Part 2 of 3: The Whole Truth of Cassidy Hutchinson
Her story informs and warns, given Trump’s ongoing threat.
Ed. Note: Today’s headlines speak of new tragedies – now in Israel as that country reels from the unspeakable horror of the Hamas attack. Readers might think a column on former Trump staffer Cassidy Hutchinson not relevant enough to read in competition with this current, much more dramatic news of the day.
But I suggest Hutchinson’s story is more relevant than ever, as she describes an administration which, if reelected to power, would be completely incapable of leading the free world now on two fronts against an existential threat. The former Israeli ambassador to the United States, Danny Ayalon, described America's importance in a recent MSNBC interview:
“The only nation in the world today that is in the way of the barbarians at the gates is the United States. It is a watershed moment that calls for leadership. And what we have seen today from President Biden is putting the United States back at
the helm.”
We – and the world – would lose that force for good with the return of Donald Trump to the presidency.
Evidence of the former president’s failings take center stage in Hutchinson's Enough, a memoir of her 10-month stint as assistant to Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and the subject of my multi-part series on the Hutchinson story. With the 2024 presidential election ahead and Hutchinson’s personal experience in Trump’s White House as a guide, it is instructive to know why Donald Trump was and still is incapable of leading America. Her story offers an important accounting that all Americans, who care, should read.
-- TheResistantGrandmother (trg)
Cassidy Hutchinson’s June 28, 2022 testimony before the House select committee probing the Jan. 6 insurrection marked a pivotal moment both for her and the nation. It had been a year and half since that violent day, and much of America hungered for answers, even while a small, but more vocal percentage parroted the former president’s characterization of it as a “hoax” and “witch hunt.”
Her appearance would forever surrender the anonymity and privacy she cherished while growing up in rural New Jersey and as a second tier but critical staffer of the 45th president. But no matter. She was going before the world to tell the truth, whether people liked it or not.
They did, as Hutchinson's testimony was positively received by all but the most rabid Trump followers and Trump himself. For sane Americans, still the majority according to recent voting results, she appeared a poised and credible witness to the chaos, dishonesty, and dysfunction of Trump and his team. And, more recently, her memoir Enough, published two weeks ago, ranks number one on the New York Times non-fiction bestseller list. As writers say, she’s being read.
Her politics
The testimony was also notable as it marked a 360 degree turn in her politics. Correction: more like a 320 one, as Hutchinson remains a Republican, the Ronald Reagan and Mitt Romney kind, she has said, but no longer in the Donald Trump mold.
It has been a long journey from 2016 when Trump’s rallies turned her on to the man and his politics. It was at one of them in that year that Hutchinson and her parents became Trump followers, although that would change with Hutchinson’s first-hand view of the man as a White House staffer. After only a 10 months-stint (long, by Trump standards) Hutchinson understood he was not the man she had believed
he was.
Like many Trump devotees, Cassidy’s parents were a working-class couple, hard workers whose lives were not easy, and she offers no evidence they expected them to be. Mr. and Mrs. Hutchinson rarely even voted, her daughter said, until the New York TV celebrity and realtor came along. But they became energized by his larger-than-life, electric, and yes, combative style, as did their daughter in the 2016 presidential election year (Ch. 2).
Unlike them, Cassidy grew up interested in history, government, and politics – beginning, she said, as a starry-eyed tot asked to carry the American flag at her pre-school graduation. Those interests grew, and in high school she began to commit to a career in government.
At odds
You might think, as I did, that Hutchinson’s reverence for government would be at odds with Trump’s extralegal, burn-the-house down, deconstructionist approach to the American system — “lock her up,” “drain the swamp,” and especially “Make America Great Again” — as if the country had jettisoned “innocent until proven guilty,” a government’s need for expertise throughout its departments, and become minor and weak.
But the excitement around the businessman-turned TV star-turned-presidential candidate “swept away” any concerns about his controversial viewpoints, Hutchinson said. He was different and, in that respect, a welcomed change for a weary and disenchanted voting bloc who saw Trump as a breath of fresh air.
“You’re fired!” — White House style
Fast forward four years as Hutchinson becomes White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows’ principal assistant in March 2020. Coming from the legislative branch and, given the executive branch’s high turnover under the 45th president, she wanted to pin down her responsibilities in her first meeting with boss Meadows (Ch. 8).
Sure, sure he’d get to it. But the most important item for discussion was what Trump expected both of them to do -- root out leakers. Meadows elaborated: “We’re going to start working on people we’re going to get rid of – people who are disloyal to the president, starting with people who leak to the press.”
Meadows handed over a binder filled with organizational charts of everybody in the federal government, including the entire White House staff. Presumably, everyone on the charts would be potential targets for losing their jobs if deemed guilty of disloyalty, as decided by the small clique of Trump, Meadows, and now, Hutchinson.
Especially surprising was Meadows’ wanting to get right to it.
“Can you name anyone off the top of your head, even if it's obvious?” asked Meadows.
Not getting a response, he prompted, “How about (name withheld by this writer). Is (name) a leaker?
Now especially uncomfortable because she knew and liked the man on the sacrificial altar, Hutchinson deflected – offering another name of a White House employee who worked with Congress, describing him as a “abrasive and sexist.”
She added, “I felt the president would have a strong White House team if he (her candidate for dismissal) were gone.”
In a later conversation with Meadows, the new Chief of Staff mentioned off-handedly that Hutchinson’s choice for the unemployment line had, indeed, been given his walking papers and escorted out of the White House.
Short lived
But Hutchinson’s defense of the first person on Meadows’ list would be short-lived, as was he. Meadows revealed his original candidate for a pink-slip had been canned on “disloyalty” charges, although given employment back in the Congress. Trump and Meadows had not forgotten him – or spoken to or given a chance to defend himself. He was out.
Hutchinson’s maiden voyage visit with her boss was nothing if not instructive. She now understood the most important priority in the White House was not rooted in policy – e.g. immigration reform, the pandemic’s growing threat, health care, or “infrastructure,” even as he famously and routinely promised solutions for the last two items were always just a few weeks away.
No, catching “leakers” came first, with the definition of “leaking” being
dangerously loose.
All rampage, all the time
For example, when a staff member shared with Politico the guest list for one of his Congressional retreats, this was “leaking” in the president’s way of thinking and worthy of another Trump rampage. So, leaking now had become a matter of someone performing his or her job of sharing commonplace information with the press as had been done in other administrations, and his own, routinely over time.
Trump's paranoia could not help but spread anxiety throughout the executive branch, as evidenced by the administration’s record-high turnover rate. It was clear the White House culture President Donald Trump was going for was based on fear, not
respect or trust.
Busy work
As Hutchinson describes her entire ten-month White House stint, I was struck by how busy the Trump team was, but how little was accomplished. Unlike his quest to punish leakers, the 45th president was not committed to accomplishing much of anything. His staff filled up his calendar with what I would describe as presidential busywork – a weekend retreat with selected House members at Camp David with gossip, late-night drinking, and unwanted flirtations to fill the time a case in
point (Ch. 9).
And frequent trips on Air Force One to visit disaster sites accompanied by members of Congress, while important, seemed more an opportunity to spread presidential largesse than empathy and inspire the jockeying of officials like Ted Cruz to wrangle their way into photo ops.
One Congressional get together, a “roundtable” meeting in the capital, revealed the often-repeated pattern of “projection.” Since the meeting itself did not produce much in the way of news, a reporter asked Trump about the growing spread of Covid in the White House. True to form, the president jumped in unthinkingly, admitting that Katie Miller, wife of adviser Stephen Miller, had tested positive.
Loose lips, again
Here, Trump had unnecessarily given up personal information about one of his staff members without permission, recalling how he was known to casually blurt out sensitive information with guests and foreign officials. But Trump’s lack of self-awareness blinded the president from admitting any kind of personal accountability, sending the signal, “do what I say, not what I do.”
Attention deficit
One issue ripe for Trump’s attention but not getting it was the rapid spread of Covid, which the president pooh-poohed early on and failed to understand and communicate its threat.
Hutchinson noticed an important reason for the president’s poor Covid management: an oddly inadequate attention span for a person in such a prominent position. She observed Trump’s focus “could not last the length of even a typical meeting” -- describing the president as incapable of, or not wanting to learn, even in matters of life and death.
Although he brought in experts, such as Doctors Deborah Birx and Anthony Fauci, he did not vouch for their science-based approaches, substituting spin and off-the-wall ideas for expertise. Trump also continued holding out the false hope the virus would have a short shelf life – somehow vanishing as quickly as it arrived.
By late fall, a CNN report accounted for 38 times from February to October 20 that the president promised it would “disappear” or “go away soon,” despite more than 220,000 deaths by the middle of that month (10.31.20 CNN.com).
In the meantime, Trump promoted the use of hydroxy chlorine, a malaria drug he heralded without evidence as a “game changer.” He also suggested Americans ingest bleach to destroy the disease. One woman took Trump up on his idea and died.
In the spring, summer, and fall of 2020, guest editorials in the Washington Post joined letters to the editor and guest opinions in that and other newspapers describing how parents, family members, and friends were dying unnecessarily by Trump’s anti-mask, anti-testing, head-in-the-sand culture that had not reckoned with the deadly nature of the disease (washington post 3.7.2020, 7.27.20, and 10.9.2020) and (the
guardian 7.21.20.).
Oklahoma!
The administration’s refusal to care about Covid’s spread and speak truthfully reached disastrous results with Trump’s June 20, 2020 campaign rally in the Sooner State.
Conceived when the president’s poll numbers were dropping and he had not held a rally since March, the event reveals a breakdown in situational awareness, ethics, trustworthiness, and an inability to learn from experts that plagued Trump throughout his tenure, but was now advertised in full view at a critical juncture in
his campaign.
The event got off on the wrong foot by its being scheduled on a sacred day and in a tragic place: on June 19th in Tulsa, OK.
Social intelligence deficit
June 19th, or “Juneteenth,” has been a holiday in the Black culture since 1865 when Union Major General Gordon Granger informed Black residents of Galveston, Tx. that the Emancipation Proclamation had set them free. (President Biden made Juneteenth a national holiday on June 19, 2021.) On its back foot, the campaign changed the date to the 20th.
Unmindfully, the June rally was also slated for Tulsa, the site in 1921 of one of the worst racially motivated massacres in American history, when angry white mobs burned and razed a wealthy Black area of the city, nicknamed “Black Wall Street, looting homes and businesses and killing 26 Black residents and 10 whites. In concert with the original June 19th date for the rally, Trump’s scheduling choices showed either a deliberate or unconscious disrespect of Black America.
Also, local health officials warned holding a large event in a confined space would make more Oklahomans sick, even if they did not attend the rally. But the Trump team ignored the warnings while also requiring attendees to sign a statement not holding Trump responsible if they contracted the virus. The campaign went ahead, touting the rally as a must-see, big comeback event.
No masks, no distancing, no people
The campaign staff planned for an at-capacity crowd with no social-distancing for the 19,000 seat arena. Upping the hype ante, the organizers told news outlets “more than a million tickets had been sold or were expected” (Time 21 june 2020). A massive outdoor overflow stage was built where Vice President Mike Pence would hold forth with the extended crowd.
The no social distancing or masks requirements signaled neither the president, nor, by extension, his staff worried about the disease spreading, even though at least eight Covid incidents were reported among Trump’s campaign team that would aid the spread of the disease.
But Trump cavalierly doubled down in his remarks, saying he had directed the federal government to “slow down” Covid testing to reduce the number of reported U.S. cases. That comment joined the insensitive planning and over-promising in the mocking, week-long news coverage of the event.
To say the event “underperformed” itself would be an understatement. Instead of 19,000, only about 6,000 showed up. The overflow stage was quickly scrapped, with its humiliating disassembly playing out in front of cable and network news crews.
Worst of all, health officials’ warnings proved fatally correct. The number of daily Covid cases in Oklahoma tripled in the 30 days following the rally. And one of the rally-goers, beloved former 2012 Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain, died of Covid on July 30, learning of the disease “in June” and dying about four weeks later according to the family’s statement. Hearing of the Republican icon’s death, Mark Meadows confided to Hutchinson, “We killed Herman Cain.”
(Meadows has denied having made the statement.)
Ironically, Trump’s Covid performance not only contributed to his Nov. 3, 2020 election loss, but presaged the dishonesty to follow it. Trump used lies to explain his popular and Electoral College defeat and turned to militia groups and craven advisers like Rudy Giuliani and Sydney Powell, ignoring in-house cabinet members and White House counsel who refused to abet the alternate reality scheme.
“He’s angry at me all the time”
Hutchinson describes how “Stop the Steal!” began a drip, drip, drip of change in Mark Meadows.
“I don’t know what to do, Cassie, he’s angry at me all the time,” he confided, fearful his not being overly enthusiastic with “Stop the Steal!” was costing him with
the president.
Keen in March to avoid the humiliation of being fired as his three predecessors had been, after the election Meadows signed on to the “Stop the Steal!” bandwagon, having given up on even his small amount of pushing back.
Hutchinson quotes Meadows saying: “I’ll be the best Chief of Staff if I can keep him in office. If that’s what he wants, that’s what I want” (Ch.15).
So, Meadows inched slowly away from his role as Trump’s crutch and shoulder to cry on to an alleged enabler in the president’s illegal goal to stay in power.
As days passed, Hutchinson noticed her boss increasingly on board with the plan for Pence on Jan. 6 to reject the electoral votes.
Then, critically, Meadows took part in the president’s Jan. 2, 2021 call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger asking for “11,780 votes, or one more than we have,” to steal Georgia from Biden to Trump.
With an election-denier pseudo cabinet forming with Rudy Giuliani, Sydney Powell, and others replacing in influence the president’s reliance on Pat Cipollone, the White House legal counsel; Bill Barr, the attorney general; and Meadows, it was clear the nay-sayers must either leave – as Barr did; form the last guardrails against an unhinged president – the White House Counsel’s path; or go along with it. Meadows’ choice
was clear.
Stay tuned
In Part 3, the series concludes with the painful consequences of Hutchinson’s principled choices in her last months in the White House. Then, broke, and alone in the world, she remains out of work by the time she receives her first subpoena to testify before the House select committee probing the Jan. 6 insurrection -- something her old boss Mark Meadows refuses to do. Hutchinson has critical choices to make. They will not be easy for a 20-something down on her luck, trying to survive against the still-potent former president with an iron grip on the Republican Party. How she decides will make history and open Americans’ eyes.
-- trg
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Thank you for reading. Please leave a comment offering feedback, questions, or suggestions for upcoming posts.
An earlier version incorrectly listed the date of the Trump call to Brad Raffensperger as Jan. 6. It was, of course, Jan. 2. A brief mind warp must have prompted the substitution of "6" for "2" as I have known the correct date since the incident occurred. TRG regrets the error.