I’m sure you recall that 2017 was rife with leaks from the White House. It seemed that Trump couldn’t sneeze without it being leaked to the media.
Thankfully those days are behind us. But now, as the books are being written, new stories are being told about how Trump chose to tackle this problem:
NY POST – Obsessed with insiders trying to undermine him, President Trump compiled “naughty and nice” lists to help him discover which White House members were leaking to the press, according to a new memoir.
Cliff Sims, a former communications aide, said Trump called him into a private study outside the Oval Office to pick his brain about possible leakers in 2017, Axios reported, citing Sims’ new book, “Team of Vipers: My 500 Extraordinary Days in the Trump White House.”
Sims wrote: “‘Give me their names,’ (Trump) said, his eyes narrowing. ‘I want these people out of here. I’m going to take care of this. We’re going to get rid of all the snakes, even the bottom-feeders.’”
The 33-year-old described the “remarkable” scene of sitting with the president of the United States “basically compiling an enemies list – but these enemies were within his own administration.”
The president rattled off a series of names of perceived turncoats, Sims wrote.
“Almost no one was deemed beyond reproach—not his chief of staff, not senior aides, almost no one other than those with whom he shared a last name,” he wrote.
“He wanted me to help him judge their loyalty. How, I wondered, had it come to this?”
How had it come to this? People were leaking like a sieve! Every phone call Trump had with a foreign leader was leaked. It was ridiculous. Trump should have been obsessed with finding these leakers.
Finally, Sims wrote, Trump whipped out a black Sharpie and scribbled two lists on a card engraved with the White House seal.
“One list was people he could trust. The other was people he couldn’t, and wanted to let go,” he wrote. “The combined lists included about 15 people — 10 of them naughty, and five of them (all campaign alumni) nice.”
Most of the targets on the president’s “unofficial Enemies list” survived the purge, “at least for a while. But Trump seemed to revel in his new inside knowledge.”
I take issue with calling it an enemies list, as if to demonize it. It was a list of potential leakers that needed to be purged because they were leaking. It’s that simple.
In any event, I’m very glad that most of the leakers are gone and the White House is far more stable than it used to be.