Confessions of an Anonymous White House Staffer

“Donald Trump doesn’t want to run for re-election,” one of my favorite White House sources told me over coffee at a diner in Silver Spring a few weeks ago.

I chuckled. “Well, he probably has little choice if he wants to avoid prosecution for a variety of potential crimes.”

I and probably every other reporter covering this White House have heard the rumor that Trump will drop the mic and walk from the stage at one point or another during the last two and a half years. I’m just about beyond taking anything seriously when it comes to my sources from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Nobody can guess what Donald Trump will do—not even Trump.

This administration is a poisoned well. To drink from it causes loss of credibility, lack of judgment and a general malaise often associated with those hooked on hallucinogens; imbibers can also gain an incredible ability to engage in mental contortions. They can lie, they can lie about their lies and they can try to sell you on both lies at the same time.

It’s quite an amazing drug pumped into the Trump Administration’s water well, but I’ve never acquired a taste for it—or piss or battery acid, to name two equally disgusting liquid refreshments.

I also do not like using confidential sources, though I went to jail to protect one, and I do not like clandestine “Deep Throat” meetings, though on occasion I’ve taken them. So it was with reluctance that I agreed to meet with the White House source.

“I don’t want to be seen with you in public,” I was told.

“Well, we’re here,” I explained over my coffee. “People can see you here.”

“We’re out of the bubble. Nobody knows us here,” I was told. Meaning, of course, that we were out of the District and therefore somehow invisible.

I just smiled. I’ve been to that particular restaurant many times over the years for a variety of reasons—I even recognized a local Montgomery County civic official when we walked in—but whatever.

For all I knew the meeting was a setup to try and record me saying something silly or damaging to my case against the president, and sure enough the source asked me several questions about being “banned” from the White House for 30 days. (My press pass has since been restored; more about that here.)

“I’m not wearing an ankle bracelet,” I said. “So all is well.”

I got a nod and a slight laugh, and then I got to hear about how just about everyone on the White House staff hates Donald Trump. Those who don’t fear him swear fealty to him, and a lonely few actually adore him. I’ve heard it all before: Complaints about Trump, the chatter of anonymous administration officials who want to enlighten us about him. But they throw rocks from behind bushes and ultimately allow the president to blame the media for throwing said rocks. “FAKE NEWS media!” I’m tired of hearing it, and I don’t understand why people who claim to be so upset never say anything publicly.

“I don’t get you people,” I said. “If you harbor all this animosity and you don’t mind griping, why don’t you come out of the shadows and do something about it?”

“What? Lose my job or worse—like you?” I was asked.

I had to laugh. “What’s your other option—roll over and play dead? Damn near everyone left in the GOP is doing that, and where’s it gotten you? If you’re going to get rolled you might as well go down fighting.”

“You don’t understand Washington D.C.,” I was told for the umpteenth time. This is often said as an admonition, right before someone tells me I’m an “outsider” or not a regular D.C. reporter. I confess I still do not know what the hell people are talking about when they say this. It seems to be meant for a reporter who isn’t part of the groupthink hordes of D.C. True that. I definitely am not worried about my spot on the social register. But as for understanding Washington D.C.? Please. Anyone who has ever attended a P.T.A. meeting understands D.C. politics. Don’t let anyone fool you that it’s anything more than that (unless you want to compare it to high school cliques; you might have something there).

“Donald Trump isn’t a product of D.C.” I said. “He isn’t some staid, go-along-to-get-along politician of the patrician class raised in the ossified environment of Washington. He’s a political pimp with a knife in one hand and a fistful of dollars in the other, bribing or shanking anyone who crosses his path as he tries to get in their way. He has no pretense, no morality and no compassion. He’s Mitch McConnell on meth combined with P.T. Barnum on steroids and acid. You guys keep thinking he’s somehow a ‘normal’ politician, whatever that is, and miss the point.”

The source nodded. “You might be right.”

I just laughed. “Yeah. Maybe. So why the hell are we meeting?”

The source had asked to meet and said there was some vital information—“something to shed some light on Trump.” We went through the “nuclear hurricane” business.

“I heard him say something very similar about bombing hurricanes,” I was told. My source also told of the arguments and lies about the Chinese trade war and a host of other mind-numbing issues the president has torn through in the last few weeks. “The Mooch is right,” my source said, in reference to Anthony Scaramucci’s public questioning of Trump’s sanity.

“Yeah, but he also said no one will stand up to him. He was right there too.” I said flatly.

There was a pause. “I’m going to leave the administration.”

I laughed. “That’s your news? Everybody leaves this administration. They either get spit out, chewed up or shot out like shit through a goose. You end up standing on a road in rural Maryland wondering how you got there and why your hair is on fire. So what?”

I admit it: I’m losing respect for and patience with those who’ve spent any significant stretch of time in this administration.

“I thought I could make a difference…” the source told me.

“Right,” I said. “Who doesn’t understand D.C. now?”

“I have a family.”

“Yeah. So do I. You act like you’re turning against a mafia Don.”

“What would you do if the President of the United States asked you to serve your country?” My source looked me straight in the eyes and didn’t flinch.

Ah, there it was. The hook. How they get you.

“I think Sean Spicer once asked me that,” I said, not quite sure if Sean or another former administration official had posed that question. But I had faced that conundrum too, long before I sat down in a Silver Spring Diner with a beaten-down Trump administration official looking to escape. “I’ll tell you what I said the last time I was asked,” I said. “If the president of the United States asked me to serve my country, I believe I would answer in the affirmative…”

“That’s right,” I was told. “That’s what we do. We have to serve.”

“You interrupted me,” I said. “I would say yes, but that would last right until the president told me to go out in public and lie about the size of his inaugural crowd. Because that is serving him and not serving the country. So I would probably be out of there faster than Scaramucci.”

“It isn’t that easy. It isn’t black and white.”

I nodded at that. “Yeah, I remember the New York Times op-ed piece. The ‘adults’ in the room. How’s that working out for you? Are you ‘anonymous?’”

“No,” I was told. “But if we leave, then who replaces us? Someone far worse. No one wants to work for the president. Why do you think Stephanie Grisham wears three hats? Why is Mulvaney doing multiple jobs? No one wants to work here at the end of the day. What’s worse—no government or a Trump government?”

I chuckled again remembering the Thomas Jefferson quote: “…were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” But there is something about the existential angst facing members of the White House staff who wish to flee—with their hair on fire or not.

Donald Trump is up for re-election next November. His administration will be in office, at a minimum, for the next 16 months. If he wins you can add 48 more to that tally. Most of the staff that started with him is gone, and according to many of those staffers still at the White House, virtually all of them, with the exception of Kellyanne Conway, Stephen Miller and Stephanie Grisham, are looking to get out—though acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney may also have to stick around for the long haul.

With so few doing so much for so many, where will this country be in 16 months? Who will be left in 48 months?

I was told point blank: “All I know is it won’t be me.”

Then my source slinked away, leaving me to pick up the check. I’m still not sure why we met. Maybe they just wanted to see if I was wearing an ankle bracelet. Or a shock collar.