President Donald Trump spent the weekend at "the winter
White House," Mar-a-Lago, the secluded Florida castle where he is king.
The sun sparkles off the glistening lawn and warms the russet clay
Spanish tiles, and the steaks are cooked just how he likes them (well
done). His daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner - celebrated as
calming influences on the tempestuous president - joined him. But they
were helpless to contain his fury.
Trump was mad - steaming, raging mad.
Trump's young presidency has existed in a perpetual state of
chaos. The issue of Russia has distracted from what was meant to be his
most triumphant moment: his address last Tuesday to a joint session of
Congress. And now his latest unfounded accusation - that Barack Obama
tapped Trump's phones during last fall's campaign - had been denied by
the former president and doubted by both allies and fellow Republicans.
When Trump ran into Christopher Ruddy on the golf course and
later at dinner Saturday, he vented to his friend. "This will be
investigated," Ruddy recalled Trump telling him. "It will all come out. I
will be proven right."
"He was pissed," said Ruddy, the chief executive of Newsmax, a conservative media company. "I haven't seen him this angry."
Trump enters week seven of his presidency the same as the
six before it: enmeshed in controversy while struggling to make good on
his campaign promises. At a time when the White House had sought to ride
the momentum from Trump's speech to Congress and begin advancing its
agenda on Capitol Hill, the administration finds itself beset yet again
by disorder and suspicion.
At the center of the turmoil is an impatient president
increasingly frustrated by his administration's inability to erase the
impression that his campaign was engaged with Russia, to stem leaks
about both national security matters and internal discord and to
implement any signature achievements.
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