White House Whiplash!

Do Any Of Us Have The Stamina For Trump?

Netanyahu and Trump at last night’s joint press conference

“Do you have the stamina to make it through four years of this?”

That’s the question one of my top DC sources asked me, slightly-tongue-in-cheek, this morning. I was checking in because I’ve been away in Europe and London for a few days, and I’ve also been focused on the copy-edits of my upcoming book with James Patterson. So the volley of extraordinary headlines flying out of the White House over the weekend, and last night, made me feel utterly disoriented, as if I’ve been away for a year, not a few days. In this short timespan, Trump appointed Marco Rubio acting head of USAID, having just abolished USAID (apparently the website went dark while Rubio was in transit and taken completely by surprise), and started to dismantle the CIA.

The entrance to the now defunct agency in DC

This was all before last night’s press conference with Bibi Netanyahu. My source told me that, like many of you probably, he’d checked out for an hour or so just to have an early dinner, but on re-emerging discovered that we were now possibly going to war: occupying Gaza, forcing 2 million Palestinians out, and rebuilding the place as “the Riviera of the Middle East.”

It’s enough to cause anyone indigestion.

So, several thoughts on this:

1. Buckle up. Yes. We should expect to feel continual whiplash for the next four years. I’m reminded of how even those closest to Trump often find themselves suddenly vulnerable simply because nature calls. Back in 2016 one senior campaign staffer, whom I like enormously and will not name, was supposed to be stop Trump’s from randomly tweeting, but even he couldn’t control Trump’s itchy fingers in the two minutes he went to the restroom. Similarly, Susie Wiles was reportedly absent from Trump’s side for a few minutes on Trump’s plane when Trump came up with the idea of nominating Matt Gaetz for Attorney General. (For my money, given how the hearings have run, I bet Gaetz would have been confirmed, but whatever…)

2. Jared Kushner: Yes, the reports that it was Kushner’s idea to displace the Palestinians from Gaza and rebuild are manifestly true. He has always said - and written - that he viewed his background in real estate as critical when looking at the Middle East. He has always leaned into the problems there as being primarily ones of land and development. "Gaza's waterfront property, it could be very valuable if people would focus on kind of building up livelihoods...I think that it's a little bit of an unfortunate situation there but I think from Israel's perspective, I would do my best to move the people out and then clean it up," is what he said at Harvard last year.

Kushner speaking to the faculty chair of the Middle East Initiative, Prof Tarek Masoud, at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government last year

So back to Trump’s “Middle East” proposal: Of course there are two major problems. 1) Where will the displaced 2 million Palestinians go, given Egypt and Jordan have said flatly they will not take them? And 2) Who is going to pay $100 billion or so to rebuild?

“Presumably Trump would like the Saudis to pay,” one former senior Trump White House official told me over the phone. But, as I wrote here last week, the Saudis don’t have much spare cash at the moment, and they’ve got their own “Riviera” to build on the Red Sea. MBS has already said what he thinks of Trump’s Gaza idea: essentially he can stuff it.

So it’s not that surprising White House officials are already softening the pronouncements of last night. But I remind you of what Trump’s former National Security Advisor, Gen H.R. McMaster said at the Council on Foreign Relations just a few weeks ago: there is always a kernel of something important in Trump’s colorful rhetoric, and my sources say he is not going to back down quickly from what he said last night.

I am also told (and I will leave it to the New York Times or Washington Post to back this up) that Trump has said he wants Kushner to have a security clearance - no questions asked this time around.

Which brings us back to what I predicted just a few weeks ago: That rules be damned (and I urge you to read Ed Luce in yesterday’s Financial Times), we likely have a shadow state department in Miami Beach. In fact that may be where our only State Department is, given that Marco Rubio must be wondering why the heck he gave up his Senate seat for a role in which, I’m told, he is already complaining he has zero autonomy.

Rubio at his confirmation hearing last month…perhaps already exhausted before the job had even begun.

So hey-ho, it’s off to the races we go.

Do I have the stamina? Do you? I guess we shall see….