Fourth time's the charm? Mark Meadows takes over Trump's White House

Rep. Mark Meadows speaks with reporters during the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Photo / AP

One day last month, Mark Meadows went on Fox News to defend President Donald Trump's decision to begin purging the government of officials perceived to be disloyal to him. "Part of his administration is trying to defeat the Trump agenda," Meadows declared.

Two days later, he was back on Fox defending Trump's attacks on prosecutors seeking a long prison sentence for his convicted friend Roger Stone. "The president was right to call it out," Meadows said. A week after that, Meadows was on Fox again, offering commentary on a Democratic debate. "The clear winner tonight," he concluded, "was Donald Trump."

Mark Meadows, left, takes over from Mick Mulvaney, right. Photo / Getty Images

For three years, Trump could reliably count on tuning into his favourite television network and finding his favourite congressman carrying his flag in one political battle after another. Now Meadows, a retiring Republican representative from North Carolina and onetime leader of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, will transform himself from outside ally to inside consigliere as he takes over as Trump's fourth White House chief of staff in 38 months.

Whether he can be any more successful than his predecessors in managing a White House that defies management remains to be seen, but Meadows takes over at a moment of singular challenges for the president. The country faces a health, economic and societal crisis with the coronavirus even as it heads into a presidential campaign season that, if anything, promises to be even more brutal than the last one in 2016.

Reince Priebus, John Kelly and Mick Mulvaney each tried to navigate Trump's harum-scarum West Wing in his own way, alternately trying to control, channel or enable the advice-resistant president, only to eventually fall out of favour. Meadows has an advantage none of them did in that he had been a political confidant and ardent champion for much longer before taking the job, but he has never been tested like this before.

"The president hasn't gone through four chiefs of staff in 3 1/2 years because he's trying to figure out how to govern," said Chris Whipple, author of "The Gatekeepers," a history of those who served in the role. "He's gone through four chiefs because he's not interested in governing. He lives to campaign — to divide, demonise and disrupt — not to get things done."

In that sense, then, Meadows may make sense. A former real estate developer turned conservative bomb-thrower, Meadows made his name as a disruptor of the system, clashing repeatedly with House Republican leaders over spending, immigration and other issues, and inciting the rebellion that forced Speaker John Boehner to step down in 2015.

Meadows has helped blow up bipartisan deals over the budget, health care and immigration that he argued had sold out conservative principles and was an architect of the partial government shutdown of 2018-19 that failed to win Trump the border wall money he demanded. He famously blew up at Speaker Paul Ryan, Boehner's successor, on the floor during a contentious vote.

Boehner and Ryan considered Meadows an irresponsible agitator who cared only about getting attention for himself and nothing at all about governance. Rather than making progress, they believed, Meadows cared only about making a point. But to his admirers, Meadows puts principle above pragmatism even at a cost to his own party.

"It's a great move by the president," Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., said Saturday of Meadows' appointment. "Mark Meadows is the best strategist in Washington, and he's a great wartime consigliere and we're heading into election season. Mark understands the president's electoral coalition and his unique ability to cut through the normal morass of Washington to get things done."

While unpopular among establishment Republicans, Meadows has a genial manner that has helped him forge unlikely relationships with some Democrats, who say that unlike Trump, he can vigorously argue issues without making it personal.

Among his most notable friends across the aisle was Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, who died in October and was a top target of Trump's racially charged attacks on Twitter. Meadows gave a moving eulogy at Cummings' memorial service that talked about the value of the "unexpected friendship."

"I would describe Mark as an unusual empath just in terms of how he can relate to people," Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington state, another Democrat with whom he has a good relationship, said Saturday. "We do disagree on so many things, yet I do think he's someone who makes things about policy and not people."

Jayapal, a co-chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, emphasised that she considered Meadows' policies destructive but appreciated that he treated others with decency and respect. "I don't see Mark Meadows being able to change the president on that," she said. "I don't think that's possible. And if he thinks that's possible, he's probably kidding himself. It just makes me sad because he will end up being corroded."

Born on an Army base in Verdun, France, to a soldier and a civilian nurse, Meadows, 60, grew up mainly in Florida, a self-described "fat nerd" and an aspiring weather forecaster in a family without much money. But he later lost weight and became a businessman in Florida and North Carolina, where he owned a restaurant for 20 years before going into real estate. He ran for the House from western North Carolina in 2012 as an outspoken critic of the Republican establishment.

Like Trump, Meadows encouraged the birther movement that spread the lie that former President Barack Obama was not born in the United States. "2012 is the time we are going to send Mr. Obama home to Kenya or wherever it is," he said that year. He later called it "probably a poor choice of words on my part" and said that he believed Obama was an American citizen.

But he was not initially sold on Trump. By the 2016 election year, Meadows had helped found the Freedom Caucus, which made a point of prioritising fidelity to conservative policy over party-line discipline, much to the chagrin of Boehner and Ryan. Trump, a former Democrat who supported abortion rights and gun control, was a suspect figure.

Meadows takes over at a moment of singular challenges for the president. Photo / AP

Meadows privately expressed reluctance to go to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland that year because he did not want to be associated with Trump and thought it was only a question of how badly the reality television star would lose that year not whether he would, Tim Alberta wrote in "American Carnage."

Still, he campaigned for Trump in the fall and was friendly with Stephen Bannon, the candidate's chief strategist. After Trump proved him wrong on Election Day, Meadows made a point of aligning himself with the incoming president, so much so that it provoked a shouting match at a Freedom Caucus meeting where other members were concerned, according to Alberta's book.

Over the past three years, Meadows proved to have considerable influence over Trump, encouraging him to reject compromises with Democrats and moderate Republicans. He was seen in the West Wing probably more than any other congressman and spoke with the president by phone probably more than any of his colleagues — so much so that some White House aides reportedly sought to block his calls.

Other Republicans considered the advice Meadows was giving Trump unnecessarily destructive. "Mr. President, Mark Meadows and the Freedom Caucus are not your friends," former Rep. Robert Pittenger, a fellow North Carolina Republican who lost in a primary in 2018, wrote last year in the Charlotte Observer. "They laud you on Fox News then undermine your legislation."

Meadows was also reproved by the House Ethics Committee in 2018 for mishandling sexual harassment allegations against a top aide. The committee ordered Meadows to reimburse the government more than US$40,000 for salary paid to the aide who did not perform commensurate work.

But Meadows has made himself best known lately as one of Trump's most stalwart defenders during the various investigations into the president. At one point early last year, during testimony by Trump's former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, who described the president as racist, Meadows sought to counter the allegation by presenting a black political appointee of Trump's.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., called it racist to "actually use a prop, a black woman in this chamber, in this committee." Angry and indignant, Meadows rejected the idea that he was a racist and demanded an apology. Cummings, who was African American, came to his defense, calling Meadows "one of my best friends," and Tlaib apologised. But many lawmakers of colour remained livid about the exchange.

Meadows rose to the president's defence again later in the year when the House debated impeaching him for coercing Ukraine to incriminate his Democratic rivals by withholding security aid. After the House voted to impeach, the president enlisted Meadows and other Republican allies as adjunct members of his defense team for the Senate trial, deployed to the cameras to denounce the case.

Meadows announced in December that he would not run for a fifth term but made clear even then that he would remain in Trump's camp. "My work with President Trump and his administration is only beginning," he said at the time.

In the months since, he and the president were coy about what that would mean, although everyone suspected he would end up in Mulvaney's corner office and no one was surprised when Trump announced it by Twitter on Friday evening.

"Mark is always up for the challenge," Gaetz said. "We all knew when Mark wasn't running for reelection that he didn't lose one ounce of vigour for the fight, and it's no surprise to see the president turn to one of his closest confidants to lead the government."

Written by: Peter Baker
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