On February 16, Dubke came back for an Oval Office interview with Trump. He was just a few minutes into telling the president about the company he founded and his philosophy on branding when Trump had an idea. “What do you think about a press conference?” he asked.
“Well, I would decide what the three messages are that you want to talk about, and I’d bring the expert in from each of the agencies, have this conversation,” Dubke said.
“No, no, no, no, no,” Trump said. “Today. What if we do it today?”
Dubke thought he was joking. Trump was serious. Spicer turned tail out of the Oval to start setting things into motion. In any normal government, this kind of knee-jerk decision would be madness. But in the Trump White House, this was just another Thursday.
“Sean!” Trump yells out to Spicer. “We’ve got to get the East Room ready.”
Within minutes, White House tours were canceled for the remainder of the day to clear the residence. A lectern and camera risers were assembled within three hours. Soon, administration policy experts filed into the Oval Office to brief Trump, and Dubke hovered on the edge of the room, his visitor badge dangling from his neck.
“I’m Mike Pence,” the vice president said, introducing himself.
“Yes, sir, I know who you are. I’m Mike Dubke,” he said.
“So what’s going on?” Pence asked.
“Well, I think they’re preparing for a press conference right now,” Dubke said.
“What’s your role here?” Pence inquired.
“Well,” Dubke said, “this was my interview for communications director.”
Pence laughed, a momentary acknowledgment of the absurdity.
“How’s that going?” he asked Dubke.
There was no thematic purpose for Trump’s press conference. The president simply wanted to have one. Trump stepped out to his lectern and for one hour and seventeen minutes delivered to a live television audience a fiery, stream-of-consciousness screed.
“I turn on the TV, open the newspapers, and I see stories of chaos—chaos,” Trump said. “Yet it is the exact opposite. This administration is running like a fine-tuned machine.”
This was the twenty-seventh full day of his presidency, and Trump was unscripted. The president denied dysfunction in an administration plainly defined by it. The next day, Dubke was officially hired, but as he began work as communications director, he knew he could not direct Trump. The ineptitude came from the very top. Trump cared more about putting on a show than about the more mundane task of governing. There would be no restraining the grievances Trump felt nor curbing the chaos he created. They could only be managed.
* * *
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On February 23, two highly regarded cabinet members, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Kelly, ran into the Trump buzz saw when they traveled to Mexico City seeking to fix a problem their boss had created. Tillerson, sixty-four, a former chief executive of ExxonMobil, and Kelly, sixty-six, a retired four-star Marine Corps general, were both men of substance and gravitas. They saw their jobs as capstones on their already decorated careers and had agreed to join the administration out of a patriotic call to duty to help a neophyte president navigate a complicated world. Yet their experience and knowledge mattered little in Trump’s cabinet.
Tillerson and Kelly had been trying to smooth over the hurt, defensive feelings of America’s long-standing ally after Trump threatened huge tariffs on Mexican goods if the country did not agree to pay for construction of the border wall, his signature campaign promise. A planned meeting in Washington between Trump and Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto was hastily called off on January 26.
Compounding the challenges Tillerson and Kelly confronted was the fact that Kushner was operating as an interlocutor with Mexico outside the boundaries of the State Department or the National Security Council. This arrangement not only smacked of nepotism but also undermined lines of authority, creating confusion for other officials in the government as well as for foreign diplomats. Mexican foreign minister Luis Videgaray, however, cultivated a friendship with Kushner during the campaign, and in the fraught early months of Trump’s presidency Videgaray would lean on Kushner as a troubleshooter.
In Mexico City on February 26, as Tillerson and Kelly believed they had reached a kumbaya moment in face-to-face meetings with their counterparts, Trump let the world know who was in charge. In what had become a startling new trend in the White House, the president let the cameras roll as he spoke off the cuff in meetings. At his 10:30 a.m. meeting with two dozen U.S. manufacturing executives in the State Dining Room, Trump applauded his administration’s decision to launch a “military operation” to deport criminals who had snuck illegally into the country and Kelly’s work to stop “really bad dudes” from crossing the border. “All of a sudden, for the first time, we’re getting gang members out, we’re getting drug lords out, we’re getting really bad dudes out of this country—and at a rate that nobody’s ever seen before,” Trump said. “And it’s a military operation.”
Though the White House and Kelly’s office had both denied they would deploy the military, nobody was entirely sure what the fledgling administration might ultimately do. After all, the travel ban had been launched without any warning. The president’s remarks became breaking news bulletins.
At this very moment, Tillerson and Kelly were at their hotel preparing to leave by motorcade for the official meetings with their Mexican hosts. Tillerson, who had been alerted to the news in Washington by his staff, ran into Kelly in the hotel hallway. “You’re never going to believe what the president just did,” Tillerson said. “He said he’s sending troops to the border.” They both knew the disaster rolling over them. The Mexican leaders were sure to be infuriated. Kelly closed his eyes and cursed. “Oh, fuck,” he said. Trump had just cut them off at the knees for the sake of the show, to look tough on television.
Tillerson and Kelly had about an hour before they were scheduled to give a joint press conference with Videgaray and Mexican interior secretary Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong. When they arrived at the ministry for their meetings, the Americans found the Mexicans stunned. Videgaray asked, “Was this a setup? Were Tillerson and Kelly in on this joke?” “Videgaray was saying, ‘What the hell? What are we going to do now?’” said one U.S. official present for the meetings. “It was very hard for them to believe this was not planned.”
Tillerson and Kelly both insisted they knew nothing about it. Kelly was firm, telling the Mexican officials that the United States was not sending any troops. Still, Osorio Chong was stone-faced as he cited chapter and verse of the Mexican Constitution. “Let me explain to you why this is never going to happen,” the interior secretary said, assuring the Americans his country’s laws prohibit U.S. troops from coming onto Mexican soil.
The Mexicans kept their composure, which Kelly and Tillerson considered a gift. Setting aside the craziness from Trump, the Mexican leaders appeared to be working overtime to keep their eyes on the bigger prize: a productive working relationship with the United States, almost in spite of its president. When Kelly and Tillerson were done assuring the Mexicans in private, Kelly went to clean up the public mess. “Give me my binder,” he told David Lapan, his communications director. He wanted the folder where he kept his prepared remarks. “I need to make some changes.”