Empires

Trump’s aides build their own empires in the West Wing

Top White House officials have broken from tradition by hiring chiefs of staff and personal PR people to support their policy goals.

By TARA PALMERI

President Donald Trump won office on promises to shake up how Washington works, and so far that’s been most apparent in his own West Wing, where his top advisers have built up personal staffs to support their own agendas instead of using a traditional White House policy and messaging operation.

Chief strategist Steve Bannon has two special assistants, a deputy assistant, an executive assistant and a body man working in his “war room” — plus his external press hand, something his predecessors under President Barack Obama, David Axelrod and David Plouffe, never had while working in the White House.

Senior adviser Jared Kushner has two staffers working directly below him, as well as another five in the newly created Office of American Innovation who are focused on his portfolio of White House issues. Included in that mix is a communications adviser, Josh Raffel, a former Hollywood PR exec who previously repped Kushner’s real estate work.

“It is a new development for a White House staffer to have their own individual PR people,” said Ari Fleischer, who served as White House press secretary during George W. Bush’s first term.

Fleischer could not recall any staffers in the Bush White House having their own media contact aside from Karl Rove, who retained former Justice Department spokesman Mark Corallo to handle inquiries about his involvement in the Valerie Plame leak investigation. Corallo is currently representing Trump's legal team on matters relating to the Russia investigation.

The expansion of staff assigned to individual senior advisers has helped the people closest to Trump build up their own brands and policy portfolios — such as Kushner’s focus on technology and Middle East peace — but also reinforces factionalism within the West Wing. The aides help bolster competing camps when they’re squaring off to influence the president on everything from climate change to trade and health care.

Current and past White House aides say such an arrangement also risks distracting from a unified Trump agenda.

“The person it hurts is Donald Trump,” said Tommy Vietor, a former National Security Council spokesman under Obama. “Their aides aren’t working to push his agenda forward; instead, they’re doing the bidding of their bosses.”

In past White Houses, staff members have been assigned to bodies like the National Security Council or the Domestic Policy Council, while top-ranked aides to the president — assistants, deputy assistants, or special assistants to the president — made do with relatively few direct subordinates.

Obama’s senior adviser Valerie Jarrett was criticized by fellow staffers in 2008 for designating her aide Michael Strautmanis, who helped oversee the office of public engagement and intergovernmental affairs, as a “chief of staff” — a title typically reserved for the president’s top deputy or for those running the established offices within the West Wing.

Trump’s White House has taken that approach to a new level.

Senior counselor Kellyanne Conway, whose portfolio spans opioids, veterans issues and communications, has a chief of staff, Renee Hudson, who manages one person below her. Hudson, who has the title of deputy assistant to the president, was a chief of staff to Rep. Todd Rokita (R-Ind.) and is considered a strong policy aide to Conway, taking the lead on many of her issues, including opioid abuse and military spouse employment. Even more critically, she fills in for Conway at senior meetings when she’s traveling around the country advocating for Trump’s agenda at rallies.

Ivanka Trump also has a chief of staff, Julie Radford, who holds the title of special assistant to the president and manages only a single person below her.

As Obama’s chief strategist, Axelrod had two special assistants and an executive assistant underneath him. Plouffe had a deputy senior adviser and two special assistants when he took over the role — half as many dedicated staffers as Bannon or Kushner have.

The extensive personal offices also illustrate the distrust among top West Wing officials in the White House communications shop, which is stocked with loyalists to chief of staff Reince Priebus who used to work with him at the Republican National Committee.

“There is no trust in the current structure to defend everyone equally,” said one White House official.

The White House defended the arrangement, with some officials saying the organizational chart is designed to let each senior aide manage their own policy portfolios from top to bottom. They also argued it helps advance the priorities of the president, who is known for delegating.

“It’s a great thing that staffers are so engaged at such a high level and have created very ambitious portfolios within the president’s agenda,” said deputy White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. “We are shaking things up, and it's a great thing for which the results will ultimately speak for themselves.”

Most noticeable is the proliferation of spokespeople operating parallel to the White House press office.

That includes Raffel, a commissioned officer with a senior title and salary who sits in on the White House’s daily communications meetings and routinely handles queries concerning administration initiatives in Kushner and Ivanka Trump’s portfolios.

He's worked to promote initiatives from the Office of American Innovation, like a recent tech CEO event, and also focuses on issues like Middle East peace, one of Kushner’s top priorities, and paid leave, a signature issue for Ivanka Trump. Raffel previously represented Kushner Cos. when he worked at Hiltzik Strategies, a New York firm.

Bannon relies on an outside press person, former Breitbart spokeswoman Alexandra Preate, who formerly represented Trump donor and Breitbart backer Rebekah Mercer. But her job is primarily to keep Bannon’s name out of the press, to avoid distracting from Trump’s agenda, according to two White House officials.

Kushner's and Bannon’s respective PR hands are the first to respond to inquiries from reporters, rather than the White House communications shop overseen by press secretary Sean Spicer — and often respond separately on issues where Trump’s advisers disagree.

The White House communications shop is more likely to respond on the record to an inquiry about Priebus than anyone else, in part because many people who work there worked for Priebus at the RNC, including Spicer and deputy press secretary Lindsay Walters.

“He brought his own PR firm inside with him,” said the White House official.

The Trump White House still has about 100 fewer staffers than the Obama administration had during its first and final years in office, with 377 staffers. First lady Melania Trump has 19 fewer staffers working for her than Michelle Obama did in 2009. And only 17 Trump staffers make the top White House salary of $179,700 per year, compared to 20 in Obama’s first year.

While the proliferation of chiefs of staff and PR people appears to naturally reflect Trump’s own hyper awareness of brand development, former White House officials still say it’s taking the West Wing in a whole new direction.

“They’re redesigning how the White House staffs,” said Betsy Myers, former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton.