A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump's Testing of America

by Philip Rucker

Trump had begun chafing against Kelly’s restrictions, which his deputy, Kirstjen Nielsen, brusquely enforced. She ordered shut the doors of the Oval Office to block staffers from wandering in without appointments; screened the president’s phone calls, making it harder for outside friends to get patched in; and mandated prescreening any papers, including the printouts of news stories about himself that Trump liked to read, before they reached the president’s desk. Just about everything Kelly did ran counter to Trump’s spontaneity, setting the two men on a collision course. Trump was embarrassed by the media narrative that Kelly was “managing” the president with his rigid structures. Kelly instructed White House operators to patch him into many of Trump’s calls so that he could hear what people told the president and vice versa. And Kelly tried to restrict who had direct access. When some of his friends complained that their calls were not connected, Trump sometimes yelled at his personal assistant, Madeleine Westerhout. “People say they’ve not been able to reach me for two weeks,” the president fumed. Westerhout blocked the calls under Kelly’s orders. Worse, though, Trump thought Kelly was acting morally superior. Trump started derisively dubbing him “the church lady” behind his back.