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High in Tower, Trump Reads, Tweets and Plans
Donald J. Trump sits high in Trump Tower
in New York, spending hours on the phone with friends, television
personalities and donors to ask if they know people to recommend for his
Donald J. Trump
sits high in Trump Tower in New York, spending hours on the phone with
friends, television personalities and donors to ask if they know people
to recommend for his cabinet.
He
joins a daily morning transition meeting with his family and staff, but
still maintains the routine that sustained him during the campaign:
starting his day at 5 a.m. reading The New York Post and The New York Times, then switching on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” whose co-host Joe Scarborough he once publicly savaged but now often seeks out for advice.
He
gets angry when members of his inner circle get too much of the
spotlight, as Rudolph W. Giuliani did when headlines about his millions of dollars in speaking fees appeared as the former New York mayor was publicly promoting himself to be Mr. Trump’s secretary of state.
And Mr. Trump has happily resumed control of his Twitter feed,
using it to bash targets in the news media and criticize the cast of
the Broadway musical “Hamilton” for imploring Vice President-elect Mike
Pence, who was in the audience Friday night, to govern on behalf of all Americans.
As
a parade of job seekers, TV talking heads and statesmen like Henry
Kissinger paraded through the lobby of Trump Tower this past week, Mr.
Trump ran his presidential transition from his triplex on the 58th floor
much the way he ran his campaign and his business before that —
schmoozing, rewarding loyalty, fomenting infighting among advisers and
moving confidently forward through a series of fits and starts.
President Obama, who met with Mr. Trump
two days after the election, has held out hope that the gravity of the
presidency will change the former reality show star. But people close to
the 70-year-old president-elect say that he has such long-held habits
formed by fame, wealth and the freedom to have done whatever he wanted
that they remain skeptical, at least for now, that he will transform to
fit the constraints of the White House.
“The
presidency may change him eventually, but it’s not going to change him
initially,” said Barry Bennett, a former senior adviser to the Trump
campaign and a Republican strategist. “He’s a man who likes a lot of
input from a lot of people, and he’s someone who has an incredible
instinct for the American people.”
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People close to Mr. Trump nonetheless say he is more focused now than he was in the first few days after his surprise victory.
He was nervous and jolted, they said, by the 90-minute Oval Office
meeting with Mr. Obama, and for the first time appeared to take in the
enormousness of the job.
He
is proud, they say, that he has so rapidly named people for his cabinet
and senior staff, including a group of hawks and hard-line loyalists: Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama as attorney general, Michael T. Flynn as national security adviser, Representative Mike Pompeo of Kansas as director of the C.I.A., and Stephen K. Bannon, the executive chairman of Breitbart News, as chief strategist.
“Ahead
of schedule, under budget, high energy, trust and loyalty — there’s
just a pattern to the whole thing,” said Richard F. Hohlt, a longtime
Republican consultant in Washington. “That’s his mark of success.”
Loyalty, however, goes only so far.
There were initial reports from senior officials within Mr. Trump’s orbit that Mr. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s most fervent supporter
in the campaign’s final weeks, was the leading candidate for secretary
of state. But the headlines about Mr. Giuliani’s business interests
bothered Mr. Trump, who was urged by several business leaders and some
media hosts to reconsider the option. Suddenly, he arranged a Saturday
meeting with one of his fiercest critics, Mitt Romney, at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J.
Transition
officials say the meeting with Mr. Romney, a moderate Republican who
was the party’s nominee for president in 2012, may not have been simply
for show. They say that Mr. Trump believes that Mr. Romney, with his
patrician bearing, looks the part of a top diplomat right out of
“central casting” — the same phrase Mr. Trump used to describe Mike
Pence before choosing him as his running mate.
Yet
Mr. Trump loves the tension and drama of a selection process, and has
sought to stoke it. A senior adviser described the meeting, in part, as
Mr. Romney simply coming to pay his respects to the president-elect and
“kiss his ring.”
Mr. Trump, who has been known to act precipitously against people who have not pleased him, did so again this past week when he removed Gov. Chris Christie
of New Jersey, another longtime loyalist, as the head of his
transition. People close to Mr. Trump say that, among other concerns, he
determined that Mr. Christie had to go after two former top aides were convicted by a federal jury on all charges stemming from a 2013 scheme to close access lanes
at the George Washington Bridge to punish a New Jersey mayor who
declined to endorse Mr. Christie for re-election. And Mr. Trump was
angered when Mr. Christie did not defend him after 11-year-old audio
emerged of the candidate boasting about committing sexual assaults.
Mr.
Trump also likes to surprise, and enjoys the worldwide speculation he
sets off with his Twitter posts. And after he became upset by Mr.
Giuliani’s headlines, his aides leaked the news that he was considering Gov. Nikki R. Haley of South Carolina for secretary of state — speculation that has since faded as Mr. Romney’s prospects have risen.
Showmanship remains central to Mr. Trump, who on Thursday held his first meeting as president-elect with a foreign leader,
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan. The setting was Mr. Trump’s marble
and gold, Louis XIV-style residence on the 58th floor, with sweeping
views of New York and Central Park. Mr. Trump, with General Flynn at his
side, sat next to Mr. Abe under an enormous crystal chandelier as Mr.
Trump’s daughter Ivanka, looked on.
The
formality of the setting contrasted with the freewheeling style that
Mr. Trump adopts in his cluttered corner office on the 26th floor, where
aides, his children and his longtime assistant, Rhona Graff, move
busily in and out as he holds court behind his desk. Mr. Trump, who does
not use a computer or read online, does keep an eye on the television,
particularly the now-constant news about himself. Most information he
takes in is in person or on the phone.
He
is worried, his aides say, that he will not be able to keep his Android
phone once he gets to the White House and wonders aloud how isolated he
will become — and whether he will be able to keep in touch with his
friends — without it as president. He continues to discuss with the
Secret Service how much he can return on weekends to Trump Tower, and
still expects to use the Bedminister golf club and his private
Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla., as vacation retreats.
The
Trump International Hotel in Washington, just five blocks from the
White House, could also take on an outsize role in the Trump
administration. His children may stay there when they come to the
nation’s capital, and there is chatter that it may supplant Blair House,
which traditionally hosts foreign dignitaries visiting the president.
But for now, Mr. Trump seems most comfortable running the show from Trump Tower.
“I’ve
witnessed him as a businessman sitting at the desk; I’ve witnessed him
as a potential candidate sitting at the desk; I’ve witnessed him as a
candidate sitting at the desk; and I’ve now witnessed him as the
president-elect sitting at the desk,” said Kellyanne Conway, a senior
adviser.
“It’s a comfortable environment,” she added, “but now the stakes are higher.”
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