President Trump is reportedly surrounded by "egos, personal agendas, vendettas" and "ruthless" behaviour. Photo / AP
President Trump is reportedly surrounded by "egos, personal agendas, vendettas" and "ruthless" behaviour. Photo / AP
Since the elections in early November, it seems that almost every day brings fresh trouble and scrapping for Donald Trump — and none of it is more stark than his enmity with those close to him.
A day after the announcement that another former aide is releasing a tell-all memoir, the US President was facing internal strife over his treatment of the military, prison reform and daughter Ivanka's use of a personal email account for government work.
The book by Cliff Sims is entitled Team of Vipers: My 500 Extraordinary Days In The Trump White House, and portrays the West Wing as a venomous nest filled with poisonous plots.
Trump liked Sims, bringing him to high-level meetings, where the Special Assistant to the President and Director of White House Message Strategy took copious notes. The picture he paints is one of "power and palace intrigue, backstabbing and bold victories, as well as painful moral compromises."
Overnight, Trump found himself at the centre of more infighting.
Republicans were affronted by his comments about retired Navy Admiral William McRaven, who led the raid on Osama bin Laden. The President yesterday called McRaven a "Clinton backer" who took too long in finding Bin Laden.
White House adviser Ivanka Trump used a personal email account for government business, in violation of federal records rules. Photo / AP
And Trump, who has insisted he is an enthusiastic supporter of the military, also last week failed to uphold the presidential tradition of laying a wreath on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington Cemetery on Veteran's Day.
He was also criticised for cancelling his World War I cemetery visit in France due to bad weather and not visiting troops at the Mexico border.
Meanwhile, a Trump-backed criminal justice reform bill is hitting a major roadblock in the Senate, despite the GOP majority. Conservatives believe the bill will make the party appear soft on crime, with one senator warning it would mean the early release of "dangerous, repeat felons".
Another fired back that the warning was "fake news", and demanded to see the bill on the senate floor, ushering in a public battle that will only look like evidence of disunity.
Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and children Donald Jr and Ivanka all urged Congress to pass the bill — but the President's inner circle is looking increasingly compromised.
The President is now battling the fallout from his daughter and senior adviser Ivanka using private email throughout 2017 to discuss official business. A key House of Representatives committee announced it would investigate whether she had broken the law.
Elijah Cummings, the probable incoming Democratic chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said he would renew efforts to look into private emails next year after the Republican-controlled panel dropped its investigation into the issue last year.
Many in his party will be furious, after Trump made Hillary Clinton's use of personal email for government business a central tenet of his 2016 campaign, urging his supporters to chant, "Lock her up!"
House Dems not going to give Ivanka a pass. House Oversight had already been looking into use of private email in the WH and will continue the investigation in the new Congress, aide told me. The goal: To determine whether Ivanka and others complied with the law
With the White House is disarray and the Democrats holding the majority in the House, the pattern of mistrust, leaks and lies continues. The President is at war with the media, removing a journalist's press pass and announcing he would skip the White House Correspondents' Dinner again. He has faced legal challenges, over the suspension of the CNN reporter's pass and his installation of an Acting Attorney-General who opposes the Russia investigation. And a US federal judge has temporarily blocked the government from denying the possibility of asylum to people who enter the country illegally.
Sims has promised to expose what it is like to be with the President in the eye of the storm raging around him — the highs and lows, anger and recriminations, as well as insights from senior figures including Kushner, John Kelly, Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway.
He takes personal responsibility, saying he helped Trump craft his enemies list, and played a major role in both successes and disasters.
"I suspect that posterity will look back on this bizarre time in history like we were living on the pages of a Dickens novel," Sims wrote in his author's note.
"Lincoln famously had his Team of Rivals. Trump had his Team of Vipers. We served. We fought. We brought our egos. We brought our personal agendas and vendettas. We were ruthless.
