The first days inside Trumps White House: Fury, tumult and a reboot
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/the-first-days-inside-trumps-white-house-fury-tumult-and-a-reboot/2017/01/23/7ceef1b0-e191-11e6-ba11-63c4b4fb5a63_story.html?utm_term=.f22b473917ff
President Trump had just returned to the White House on Saturday from his final inauguration event, a tranquil interfaith prayer service, when the flashes of anger began to build.
Trump turned on the television to see a jarring juxtaposition massive demonstrations around the globe protesting his day-old presidency and footage of the sparser crowd at his inauguration, with large patches of white empty space on the Mall.
As his press secretary, Sean Spicer, was still unpacking boxes in his spacious new West Wing office, Trump grew increasingly and visibly enraged.
Pundits were dissing his turnout. The National Park Service had retweeted a photo unfavorably comparing the size of his inauguration crowd with the one that attended Barack Obamas swearing-in ceremony in 2009. A journalist had misreported that Trump had removed the bust of Martin Luther King Jr. from the Oval Office. And celebrities at the protests were denouncing the new commander in chief Madonna even called for blowing up the White House.
Trumps advisers suggested that he could push back in a simple tweet. Thomas J. Barrack Jr., a Trump confidant and the chairman of the Presidential Inaugural Committee, offered to deliver a statement addressing the crowd size.
But Trump was adamant, aides said. Over the objections of his aides and advisers who urged him to focus on policy and the broader goals of his presidency the new president issued a decree: He wanted a fiery public response, and he wanted it to come from his press secretary.
Spicers resulting statement delivered in an extended shout and brimming with falsehoods underscores the extent to which the turbulence and competing factions that were a hallmark of Trumps campaign have been transported to the White House.
The broader power struggles within the Trump operation have touched everything from the new administrations communications shop to the expansive role of the presidents son-in-law to the formation of Trumps political organization. At the center, as always, is Trump himself, whose ascent to the White House seems to have only heightened his acute sensitivity to criticism.