Begun, the Trump exodus has.
| Could we be seeing some voluntary turnover at the White House come New Year? I explore this question in a piece for the new issue of the magazine. Here’s a preview: Washington was surprised to learn that Dina Powell, the deputy national security adviser for strategy, will be leaving her post early in the new year. Powell, one of the few veterans of the George W. Bush administration to take a senior role under Trump, had been something of a rock of normalcy in an abnormal White House. In the administration’s first few weeks, her experience was a prized asset. Powell is, moreover, personally close to both Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump—which is the nearest anyone without the last name “Trump” can get to job security in the West Wing.
Her desire to leave after one year was apparently well known, according to administration officials. Powell’s family remained in New York—where she had been a partner at the investment bank Goldman Sachs—and she commuted back and forth weekly. She timed her exit to follow the release of the president’s national security strategy, on which she worked closely with National Security Council staffer Nadia Schadlow.
Powell’s decision to move on from the White House so early in the administration was her own, and she leaves with many fans. “We are losing an invaluable member of the president’s national security team,” says Defense Secretary James Mattis. “She is one of the most talented and effective leaders with whom I have ever served,” says her boss, H.R. McMaster. But it remains a very unusual choice, and the White House door may only just have started revolving. |
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Omarosa Manigault, the former Apprentice star and White House staffer who was fired (or, she claims, resigned) Tuesday evening, appeared on Good Morning America Thursday morning to tell her side of the story.
“John Kelly and I had a very straightforward discussion about concerns that I had, issues that I raise, and as a result I resigned,” Manigault said. She denied White House reporter April Ryan’s claim that the situation had devolved into vulgarity, saying that if it had been a scene, then “where are the pictures and videos?” |
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Column of the Day—From Bloomberg View’s Eli Lake on the real FBI scandal “hiding in plain sight.”
“If you’re looking for a Justice Department scandal regarding Robert Mueller's investigation into Russia's influence of the 2016 election, it's hiding in plain sight. Look no further than the government's release of the private texts between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page,” Lake writes. |
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President Trump is fond of saying he has accomplished more during his first year in office “than any president in history”—a claim that’s fairly, um, hyperbolic. But on Thursday, the president had a chance to brag about one area where his administration has made sweeping changes: federal deregulation.
“We’ve begun the most far-reaching regulatory reform in American history,” Trump said. “For many decades, an ever-growing maze of regulations, rules, and restrictions has cost our country trillions and trillions of dollars, millions of jobs, countless American factories, and devastated many industries. But all that has changed the day I took the oath of office.” |
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Photo of the Day
Donald Trump prepares to cut a red ribbon between two stacks of paper, representing the regulatory code from 1960 compared to today, during an event in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, on December 14, 2017. (Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images) |
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| A defense of those cheesy Hallmark Christmas movies comes from Roy Peter Clark, who has seen a lot of them since becoming his wife’s caregiver. Stick around for his surprisingly good treatment of a made-up movie. |
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