Fall Out: A Year of Political Mayhem. Tim Shipman
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It was a very serious meeting.’ Conversation roamed from the Middle East peace process to NATO, the Syrian civil war and Russia. ‘Kushner went in quite hard, they weren’t able to push him around. Boris pushed back.’ The main issue for the British was to ascertain how Trump would approach global affairs and whether he was planning to tear up the international order to affect a new partnership with Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
There were jaw-on-the-floor moments. When one of the Brits asked, ‘What do you give Russia to get them to the table?’ the reply astonished Johnson. ‘Steve Bannon being mischievous said if they want to move into some Baltic state, “We’re relaxed,”’ a source present said. To suggest that Russia be given carte blanche to march into a NATO state that both countries were sworn to defend on the pretext of protecting the Russian population was astonishing. Johnson leapt in, ‘What? Like the Sudeten Germans?’ comparing such a move to Hitler’s march into Czechoslovakia in 1938. ‘They recoiled,’ the source said. ‘Boris’s grasp of history outflanked them on a bunch of things. I don’t think they were serious.’
After three hours the meeting broke up. Thereafter Johnson and Bannon spoke most weeks. Kushner also kept in touch with Johnson and spoke to his aide Liam Parker about the Middle East peace process. Parker and Stephen Miller, Trump’s speechwriter and senior policy adviser, also conversed weekly.
The choreography continued a week later when Trump used an interview with Michael Gove, in his new guise as a Times journalist, to praise Britain as ‘smart’ for backing Brexit, and called Barack Obama’s statement during the EU referendum campaign that Britain was at the ‘back of the queue’ for a trade deal a ‘bad statement’. He said, ‘We’re gonna work very hard to get it done quickly.’3
British officials were left open-mouthed and concerned by Trump’s uncompromising inauguration speech, which appropriated the ‘America First’ slogan of isolationists before the Second World War, pledged to ‘end the carnage’ on America’s streets and ‘make America great again’ – an oration even George W. Bush dismissed as ‘some weird shit’. However, they were encouraged that Trump did not show his face at a party the night before thrown by the self-styled ‘Bad boys of Brexit’, Farage, Banks and co., who had taken over the top floor of the Hay Adams hotel.
Word spread that Trump was already calling the prime minister ‘my Maggie’ in an attempt to recreate the chemistry of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. The president had also expressed his hopes for a ‘Full Monty’ state visit, with nine holes of golf at Balmoral, a personal tour of the Churchill War Rooms with Boris Johnson and dinner with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. British officials had put on the table the idea of a financial services passporting deal with the US as the precursor to a trade deal. There was, however, friction over the prospect of Trump seeing Prince Charles. The president’s aides made clear that, as a climate change sceptic, he did not wish to be lectured by the heir to the throne about global warming.
Trump was also angry at the publication of a dossier by a former MI6 spy, Christopher Steele, which had been prepared for his political opponents, alleging that Russia held compromising material on him, including videos of him being urinated on by Muscovite prostitutes. Denouncing the story as ‘fake news’, Trump said, ‘I’m also very much of a germaphobe, by the way, believe me.’ The admission was about to impact on May’s visit.
May saw the Trump visit as key to her Brexit strategy. She wanted a close relationship with the US and the prospect of a preferential trade deal. But she also sought to use the visit to ensure that Trump was engaged in Europe and NATO. May first used a speech to Republican congressmen in Philadelphia – the first by a British prime minister to a party retreat – to talk about American leadership and support for the post-war institutions. Calling NATO ‘the cornerstone of the West’s defence’, she admitted that ‘some of these organisations are in need of reform’ but said Britain and America should ‘recommit ourselves to the responsibility of leadership in the modern world’. Tackling Bannon’s views head on, May added, ‘It remains overwhelmingly in our interests – and in those of the wider world – that the EU should succeed.’
Diplomatic channels quickly detected approval from the EU27. One of May’s aides said, ‘The Europeans were anxious about the fact we were invited so early. Trump saying he wanted to break up NATO made them feel defensive and threatened. They were relieved we were defending European values.’ Behind the scenes in Philadelphia, May had conversations with Paul Ryan, the speaker of the House of Representatives, and Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, about how to deal with and rein in Trump. ‘They were saying, “We can restrain this crazy man. We’re all scared but if we work together in this network we can achieve things.”’
On 27 January, a week to the day after Trump’s inauguration, Theresa May became the first foreign leader to stride into the White House under its new ownership. She did so accompanied by a trio of female aides – Fiona Hill, Katie Perrior and Lizzie Loudon. Tom Swarbrick, head of broadcast, and Chris Brannigan, head of government relations, who had both hoped to attend, were told they were staying at home. This was Hill’s answer to the Pussygate controversy. ‘It was Fi’s decision that we were going to have this all-female presentation, because that was a way to challenge Donald Trump.’
The two delegations held a closed meeting with a small number of aides, a joint press conference in the East Room of the White House and then a working lunch with a larger cast. In the closed session, Trump repeated his view that Brexit was ‘really good for the UK’ and added, ‘I’m really struck by the number of meetings I’ve had in which people say they feel they’ve got the UK back again. That really pleases me.’ They agreed that Jeremy Heywood would be the point man on trade discussions with Gary Cohn, the director of Trump’s economic council. May happily unveiled the Churchill bust, which had been returned to a side table in the Oval Office.
May had already spoken to Trump about the importance of NATO in both her prior telephone conversations. Now she raised it again, addressing him as ‘Mr President’ but giving him ‘a very hard time’ until Trump relented. He said, ‘I don’t want to be a problem for NATO, I’m 100 per cent for NATO, you can say that.’ In the press conference May did just that, using her opening statement to force Trump into repeating his statement publicly. She said, ‘We’ve reaffirmed our unshakeable commitment to this alliance. Mr President, I think you said, you confirmed that you’re 100 per cent behind NATO.’ As May fixed him with a steely glare, Trump nodded and mouthed, ‘True.’
The mood music was good as Trump showed his serious side in the closed meeting. A Downing Street source said, ‘He was on top of any number of quite complex briefs and he’d only been president for a week. That impressed Theresa because she’s a details girl.’ Over lunch Trump also turned on the charm, addressing May as ‘Theresa’. ‘When I come to England I want to see you first on arrival,’ he told her. ‘I always keep menu cards for significant moments.’ He promptly handed his to a staff member, saying: ‘Keep that safe. I had lunch with the British prime minister.’
As they walked down the White House colonnade after the press conference, Trump took May’s hand while the pair went down a ramp, providing all the world’s press with the Kodak moment they wanted. Yet this was not quite the act of chivalry it appeared. The footage showed a man slightly unsteady on his feet. Word quickly spread through the White House press corps and May’s aides that Trump had a phobia of stairs and slopes – a condition called bathmophobia. ‘You see his hand go out almost instinctively for help,’ said a British official. One American reporter pointed out sardonically, ‘Trump tells people he hates stairs and ramps and hates germs, so when he gets to a staircase with a dirty handrail he doesn’t know what to do.’
If that incident highlighted the oddities of dealing with Trump, May was quickly appraised about the controversies as well. In their meetings Trump had mentioned his plans to restrict arrivals to the US from six predominantly Muslim countries. May left Washington and was in the air to Ankara, where she was due to sign a defence deal with Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, when news broke that Trump had just signed an executive order imposing the ban, prompting the claim