Some in the West Wing have come to dread Donald Trump’s trips to Mar-a-Lago, which make an already unpredictable president even more difficult to manage. | Alex Wong/Getty Images ‘Someone should say a prayer’ for Trump’s aides The president has decamped to Mar-a-Lago, where he’ll have plenty of time to dwell on a barrage of negative headlines.

President Donald Trump’s ever-growing list of grievances piled up on Monday — and now he has decamped to Mar-a-Lago, where he’s going to have plenty of time to obsess over them.

The president’s regular visits to his Florida property often bring out an even more unfiltered Trump, and people close to the president are bracing for a potentially tumultuous trip, according to three outside advisers.


By Monday afternoon, it appeared there were all manners of triggers that could set the president off.

Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen again appeared in court under the cloud of a federal criminal investigation. Fox News host Sean Hannity, Trump’s friend and frequent confidant, was named as one of Cohen’s clients during the court proceedings. Reporters from The Washington Post and The New York Times, which Trump has regularly lambasted on Twitter, won Pulitzer prizes for their coverage of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. And Trump had to walk back a pledge by his ambassador to the United Nations to impose new sanctions on Moscow.

Even before he departed for Mar-a-Lago on Monday, Trump was fuming over former FBI Director James Comey’s new book and the ongoing criminal investigation into Cohen. Five days at Mar-a-Lago, where he often spends even more time watching cable news and talking to friends, could send his frustrations to new heights.

"Someone should say a prayer for Sarah, Mercy and Raj because rest assured, Mar-A-Lago is the last place they want the president spending his time this week,” said one person close to the White House, referring to White House communications staffers Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Mercedes Schlapp and Raj Shah. “They have a lot of clean-up duty ahead of them."

Some in the West Wing have come to dread the trips, which make an already unpredictable president even more difficult to manage. The visits to Mar-a-Lago come with “more distractions, more reminders of pre-POTUS life, more opportunities for outside friends to make contact,” one former White House official said, “and more time watching TV.”

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The revelation that Cohen did legal work for Hannity immediately lit up social media and even got play on Fox News. "It's very strange to have my own television network have my name up on the lower third,” Hannity remarked on his radio show Monday, adding, “Michael never represented me in any matter. I never retained him. But I occasionally have had brief discussions with him” on legal matters.

Trump regularly speaks to Hannity and other Fox News personalities, who often serve as unofficial cheerleaders for the president. Trump has sometimes even promoted Hannity’s show on Twitter, including earlier this month ahead of an episode in which Hannity excoriated Comey.

The president has been known to be defensive of his friends and allies, and people close to Trump expect him to be furious that Hannity’s name is being dragged into the Cohen investigation.

With so many of Trump’s trusted advisers gone, from former communications director Hope Hicks to personal aide John McEntee, the president has fewer people around him to tamp down his impulses.

At Mar-a-Lago — where he’s officially going to be hosting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe — he’ll likely have greater contact with outside advisers who have been deeply critical of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, and have even suggested firing deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein.

Trump has been ranting in private for days about Rosenstein, who signed off on the FBI’s raid of Cohen’s office and apartment. Comey’s media tour, which featured a primetime ABC News interview on Sunday as well as multiple interviews this week, has only further cemented Trump’s belief that his critics are conspiring to undermine him.

"Comey drafted the Crooked Hillary exoneration long before he talked to her (lied in Congress to Senator G), then based his decisions on her poll numbers," Trump wrote on Twitter on Monday. "Disgruntled, he, McCabe, and the others, committed many crimes!"

The president's online post refers to a finding by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who uncovered transcripts last August showing Comey began drafting a recommendation against filing charges against Democrat Hillary Clinton over her use of a personal email server during her tenure as secretary of state months before the FBI investigation into that server had concluded.

Trump also made reference to Comey's forthcoming book, which includes a passage in which the former FBI director said "it is entirely possible" that his late October 2016 decision to notify Congress of the bureau's discovery of additional Clinton emails on the laptop of disgraced former Rep. Anthony Weiner was partly influenced by the Democratic candidate's significant lead in the polls at the time.

Aside from the president's Monday morning tweet, it was counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway who served as the public face of the White House's response to Comey's interview. She slammed the former FBI director on Monday as an attention-hungry author whose forthcoming book amounts to a “revisionist history” of his interactions with Trump.

Conway appeared Monday morning on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” responding to the hour-long interview special that the network aired Sunday night with Comey in which the former FBI director said Trump is morally unfit to be president and said it is possible that the Russian government is in possession of compromising material regarding the president.

Conway was unflinching in her own evaluation of the former FBI director’s performance, telling George Stephanopoulos that Comey “struggled to answer basic questions and he looked a little shaky.” She called certain parts of his book regarding the size of Trump's hands and the length of his tie "gutter."

Even before it aired, Comey’s interview seemingly sent shockwaves through the White House, with the president erupting with several tweets over the weekend directing vitriol at the former FBI director, whom Trump labeled “slippery James Comey.” The president also called Comey, whom he fired last spring with the bureau’s ongoing Russia investigation weighing on his mind, the worst leader in the FBI’s history.

Comey, elsewhere in his interview with Stephanopoulos, compared Trump’s emphasis on loyalty to that of a mafia boss. He said it was possible that the president’s alleged request during a Feb. 14, 2017, dinner that Comey let go of an FBI investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn could constitute obstruction of justice.

Sanders told reporters Monday that the president watched some of Comey’s interview.

"He saw bits and pieces,” she said, adding, that he “didn't watch the whole thing.”

