US President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with teachers, school administrators and parents in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington on Feb. 14.SAUL LOEB/AFP / Getty Images
As a candidate, Donald Trump vowed to shake up business as usual in Washington. Now, he is keeping that promise, but his version of change looks more like chaos.
In his first month as U.S. President, Mr. Trump oversaw the disorderly rollout of an immigration ban and earned a rebuke from a federal appeals court.
He picked fights with judges, corporations and U.S. senators on Twitter. He stoked tensions with reliable allies such as Australia and Mexico. He continued to assert the existence of massive voter fraud in the November election without evidence. And, he tackled his first foreign-policy crisis – a missile test by North Korea – from the outdoor restaurant of his private club in Florida.
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On Monday, Mr. Trump's national security adviser, Michael Flynn, resigned after just 24 days on the job – the shortest such tenure in history – amid a scandal over his contacts with Russia. Mr. Trump learned weeks ago that U.S. authorities believed Mr. Flynn was vulnerable to blackmail by Russia, but he took no action.
The rocky start to Mr. Trump's administration, illuminated by a daily flow of detailed leaks from within the White House, has left Washington insiders and world leaders reeling.
Former administration officials – both Republicans and Democrats – say they are stunned by the apparent dysfunction and friction in Mr. Trump's inner circle. They give Mr. Trump credit for orchestrating a successful introduction of his nominee to the Supreme Court, Judge Neil Gorsuch. But they note that much of the rest of the new administration's energy has gone into fixing problems of its own making. There's a sense that the White House "wants to be decisive and show quick action," said David Kochel, a veteran Republican strategist. But "that sort of frenetic pace leads to mistakes."
Whether Mr. Trump can steady the trajectory of his administration depends partly on his ability to decrease infighting within the White House and discipline his own tendency to create distractions, often via Twitter. Much also depends on the future course of the investigations into ties between Mr. Trump's advisers, including Mr. Flynn, and Russian officials.
Republicans in Congress have largely declined to criticize Mr. Trump's unconventional choices or erratic outbursts. But that is growing increasingly difficult. Earlier this week, photos emerged of Mr. Trump and his senior staff discussing their response to North Korea's launch of a nuclear-capable missile in view of other diners at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump's mansion and private club in Palm Beach, Fla. "You can't make it up," said Senator John McCain, a Republican from Arizona, in response to the scene, according to The Washington Post. (A spokesman for Mr. Trump said he had not reviewed any classified information in public).
"This White House is not normal," said Gordon Adams, a national-security expert at American University who served in the administration of former president Bill Clinton. "What they're doing breaks the mould in so many ways it can't even be counted."
Former aides to Mr. Trump's predecessor, Barack Obama, say they were expected to do their work without letting infighting seep into the public area, a reflection of their boss's desire to avoid unnecessary drama. And they were expected to adhere to ethical standards. Last week, Kellyanne Conway, a senior adviser to Mr. Trump, used a television appearance to urge viewers to buy his daughter Ivanka Trump's products after Nordstrom, a department store, said it would no longer carry them.
Chris Lu, a former Obama White House official who is now a senior fellow at the University of Virginia's Miller Center, said he would have been fired for doing what Ms. Conway did, which appears to violate the code of conduct for federal employees. But Mr. Trump did not seem to mind. Indeed, he himself criticized Nordstrom on Twitter for treating his daughter unfairly.
Mr. Trump's constant tweeting can be self-defeating because it serves to change the subject even when his administration has executed something fairly well, such as the introduction of Judge Gorsuch, said Mr. Lu. Mr. Trump "just jumps around from day to day," said Mr. Lu, which then sends his staff scurrying to dissect and explain. "I don't know how you conduct foreign policy in that manner in a responsible way."
Meanwhile, from the outside, the White House looks like "a snake pit," with aides leaking information to the media to inflict damage on each other, said Peter Wehner, a former official in the administration of George W. Bush. "It's stunning to see that so early in a presidency."
Mr. Trump's senior staff – including chief of staff Reince Priebus, senior counsellor Stephen Bannon, senior adviser Jared Kushner and Ms. Conway – all appear to be jockeying for the approval of the man sitting in the Oval Office. "There are too many competing power centres, too many people with walk-in privileges, too many people out freelancing on television," said Mr. Kochel, the Republican strategist. "It's clear there needs to be a more focused, disciplined process."
Some defenders of Mr. Trump argue that every new administration has its growing pains. They point to the start of Mr. Clinton's first term, when there was an undisciplined and freewheeling nature to policy discussions, which lasted late into the night, and the administration stumbled into an early confrontation with the military over the rights of gay service members.
The two situations aren't comparable, said Matthew Dallek, a political historian at George Washington University. Mr. Clinton had years of experience as a governor and was surrounded by people who knew how to work the levers of government. "Jeb Bush once said Donald Trump was a chaos candidate who would be a chaos president," Prof. Dallek said. "I think he was right."