By John Cassidy
Donald Trump has built his political career on his reputation as a successful businessman, so it seems fair to assess his recent performance as President as if he were a C.E.O. running U.S.A., Inc. The report card isn’t pretty. Indeed, if Trump were the chief executive of a public company, the firm’s non-executive directors probably would have been huddled in a crisis meeting on Tuesday morning, deciding whether to issue him a pink slip.
In such a corporate scenario, the board members would likely decide they had no choice but to oust Trump to protect the reputation of the company and prevent further damage. During the past week, he has twice messed up monumentally, doing grave harm to his own credibility and undermining the country’s reputation around the world. And these were just his latest mistakes. During his four months in the corner office, Trump has repeatedly shown that he is patently unsuited for the position he holds, and he has also demonstrated a chronic inability to change the way he operates.
It was bad enough when, this time last week, he fired one of the company’s most senior compliance employees, James Comey, and then went on television and contradicted the official version of the dismissal, which his deputy, Mike Pence, and others had stated publicly. Not for the first time since Trump took over, the firm’s public-relations department was left scrambling, and Pence was sorely embarrassed. Trump’s subsequent outbursts on Twitter, in which he appeared to threaten Comey, only made a bad situation worse. The entire episode confirmed the impression that Trump puts his own interests, and his personal grievances, ahead of his duties to the company.
But that wasn’t the nadir. On Monday we learned, courtesy of a blockbuster story in the Washington Post, of another big blunder on Trump’s part. The day after he canned Comey, Trump revealed some of the company’s trade secrets to senior executives from a key rival, Russia Corporation, which only last year did all it could to sabotage one of U.S.A., Inc.,’s key product launches. Just how much damage Trump’s indiscretions have inflicted on the company isn’t yet known. But it’s clear that he was guilty of a serious breach of trust, and another stunning error of judgment.
Since he was chosen as C.E.O., last November, it has been one thing after another. But, partly because stock in the company has risen despite it all, most of U.S.A., Inc.,’s senior executives and big shareholders have until now stayed loyal to Trump. On Monday, however, there were signs of dissension in the ranks, with some people in the company registering alarm at what is going on at the top.
“Obviously, they are in a downward spiral right now, and have got to figure out a way to come to grips with all that’s happening,” Bob Corker, who helps lead U.S.A., Inc.,’s Tennessee division, said after the Washington Post story appeared. “The chaos that is being created by the lack of discipline is creating . . . a worrisome environment.” Susan Collins, a widely respected company veteran from the firm’s Maine office, told reporters, “Can we have a crisis-free day? That is all I am asking.”
Perhaps the most worrying sign for Trump came from U.S.A., Inc.,’s corporate headquarters, in Washington, D.C., where Paul Ryan, the company’s head of product development, who is widely regarded as a key Trump ally, expressed concern about the latest turn of events. While not referring to Trump directly, Ryan said in a statement that “protecting our company’s secrets is paramount.”
To be sure, I am stretching the corporate analogy here—Ryan said “our country’s secrets,” not “our company’s secrets”—but it brings out an important point. Most major corporations wouldn’t put up with Trump-like behavior. They have well-established rules and procedures for dealing with a C.E.O. who has gone rogue. If a firm’s board of directors sees the boss acting erratically and seriously undermining the firm’s long-term interests, it can step in and find a replacement. (At the very least, it can issue a reprimand and launch an internal inquiry to find out what has gone wrong.)
Politics doesn’t work like that, of course. More than sixty million Americans voted for Trump, and removing him from office would be a monumental undertaking. In light of Trump’s disclosures of classified information to Russia, some legal experts argued on Monday night that Congress could impeach him for violating his oath of office, in which he pledged to “faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States”—but that seems a long way off. Despite the latest statements from Ryan, Corker, and others, the G.O.P.’s leaders have come nowhere close to publicly supporting such a move.
On Tuesday morning, Trump took to Twitter and sought to defend himself. He didn’t deny that he had given classified information to the Russians. Instead, he pointed out that, as President, he has the right to declassify secrets, which is true. He also said he did it for “Humanitarian reasons, plus I want Russia to greatly step up their fight against isis & terrorism.”
This wasn’t how the Washington Post framed the story: the newspaper reported that Trump, in his meeting last Wednesday with Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, appeared to “be boasting about his inside knowledge of the looming threat.” Quoting an unnamed U.S. official who had knowledge of the exchange, the story quoted Trump as saying, “I get great intel. I have people brief me on great intel every day.” That is our President, and our C.E.O.
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