Trump Thinks Rules Don’t Apply but MonicaCrowley, Washington Said Otherwise
Monica Crowley leaves Trump Tower last month. (Evan Vucci/AP)
With Breanne Deppisch
THE BIG IDEA: Donald Trump and his team believe that the rules and norms of Washington do not apply to them. They are wrong, and yesterday brought a significant proof point.
Washington veterans marvel at how much Trump has been able to get away with because he just doesn’t seem to care what anyone else thinks. The president-elect has disregarded the long-standing tradition that there should only be one president at a time. He talked to the leader of Taiwan in contravention of the one-China policy; his national security adviser has been in contact with a senior Russian government official. He has refused to fully divest his financial holdings, given his son-in-law a government job and ordered his aides to declare war on an independent ethics office that raised questions about these arrangements.
There have also been so many developments related to Trump’s Cabinet appointees that Tom Daschle's use of a businessman's limousine and chauffeur, which created tax issues that prompted Daschle to withdraw his nomination for HHS secretary eight years ago, look small and insignificant by comparison. Several news stories that might have doomed past nominees have drawn less attention than Trump’s early-morning, made-for-cable tweets.
For the past 10 days, the poster child for this phenomenon has been Monica Crowley, a TV talking head who despite a dearth of serious experience was appointed as the senior director of strategic communications on the National Security Council
A steady stream of stories since the weekend before last has revealed pretty egregious examples of apparent plagiarism over a period of several years, from a 2012 book to her PhD dissertation and op-eds.
I have little doubt that Barack Obama and George W. Bush would have immediately terminated someone who did what Crowley appears to have done if that person was up for a similar posting (with a role in speechwriting and drafting statements in the name of the president).
There are many precedents: Plagiarism doomed Joe Biden’s 1988 presidential campaign, and just three years ago Montana Sen. John Walsh (D) ended his campaign for a full term after it came out that he’d plagiarized a paper for the Army War College.
President-elect Trump's national security spokeswoman is stepping back amid allegations of plagiarism. Here are four others who faced similar accusations. (Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post)
But Trump learned crisis management from his mentor Roy Cohn, who had been Joe McCarthy’s chief counsel during the witch hunts of the 1950s. Cohn, who represented Trump when the Justice Department sued him for housing discrimination in the 1970s, taught him to never apologize and to always counterpunch.
That’s exactly how his team initially responded to the revelations about Crowley. The transition team put out a statement saying, “Any attempt to discredit Monica is nothing more than a politically motivated attack that seeks to distract from the real issues facing this country.” Trump continued to stand by her even as publisher HarperCollins announced that it would no longer sell Crowley’s book and more stories detailed fresh examples.
Finally, because a handful of reporters doggedly pursued the story, the pressure became too much. Yesterday afternoon, Crowley sent a statement to the Washington Times to say that “after much reflection” she’s decided to stay in New York. She made no mention of plagiarism.
Andy Puzder, president of CKE Restaurants, at a Carl's Jr. restaurant. (Al Seib/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
-- The conventional wisdom that all of Trump’s Cabinet picks will be confirmed by the Senate shifted somewhat over the long weekend, and the odds are increasing that at least one will be stopped. Democrats continue to express some hope about blocking Steve Mnuchin for Treasury or Tom Price for HHS, but secretary of labor-designee Andy Puzder seems like the more vulnerable target. His hearing has already been postponed, and CNN reported last night that the restaurant executive is having second thoughts. "He may be bailing," a Republican source plugged into the Trump transition effort told John King. "He is not into the pounding he is taking, and the paperwork."
The most potentially damning revelations, which could get a full airing during a public hearing, are about past allegations by Puzder’s ex-wife that he abused her. She has now recanted, and he has always denied wrongdoing, but Politico reported last week that she appeared in disguise on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” as a victim of domestic violence, after having accused him multiple times of physically assaulting her in the 1980s.
A public debate about domestic violence is not something the transition team wants because it will distract from his agenda while prompting a re-airing of the 2005 “Access Hollywood” video, as well as a round of unflattering stories about the calamitous end of Trump’s own first marriage. (During a divorce deposition, for example, Ivana said that Donald had raped her.)
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