President Trump discussed his call with Russian President Vladimir Putin during an Oval Office meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Photo: Kevin Dietsch, Pool / Getty Images
One of the most startling leaks — and stunning revelations — of this whole administration has left President Trump and his senior staff furious and rattled. The Washington Post reports in its lead story: "Trump did not follow specific warnings from his national security advisers [yesterday] when he congratulated ... Putin on his reelection — including a section in his briefing materials in all-capital letters stating 'DO NOT CONGRATULATE.'"
Why it matters: The speed and sensitivity of the leak prompted immediate finger-pointing within the administration, as aides reeled from a leak that could only have come from a small group of people, each of whom is trusted with sensitive national secrets.
Possible motives include concern about how Trump is handling Putin, frustration by the officials about Trump ignoring their advice, or internal power games.
A White House official, furious about the WaPo story: “This is the way Trump is. If he’s doing business with you or working with you in some way, he’s going to congratulate you."
The official said: "The idea he’s being soft on Russia is crap. He approved Javelin missiles to Ukraine, closed the consulate in San Francisco, approved the sanctions. ... But ... he doesn’t want his personal relationship [with Putin] to be acrimonious."
Trump's view is there’s a lot of business to be done, and overlapping interests, and if the relationship between the two countries "is to rebuilt, the line has to be through the personal, leader-to-leader level.”
Trump had nonchalantlydisclosed his message to Putin, while speaking to reporters during an Oval Office appearance with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Trump told reporters: "I had a call with President Putin and congratulated him on ... his electoral victory."
"We had a very good call, and I suspect that we’ll probably be meeting in the not-too-distant future to discuss the arms race, which is getting out of control — but we will never allow anybody to have anything even close to what we have. And also to discuss Ukraine and Syria and North Korea and various other things."
"So I think, probably, we’ll be seeing President Putin in the not-too-distant future."
Why it matters, from the WashPost: "The president’s conversation with Putin ... prompted fresh criticism of his muted tone toward one of the United States’ biggest geopolitical rivals amid the special counsel investigation."
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Trump asked Netanyahu if he genuinely cares about peace
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Trump at the White House in March. Photo: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images
In a phone call last year with Bibi Netanyahu, President Trump said something that shocked some of the people who helped prepare his briefing materials for the conversations. According to three sources familiar with the call, Trump asked Bibi bluntly if he actually cares about peace or not.
The details: Trump was pressing Bibi on the importance of striking a "deal" for Mideast peace. He'd read news reports about Bibi planning to build additional settlements to please his conservative base in Israel. Trump thought Bibi was unnecessarily angering the Palestinians. So, in the course of a longer conversation that was mostly friendly and complimentary, he bluntly asked Bibi whether or not he genuinely wants peace.
When Axios shared the details of this conversation with the White House before publishing, a senior official said: "The President has an extremely close and candid relationship with the Prime Minister of Israel and appreciates his strong efforts to enhance the cause of peace in the face of numerous challenges."
And Press Secretary Sarah Sanders added: "The President has great relationships with a number of foreign leaders but that doesn’t mean he can’t be aggressive when it comes to negotiating what’s best for America."
Between the lines: According to a host of sources familiar with the president’s thinking, Trump views foreign policy as a question of relationships. The way he crafts American foreign policy is almost entirely dependent on his personal rapport with world leaders.
A perfect example: The United Kingdom .Though Trump has great affection for Britain (he has golf courses there, appreciates the special relationship, and has referred to himself as “Mr. Brexit”), he and Theresa May have a fraught relationship. He hits the roof when he reads that she's criticized him. So he has yet to visit America's closest ally, even after last year's terrorist bombings in Manchester, though a source privy to private discussions tells me that it's "quite likely" that Trump visits the UK before the summer.
Another example: Trump finds Japan’s trade practices and regulations to be very irksome. But he has a great personal chemistry with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, and would likely be going far harder on the country if their relationship were tense.
Why this matters: Trump's foreign leader interactions — often improvised, often hot and cold, often disregarding diplomatic conventions and basic briefing materials — have confounded much of the administration's national security staff.
Trump freelances; he rarely refers to scripts and notes, and he disdains long briefings. Instead, he kibitzes with foreign leaders like he does with his Manhattan real estate friends.
His ad-lib style sometimes works to his advantage — and he's established genuinely good relationships with leaders like Emmanuel Macron of France and King Salman of Saudi Arabia — but it's also at times thrown staunch allies like the U.K. and Germany off-balance. And it makes the national security establishment — many of whom have longitudinal views of these relationships — break out in hives.
A Trump briefing is completely different from those of his predecessors. He doesn't want briefing books or long speeches about policy. Besides the news of the day, he almost always asks the following questions before most foreign leader meetings:
What is the trade deficit with the foreign country? How big is their army and defense spending, and to what extent is America picking up their tab? And, in some cases, how much foreign aid is the U.S. sending to the country? Put simply: what are we doing for them and how much are they contributing in return?
One hard lesson Trump's staff learned: Always find out whether the leader he's meeting with has said mean things about him.
Trump was furious with his national security team for not telling him in advance of his meeting last year with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras that Tspiras said during the presidential campaign that Trump represents an "evil" ideology.
At Trump's joint press conference with the Greek leader, Fox's John Roberts quoted the brutal things Tsipras had said about Trump. The president blew up at his team afterwards for not finding this out and briefing him about it in advance.
Kellyanne Conway has never actually wanted the job of White House communications director, according to sources who've discussed it with her, but Axios has learned that she left many in the White House communications team this week with the impression that she'd be leading the team in some capacity.
Behind the scenes: Senior White House communications official Mercedes Schlapp convened an off-site team-building and planning retreat last week for the White House comms team. They held the session on Thursday at the General Services Administration building a couple blocks from the WH (the same building that once housed the transition).
About 40 people were in the room, and according to sources who were there:
Conway opened the session by addressing the group and giving what a source in the room described as a "pep talk".
She told the staff that the President had asked her to take a more active role in communications. She didn't directly address any of the communications director speculation but many in the room were left with the impression that she'd be taking a leadership role going forward.
She then asked the group for ideas to take to POTUS.
One suggestion that most in the room agreed with: that Trump should do more local and regional media, which increases his chances of getting more favorable coverage than he's getting in the national media.
But one person asked how to reconcile what the president wants to see versus what actually helps but that he might not notice.
Trump wants to see surrogates defending him on cable TV but the consensus within Trump's own communications team is that getting surrogates out in regional and local markets is a far more effective way of conveying POTUS' messages and accomplishments than appearing on cable TV.
Besides Conway's address to the group — in which the communications director role wasn't directly discussed — there was no other discussion during the session about who would replace Hope Hicks.
Other tidbits: The group, which has been beset by leaks and media reports of infighting, ran team-building exercises on large notepads. One of the questions posed to the group: If somebody was making a documentary about the White House communications team in five years, what would they say?
At one point in the session, Kirk Marshall, Joe Hagin's top deputy for Human Resources, asked the group to explain what they thought the difference was between comms and press.
Somebody asked a question about the standard of the Trump administration's communications work and Brad Rateike, director of cabinet communications, joked: "It's impossible to get fired around here."
Next steps: Kirk Marshall will lead one-on-one interviews with communications staff, soliciting suggestions on how to better improve the White House team and will encourage staff to offer a more candid perspective than they might have in a large group. They then plan to hold another planning retreat.
