President Donald Trump has cast himself as a master brander and dealmaker, but rarely talks much about his crisis management style.

The past week has, however, put that style on clear display.


The White House was slow to respond to the Parkland school shooting in any expansive way in the first several hours, waiting until overnight to make any formal statements beyond telling reporters the president was “aware” and monitoring the situation.

The hesitance followed a week in which the president did nothing to calm the furor surrounding the revelation that a former top aide was allowed to keep working in the West Wing and handling sensitive information without a full security clearance because of allegations of past domestic abuse. The scandal led to criticism about how it was handled by Trump’s chief of staff John Kelly and cast doubt about his tenure.

In both cases, the president seemed to hang back behind staff decisions rather than taking decisive action to look engaged and involved. The response underscored the extent to which this White House, which is eternally engulfed by dramas — many of Trump’s own making — remains rudderless in a crisis and curiously flat-footed when true emergencies like the latest Florida shooting arise.

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“I get the impression here, depending on the crisis that hits, there is a scramble to immediately react in some way, without finding the truth or not liking the truth, and so there is an immediate reaction that only raises more questions,” said Leon Panetta, who served as chief of staff under President Bill Clinton and later as Secretary of Defense under President Barack Obama. “It makes the White House look like they just simply don’t have their act together and creates even greater problems for the president.”

Trump tweeted early Thursday about the Florida shooting, highlighting the shooter’s record of “bad and erratic behavior” and exhorting Americans to “report such instances to authorities again and again.” It wasn’t until after 11 a.m. — more than 20 hours after the first reports of gunfire in Parkland, Florida — that the president delivered a carefully worded, six-minute televised statement on the massacre.

The shooting interrupted a slow-moving, nine-day scandal over the administration’s decision to allow a senior aide, Rob Porter, handle sensitive information as White House staff secretary, despite red flags in his background concerning domestic abuse. The Daily Mail published interviews and photographs documenting claims by Porter’s two ex-wives of verbal and physical abuse.

While Porter denied the claims and resigned Feb. 7, the episode has revealed the extent to which chief of staff John Kelly and White House counsel Don McGahn have circumvented the standard clearance process to allow some aides to continue working in the Trump administration — and been a source of consternation and embarrassment as senior officials, including press secretary Sarah Sanders, have contradicted themselves and changed their explanations about what happened in Porter’s case.

Trump fueled the fallout from the Porter firing by waiting until Day 9 of the news cycle — hours before the Parkland shooting — to offer a broad condemnation of domestic violence. Trump also kept the story alive by telling reporters last Friday that the administration only wished Porter well, without mentioning anything about his two ex-wives or other abuse victims in general.

“It’s a tough time for him. He did a very good job when he was in the White House. And we hope he has a wonderful career and he will have a great career ahead of him,” the president said of Porter on Friday, three days after the first Daily Mail report. “He also, as you probably know, says he’s innocent — and I think you have to remember that.”

Behind the scenes, Trump has also extended the shelf life of the Porter crisis by not insisting that his staff offer a clear or cogent timeline of who in the White House knew about the allegations against Porter.

“The White House knew this story was coming, and they were still so unprepared for it,” said one close adviser about the fallout from the Porter scandal. “Can you imagine if our country had a real crisis?”

How the Trump White House responds to mass shootings All the times President Trump's White House spoke about shootings on U.S. soil, from an outdoor concert in Las Vegas to a high school in Parkland, Florida.

Multiple White House officials have said in recent days that morale has not been this low since the chaotic first 100 days of the Trump administration, when Reince Priebus worked as the chief of staff and warring factions threatened all decision-making.

Although a handful of close Trump allies insist that Kelly’s job is safe, White House officials worry that if Trump ousted Kelly, or if he left, it would further destabilize an already fragile White House. There’s also a general sense that, with tax reform over and the midterms on the horizon, little policymaking will get done in 2018, giving some aides less incentive to stay with the administration.

Several staffers have privately indicated that they want to find new jobs as quickly as possible, as to not be tainted by the actions of the administration.

“The president probably fueled the fire by coming out and defending Rob Porter the way he did and not discouraging stories about his conversations with others about potential new chiefs of staff,” said one senior administration official. “That just furthers the instability but, then again, that is his style.”

Until the Florida shooting drew the nation’s attention away from the White House, the press shop was still internally debating whether Kelly should address the press corps to more fully explain Porter’s firing. The communications office delayed the briefing twice on Thursday before abandoning it entirely.

“I suspect they didn’t want split screens,” said former President George W. Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer, speaking about the cancellation and the South Florida school massacre. “White Houses have been burned by split screens before.”

Now the attention inside the West Wing has turned to shaping a Florida response and planning upcoming travel to visit the Parkland community where the shooting occurred — which happens to be in a heavily Democratic area, which Trump typically avoids.

A White House spokesman did not respond to comment on the president’s upcoming travel. He is still scheduled to make a weekend visit to his Mar-a-Lago resort in West Palm Beach, 40 miles from Parkland.

The question remains whether Trump can pull the White House out of this funk and show the leadership chops to calm his staff and comfort the nation, not just his base.

“The White House has to find the discipline to help the president do such a challenging job,” said Andy Card, who also served as chief of staff under Bush. “The president continues to be climbing a steep learning curve. They need to demonstrate some restraints so everyone can stay focused on the priorities.”

