End of Small Talk

‘It’s the End of Small Talk in Washington’

There may be no city as unsettled by Donald Trump as the one he just moved to. A social anthropology.

By DANIEL LIPPMAN and JOHN F. HARRIS

During the 1968 riots, Washington, D.C., was ablaze with arson and looting when an aide burst in to tell President Lyndon B. Johnson of a rumor that the carnage was headed toward the exclusive precincts of Georgetown. Johnson replied with acid humor: “I’ve waited 35 years for this day.”

LBJ was not talking so much about Georgetown as a physical place. He was talking about Georgetown as a state of mind, that web of journalists and socialites and former government officials—united by overlapping friendships and shared class, cultural and ideological affinities—that served as capital tastemakers and played on the social ambitions and insecurities of generations of presidents.

Georgetown as LBJ thought of it, and as presidents up through Bill Clinton encountered it, is now a faint ghost, largely a historical phenomenon. But its lineal descendant is still very much around. It is that group of scene-makers and self-promoters, along with some well-intentioned people who genuinely admire public service, that journalist Mark Leibovich skewered in his 2013 book This Town.

If these were normal times, the kind of people LBJ excoriated and Leibovich lampooned would be engaged right now in a familiar ritual. It would involve lunches and dinners with the new White House team, off-the-record chats about the workings of government mixed with let’s-be-friends chatter about real estate and schools and fitness routines. Presidential advisers would respond cautiously, flattered by their new social cachet, and correctly worried that they might be suspected of divided loyalties and leaks back at the White House.

But these aren’t normal times. Team Trump is showing few signs so far of hungering for the sort of social intercourse with permanent Washington that usually accompanies a new administration. And many longtime capital denizens in interviews describe themselves as put off by what they see as Trump’s personal vulgarity, and disturbed on some more fundamental level by the tornado of ethical controversies swirling around him.

“I think you are going to need a very strong blender to mix the Washington community with the Trump crowd, and I don’t think it’s going to end up being a smoothie,” says Sally Quinn, widow of the legendary Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee. “A friend of mine said, ‘It’s the end of small talk in Washington.’”

If Donald Trump’s arrival in the White House has torn at the social fabric across the country, it has interrupted the rhythms and culture of daily life nowhere as much as the city where he now lives. Like many politicians, he ran against Washington, but far more than any president in memory, that outsider rhetoric has translated into outsider governance, a disdain for the capital that seems to translate into genuine disconnection from its existing networks. For Trump’s supporters, this amounts to a promise kept—a disruption, even a thrilling rejection, of America’s permanent governing class. But it also risks impeding his agenda by cutting him off from some of the levers that can help a new president govern, or at least navigate the unwritten rules and networks of the capital to get things done.

Permanent Washington has changed over time, in ways that at first blush might seem friendlier to the Trumps. Over the past few decades, the old Georgetown—epitomized by people like the late Post owner Katharine Graham and hostess Evangeline Bruce—has largely given way to the flashier, less aristocratic world of social mixers like political and media consultants Tammy Haddad and Juleanna Glover. Where the Georgetown of the 1960s was a world of Andover and Choate grads and inherited wealth, today’s D.C. macher class is a meritocracy of sorts, as likely to feature self-made strivers from state schools as it is the scions of Harvard and Yale. That might seem friendlier territory for the Trumps, given their nouveau-riche vibe, but it hasn’t worked out that way. While both old Georgetown and modern This Town lean strongly Democratic, even longtime Republicans say they feel a different kind of chill between Trump’s Washington and social Washington. One veteran of George W. Bush’s White House with deep connections to the city’s media and lobbying scenes says of the Trump team: “They wear our scorn as a badge of honor.”

There are exceptions, partial ones. Some Goldman Sachs alums now in the White House—chief economic adviser Gary Cohn and deputy national security adviser Dina Powell—are familiar faces to many social Washingtonians, who are reassured that they are influential figures at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. But both, according to people in their circles, are still facing considerable backbiting from acquaintances who are incredulous that they are working for Trump.

“People are less anxious to go fawn over the new Cabinet and their wives,” confesses one longtime GOP Washington society figure. “I’m not interested in the Trumps and the Trump administration. I’m making no effort. Back in the day, I’d be having lunch with the new people.”

But part of what’s going on is that the “new people” are still having lunch—though often not with members of the establishment Beltway class. Trump swept into office promising to “drain the swamp” and touting his refusal to play by the usual Washington rules. Instead, he seems to be replacing one set of elites with another—it’s just that the old crowd hasn’t fully realized it yet.

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If there is a social hub of Trump’s Washington, it’s his own business establishment—the glitzy and controversial Trump International Hotel Washington, D.C., in what was once the Old Post Office, just half a mile from the White House. One unique feature of this administration is its extraordinary wealth—the net worth of the Cabinet and senior staff has been estimated at as much as $5.2 billion—and top officials are regular guests at the hotel, where rates for a one-bedroom suite go as high as $5,925 a night. Before Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin bought a house in D.C., he was known to stay there during the workweek; early in the administration, another frequent guest was Small Business Administration chief Linda McMahon, who earned her fortune the old-fashioned way: from pro wrestling. On any given night, K Street lobbyists and Trump insiders can be found mingling in the hotel’s gilded Benjamin Bar & Lounge, sipping $29 cocktails and dollops of wine served in crystal spoons. Trump hasn’t exactly broomed the city clean of its webs of influence: He’s just shifted them two miles east.

“Many clients that come to town want to be at the Trump Hotel, want to stay at the Trump, want to dine at the Trump,” says a Republican government relations consultant who goes a few times a week—and sometimes has as many as five meetings a day at the hotel. “We know that members of the administration frequent the hotel itself, so when we hear that the term ‘lobbyist’ was coined over at the Willard, now the new lobbyists’ lobby is probably the Trump Hotel.”

“You’re always going to see people,” adds another Republican operative who works for a prominent trade association and stops by the Trump Hotel at least twice a week. “It’s just a great place to gather intel,” this person says. “On Friday night, you’re pretty much guaranteed to run into senior staff.”

“They look at it as a piece of the president,” explains Kellyanne Conway, the White House counselor and one of the more social members of the administration. “So it’s become a very popular place to have dinner,” especially for business people coming into town.

Trump has dined at BLT Prime steakhouse in the hotel at least twice since it opened, but he generally eats in the White House or, on weekends, at one of his clubs in Florida or New Jersey. Until mid-June, Melania Trump was not even a physical, much less cultural, presence in the capital, remaining in New York to take care of their son, Barron. So the social role of the first couple for the first five months of Trump’s presidency fell ostensibly to West Wing couple Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, who are renting a white brick mansion in the Kalorama neighborhood from a Chilean billionaire for $15,000 a month. But Ivanka and Jared, who have three young children and observe Shabbat on Friday evenings, don’t get out much, either.

The Trump-Kushners live a three-minute walk from Barack and Michelle Obama, who moved into the neighborhood right after they left the White House in January—a location right in This Town Washington that offered the chance to build some new ties. But the contrast with the Obamas has been instructive. Weeks before the Obama move, Secret Service and Obama staffers approached nearby homeowners to explain what the security measures would look like, and what disruptions they could expect. A few weeks later, these same neighbors received personal notes from the former president and first lady thanking everyone for their patience—with a future invitation to their new home.

People who live near the Trump-Kushners initially didn’t receive such outreach or handwritten cards, and the oversight was noted. After published reports about how Ivanka’s neighbors were angry at the disruptions to their street—one irate Kalorama resident called it “a three-ring circus from the day that they moved in”—the first daughter showed up at several of their doors with a peace offering: two blue cupcakes baked by daughter Arabella, and an apology for the chaos her move to Tracy Place has caused. (“We love the neighborhood, and our family has received an incredibly gracious welcome from our neighbors,” Ivanka told the Associated Press in March.)

Superlobbyist Tony Podesta, the brother of Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, who lives close to both the Obamas and Ivanka and Jared in Kalorama, said he hopes to host a neighborhood party this summer and invite the two couples over for pizza. “Hopefully we’ll have a chance to reacquaint the Obamas with the tamer Trumps.”

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Political combat in Washington has always featured elements of ritualized warfare, where the city’s opposing tribes put aside their spears to nosh and network, in the service of the greater good of the establishment and its enduring values and interests. And presidents have been dissing Washington since Thomas Jefferson, who confessed late in life that his role in setting up the capital was the worst mistake of his political career. But the hostility between this president and This Town seems all too genuine—and altogether new in tenor. It’s common to hear well-known D.C. media figures describe Trump in terms like “low-class jerk” or diagnose him with maladies, like “serious personality disorder,” as one did at a recent party. Journalists are turned off by Trump’s tweets and statements calling the media “fake news” and attacking the legitimacy of their work. It especially rankles reporters that he usually doesn’t give the normal presidential disclaimers about respecting the role of the free press.

For many in the president’s orbit, bitter at the reams of negative coverage and never-ending leaks from inside their own government, the hostility is mutual. “The antipathy that a lot of the core Trump people have for the D.C. media establishment is authentic and real,” says Steve Clemons, Washington editor-at-large of the Atlantic.

Some have been more open, however, and there are signs that at least some strands of the Trump administration are willing to play by traditional rules. Conway often drops by cocktail parties in D.C., and said in an interview that she hasn’t sensed any hostility from the Washington set. She and her husband, George, recently bought an $8 million house off Embassy Row. “People have been very welcoming,” she says, pointing to her frequent polite interactions with female senators like Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota. “They’re genuinely curious,” she says of people in D.C. As for others in the White House, she adds, “I’ve never heard anybody say, ‘I feel unwelcome,’ or ‘I feel excluded,’ or ‘I feel funny.’”

“Whatever Kellyanne says about alternative facts, she’s great to be with,” says Margaret Carlson, who has hosted intimate off-the-record dinners with journalists and politicians for about 15 years. “She’s a down-to-earth person that people like me have known for 20 years. She’s pleasant to be around, and George is friendly too.”

For many senior Trump advisers, one factor hindering their social lives is the constant need to hover around the president, who is known to shift allegiances quickly and has a long history of encouraging infighting among his aides. Even if they want to engage with D.C., Trump staffers find it difficult to break away from the constant fire drills at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

“Politely declining has become a very popular response for many of us, but I’ve also found that sometimes I’ll go out for something and then come back to the White House,” says Conway, who rejects the notion that Trump staffers aren’t especially social. “When I do pop in to an event at an embassy or someone else’s home, I tend to encounter colleagues there.”

“Many of them would like to get involved with the social scene, but it’s very hard for them to do so because they’re always at work,” explains one source close to the White House. “Right now they’ve been chained to their desks 24-7.”

But being overwhelmed at the office clearly isn’t the whole story. This year’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner—a traditional opportunity for the administration to build and repair its connections even with an antagonistic press corps—became instead a headline example of Trump rejecting the relationship. Not only did the president skip the dinner invitation, hosting a rally in Pennsylvania instead, but other White House officials were instructed to stay away from the dinner and its associated events out of “solidarity.”

At media consultant Tammy Haddad’s annual garden brunch, long one of the more exclusive invites to snag during that weekend because of its power guest list, no Trump administration officials showed. Guests at the party were prompted by a screen to, “Tell us how you participate in democracy,” and pins saying, “Democracy Hustles Harder” were passed out. But beneath the surface the attendees did seem to feel like the early sense of danger coming out of the White House had faded. “The existential howl is starting to diminish a little bit,” one brunchgoer said. Signs of a thaw were likewise evident at another annual party given that weekend, hosted by Atlantic Media owner David Bradley and attended by many reporters and VIPs. Defense Secretary James Mattis was there, and found himself encircled by reporters giving him their business cards and putting in requests for interviews. “He’s the rock star tonight,” one Democratic senator said of Mattis.

But it’s telling that Mattis is someone with his own longtime Washington power base, who has been seen as fairly independent of the president. “I have the sense that a lot of the people close to Trump are afraid to go out of the house or certainly the White House at this point,” says Gregg Herken, author of The Georgetown Set: Friends and Rivals in Cold War Washington. “I suspect that’s the fear for a lot of the people around Trump, that they don’t want to engage too much socially outside of their own circle for fear that they would be criticized.”

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While the Trump experience may be anomalous in some ways, his combination of attraction to the worlds of media and Washington society—few presidents have paid more attention to what people are saying about him—and his resentments of the inhabitants of that same world have many historical precedents.

Perhaps no one was more at ease with Georgetown than President John F. Kennedy, a former resident of the neighborhood who kept many of his friends among journalists and the Washington upper classes. During his first hours in office, he left his inaugural ball to attend an after-hours party at the home of columnist and Georgetown social maven Joe Alsop, a shirttail relative of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

But Kennedy was the exception. Most presidents are more like Trump, outsiders to the Northeastern social milieu who have looked at permanent Washington and its media-heavy social scene with deep resentment. “There goes Henry to dine with his Georgetown friends,” Richard Nixon sometimes would say when his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, left a meeting.

Jimmy Carter by temperament had little affinity for the Georgetown crowd—a feeling that was amply reciprocated—though aides like Hamilton Jordan and Jody Powell accepted their share of party invitations. Ronald Reagan didn’t spend a lot of time obsessing over his social standing in official Washington, though his wife, Nancy, took on the role of social connector, staying on good terms with Katharine Graham and many journalists. George H.W. Bush’s relationships ran deep, as a longtime Washington hand.

Of recent presidents, Bill Clinton may have had the most complicated relationship with social Washington. Before coming to the presidency, he had long and close relationships with many people who were part of that generation’s equivalent of the Georgetown set, like former journalist Strobe Talbott. But upon arriving in the White House, he and then-first lady Hillary Clinton were hurt and deeply aggrieved to find themselves facing skepticism from the city’s establishment, especially from a press they had expected to fall willingly into their camp. The Clintons felt they were held to a double standard because they were young and from a small Southern state like Arkansas. It didn’t help matters when the details of Bill Clinton’s relationship with Monica Lewinsky surfaced. “With some exceptions, the Washington Establishment is outraged by the president’s behavior in the Monica Lewinsky scandal,” Sally Quinn wrote in the Washington Post at the height of the Lewinsky scandal. “Washington insiders are particularly appalled by the president’s recklessness.”

Bill Clinton was furious, and in the recollection of a former close aide once joked that he was going to award Ben Bradlee the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his sacrifice in having to sleep with Quinn. (Bradlee did late in his life win the Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama—but not for that.)

Trump staffers, similarly, feel like the D.C. media-political complex is out to get them—and they would not be entirely wrong. This Town tends to circle the wagons against people not only who don’t play by its rules, but whose approach to the presidency threatens to dim the aura that surrounds it. And the resulting distance breeds the kind of mistrust that does actually hurt an administration, argues Steve Clemons of the Atlantic: “They’re not going to be building relationships that could be useful in helping all sides understand each other.”

“It’s easier to hate the enemy that you don’t dine with, and it’s easier to hate Trump if you’re not hanging out with” Trump people, says author and historian Evan Thomas. “There was kind of a class snobbery about Georgetown, but there’s now more of a moralistic fervor of each side is thinking the other is somehow immoral.”