The new president is struggling to gain momentum due to leaks that have proved beyond his ability to control.
During the first six weeks of his presidency, President Trump has been hit with leaks on a broad spectrum of topics. BILL CLARK/CQ-ROLL CALL/GETTY IMAGES
At a health-related business expo three years ago, when Donald Trump was asked for the No. 1 trait he looks for in employees, he replied with a single word: loyalty.
It's an attribute he's valued throughout his corporate career and, to varying degrees, during his dive into electoral politics.
But as president, Trump is now learning the limits of leaning on loyalty while overseeing a sprawling federal government bureaucracy that is too massive to manage or ensure total trust.
This week again snapped that reality into focus with the revelation that Attorney General Jeff Sessions met with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak at least twice last year, after testifying to Congress that he "did not have communications with the Russians."
The discovery, unearthed in a piece by The Washington Post citing Justice Department officials, marks the latest example of a damaging story for the administration that features at least one anonymous source. And while it's unclear whether the Post piece stemmed specifically from an interdepartmental leak, that's precisely where Trump attempted to pin blame in its aftermath.
"The real story is all of the illegal leaks of classified and other information," he said in a statement that also accused Democrats of "overplaying their hand" after losing the presidential election. "It is a total witch hunt!"
During the first six weeks of his presidency, Trump indeed has been hit with leaks on a broad spectrum of topics, including a dossier that features highly embarrassing allegations about his activity in Russia, his reportedly heated conversations with both the prime minister of Australia and president of Mexico, and details about former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn's December call to the Russian ambassador that ultimately triggered Flynn's resignation.
Some of the leaking has presumably come from holdovers of President Barack Obama's administration intent on sabotaging Trump. Others are clearly emanating from inside the current West Wing, as a legion of aides joust for internal supremacy.
But the continuous drip of detrimental information is robbing Trump of the chance to wrest any persistent momentum at a point when he's going to need considerable – and undistracted – political capital to push through his legislative priorities. It's almost hard to remember that Trump had one of the best days of his presidency Tuesday with his address to a joint session of Congress, because 24 hours later he was mired again in another controversy tied to talks with reporters.
"We take the matters seriously and are taking steps to prevent them," White House spokesman Raj Shah says.
Leaks have permeated every presidency in history, of course. But the unique hostility to Trump within the federal bureaucracy – coupled with an inexperienced and largely insular staff – is swelling the problem at an earlier point.
Trump is now battling an enemy within that he cannot control.
"The volume at this early stage is what is really new," says Eric Posner, a University of Chicago Law School professor who specializes in studying the power of the U.S. presidency. "Usually it takes more than a few weeks to have a problem. Because of Trump's reckless statements about what he's going to do and occasional violent rhetoric, the people in the bureaucracy are worried more than people in other transitions.
"The bureaucracy – non-military, non-law enforcement – tends to be pretty liberal. I don't remember this kind of torrent of unhappiness."
Sometimes, leaks are strategically dropped in order to influence the president's thinking and thus the realm of public opinion. That may have played into the multiple reports that said Trump's new national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, signaled to National Security Council staff his displeasure with the phrase "radical Islamic terrorism."
The rejection of traditional Trump-team doctrine appears not to have had an effect on the president, as Trump doubled down on the description during his joint address to Congress. But such leaks are more commonplace.
What's more of a problem for Trump is the leaks pouring out of agencies that undercut a policy or stain the integrity of a Cabinet-level official or deputy, like Flynn. Sessions, for his part, is now beating back calls for his resignation from Democrats.
The executive order attempting to execute a travel ban affecting majority-Muslim countries is now stuck in court, which could be attributed in part to White House staff's secretive approach in cobbling it together. In part because of the fear of leaks, top Trump aides – particularly chief strategist Stephen Bannon and policy adviser Stephen Miller – constructed the language without much guidance from Cabinet agencies.
Now, a revised order has been stalled again, pushed back beyond several prior deadlines even though it has been deemed by Trump officials as crucial to keeping Americans safe from a terrorist attack. The lengthened timeline for the revised order is due to the administration "taking the adequate steps for review and input from agencies to ensure smooth implementation," Shah says.
Meanwhile, in another leak, "sources" told CNN that three of Trump's top advisers have advocated to exclude Iraq from the travel ban for diplomatic reasons.
Thus is the conundrum facing the Trump administration.
"If you disclude people, you make mistakes. If you include people, you face leaks," Posner says.
On top of the anonymous leaks, a former adviser is now coming forward to protect his own reputation, especially when it comes to the controversy regarding campaign contacts with Russia, which is prompting congressional investigations.
Carter Page, a foreign policy adviser to Trump during the campaign, appeared on MSNBC Thursday night and didn't deny he met with Kislyak in July, despite claims from Trump and other top administration officials that no campaign aide had contact with the Kremlin during the 2016 election battle.
Page isn't tied to the administration now, which is even more potentially dangerous for Trump, as that loyalty the president prizes can wear thin quickly when there's the prospect of a subpoena. For the president, the scariest thing about this is that it is largely out of his control. White House press secretary Sean Spicer can't screen the phones of all government officials – and Trump can't clean house of them, either.
Trump has professed his admiration for President Dwight Eisenhower, the World War II supreme allied commander who was the last person to ascend to the presidency without holding prior elected office.
But as Eisenhower was transitioning to become commander in chief, President Harry Truman predicted the career military man would be vexed by bureaucracy.
"He'll sit here and he'll say, "Do this! Do that!" – and nothing will happen," Truman said. "Poor Ike, it won't be a bit like the Army. He'll find it very frustrating."
Not even two months into his presidency, it's hard not to think the billionaire businessman isn't feeling a bit like Ike.
