd-size dispute. “Is this something that I really want to go to battle over on day one? Who needs a controversy over the inauguration?” he said he asked himself.

He also detailed efforts to cool down Trump’s tweeting habit, clashes with chief strategist Steve Bannon and his constant — and ultimately unsuccessful — efforts to rein in Trump.

“[Trump] is a man who fears no one and nothing,” Priebus said, “and there is absolutely nothing he’s intimidated by. . . . And that’s very rare in politics. Most people in politics are people who have sort of an approval addiction. Now, granted, President Trump does too, but he’s willing to weather one storm after the next to get to an end result that most people are not willing to weather. . . . He doesn’t mind the craziness, the drama, or the difficulty, as long as an end goal is in sight. He will endure it.”

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/di...ays-2018-02-14