Tag: Rob Porter

Aides tried to persuade Donald Trump to let them fact-check his tweets

Top White House aides tried in vain to persuade President Donald Trump that he should let them check his tweets for accuracy, spelling and tone before he posted them for the world to see, journalist Bob Woodward wrote in his book that was released Tuesday.

Woodward said the aides – led by former communications director Hope Hicks – were alarmed by the outrage over Trump’s June 2017 tweet attacking the appearance and intelligence of Mika Brzezinski, a co-host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” political talk show.

The president blasted Brzezinski as “low I.Q. Crazy Mika” and said she had been “bleeding badly from a face-lift” during a New Year’s party at his Florida resort.

The tweet reignited controversy over Trump’s treatment of women, prompting Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine to tell Trump to “stop.”

“It’s not politically helpful,” Hicks told Trump, according to Woodward’s book “Fear” about the Trump White House. “You can’t just be a loose cannon on Twitter. You’re getting killed by a lot of this stuff. You’re shooting yourself in the foot. You’re making big mistakes.”

Hicks, along with three other aides – former staff secretary Rob Porter, former chief economic adviser Gary Cohn, and social media director Dan Scavino – told Trump they wanted to create a committee to vet his tweets, Woodward wrote.

“They would draft some tweets that they believed Trump would like,” Woodward wrote. “If the president had an idea for a tweet, he would write it down or get one of them in and they would vet it. Was it factually accurate? Was it spelled correctly? Did it make sense? Did it serve his needs?”

Trump reportedly responded “I guess you’re right” several times. But the president ended up ignoring his aides’ proposed edits and “did what he wanted,” Woodward wrote.

Trump has already tweeted his low opinion of the book.

“The Woodward book is a Joke – just another assault against me, in a barrage of assaults, using now dis-proven unnamed and anonymous sources,” he tweeted Monday. “Many have already come forward to say the quotes by them, like the book, are fiction.”

[USA Today]

Trump Has Reportedly Spoken With Witnesses About What They Told Mueller Team

President Trump has apparently spoken with witnesses who have already spoken with Robert Mueller‘s office about what they discussed… and Mueller knows.

In one episode, the president told an aide that the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, should issue a statement denying a New York Times article in January. The article said Mr. McGahn told investigators that the president once asked him to fire the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III. Mr. McGahn never released a statement and later had to remind the president that he had indeed asked Mr. McGahn to see that Mr. Mueller was dismissed, the people said.

In the other episode, Mr. Trump asked his former chief of staff, Reince Priebus, how his interview had gone with the special counsel’s investigators and whether they had been “nice,” according to two people familiar with the discussion.

The conversations appear not to rise to the level of witness tampering or anything like that, but “witnesses and lawyers who learned about the conversations viewed them as potentially a problem and shared them with Mr. Mueller.”

Mueller’s team is looking into potential obstruction on the President’s part.

And by the way, the aide involved in the McGahn part of this report? The Times says it was Rob Porter.

[Mediaite]

Trump Defends Rob Porter: ‘He … Says He’s Innocent’

President Donald Trump on Friday praised former Staff Secretary Rob Porter, who left the White House Thursday amid a domestic abuse scandal involving allegations from two ex-wives.

“We wish him well, he worked very hard. We found out about it recently and I was surprised by it, but we certainly wish him well and it’s a tough time for him,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “He did a very good job when he was in the White House.”

Despite images handed over to media outlets from his first wife showing her with a black eye she says Porter gave her on their honeymoon in the early-2000s, the president said White House officials “hope he has a wonderful career and he will have a great career ahead of him.”

The president, breaking his silence on the matter, said he was “very sad” when he learned about the charges, which Chief of Staff John Kelly reportedly knew about months ago.

Porter also is “certainly … also very sad now,” Trump said.

The president again defended Porter near the end of his remarks about the former staffer.

“He also, as you probably know, says he’s innocent and I think you have to remember that,” said the president, who has faced sexual assault accusations from multiple women. “He said very strongly yesterday that he’s innocent so you have to talk to him about that, but we absolutely wish him well, he did a very good job when he was at the White House.”

On Thursday, Principal Deputy Press Secretary Raj Shah announced Porter had left the White House staff for good. “His last day was yesterday,” Shah said. “I know he came in today to clean out his stuff.”

Shah called the assault allegations “serious and disturbing,” ramping up the White House’s reaction after defending Porter much of Wednesday.

“They’re upsetting,” Shah said.

He described the allegations as still being reviewed as part of an extensive background check process that Porter was still in the midst of when reports made the charges public this week.

Asked what caused the White House to change its tone on Porter, Shah replied the images of one of Porter’s ex-wives’ black eye were “upsetting.”

He declined to say whether Kelly knew about the allegations long before the reports were published.

Trump’s defense of the alleged wife abuser comes after he encouraged “lock her up” chants about 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton over her use of a personal server while secretary of state. He also has called on other political foes and some of those looking into potential collusion between his 2016 campaign and Russia to be the subject of federal probes and possible prosecution.

The president did not comment on the fate of his embattled chief of staff. Some women’s organizations, for instance, have called on Kelly to step down for reportedly knowing about the Porter allegations for months but keeping him on staff — even allowing him to become his right-hand man.

Kelly’s repeated defenses of Porter earlier this week and his allowing Communications Director Hope Hicks, Porter’s current girlfriend, to craft a number of Thursday statements about the matter has again made the chief of staff a lightning rod for Democrats. (He has caught their ire also over his hard-line comments about illegal immigrants.)

For instance, Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington called Kelly’s role in keeping Porter on as a White House staffer even after learning of the allegations “very, very disturbing.”

“Clearly, WH Chief of Staff John Kelly knew about Rob Porter’s history of abuse directly from FBI and chose to ignore it,” Jayapal tweeted Thursday morning. “#MeToo is as much about those who protect the abusers with their silence as the abusers themselves.”

[Roll Call]