The 30-minute sit-down in the White House residence at 5 p.m. on Sunday wasn’t like the end of an episode of “The Apprentice.” It wasn’t televised in prime time, for one, and he didn’t dramatically say “You’re fired” at the end.
But it had the same effect. Just like the partial government shutdown he forced earlier this year in a futile effort to get money for a wall, Trump telegraphed to his base that he’s willing to do whatever it takes to secure the southern border and conveyed that he intends to make this issue a centerpiece of his reelection campaign.
“Two senior administration officials said that Nielsen had no intention of quitting when she went to the meeting Sunday with the president and that she was forced to step down,” Nick Miroff, Josh Dawsey, Seung Min Kim and Maria Sacchetti report. “Trump told aides last fall that he wanted to fire Nielsen … She appeared to regain her footing after U.S. Border Patrol agents used tear gas to repel a large crowd attempting to break through a border fence — the kind of ‘tough’ action Trump said he wanted …
The president grew frustrated with Nielsen again early this year as the number of migrants rose and as she raised legal concerns about some of Trump’s more severe impulses, particularly when his demands clashed with U.S. immigration laws and federal court orders.”
This is a central theme in all the news accounts of why Trump turned on her.
“The president called Ms. Nielsen at home early in the mornings to demand that she take action to stop migrants from entering the country, including doing things that were clearly illegal, such as blocking all migrants from seeking asylum,” the New York Times reports. “She repeatedly noted the limitations imposed on her department by federal laws, court settlements and international obligations. Those responses only infuriated Mr. Trump further.”
It’s part of a pattern. Trump has repeatedly shown disdain for the rule of law. The president declared a national emergency on Feb. 15 so he could divert money from the military to build his wall, even though his own lawyers at the White House and Justice Department advised him against doing so.
Trump alone cannot fix it, but he’s still learning the limits of the presidency and the added constraints that come with divided government.
The law needs to change to accomplish most of what Trump wants at the southern border, and this is very unlikely to happen now that Democrats control the House. The president ran promising that he alone can fix it, and he appears to still be learning that this is not how republican government works.
Nielsen “believed the situation was becoming untenable” because Trump was “becoming increasingly unhinged about the border crisis and making unreasonable and even impossible requests,” a senior administration official told CNN.
The Wall Street Journal’s conservative editorial board describes her termination as “a ritual sacrifice”: “Ms. Nielsen wasn’t responsible for the surge of Central American migrants arriving at the border to claim political asylum, but Donald Trump and Democrats in Congress both needed a fall guy.”
Trump prefers to surround himself with yes men.
This is a major reason that the administration has experienced historically high turnover.
“Nielsen’s ouster fits with a pattern of Trump forcing out officials who have pushed back against his more radical instincts or been unable to carry them out, or who have earned his ire for being unwilling to match his defiance for governing practice and convention,” CNN’s Stephen Collinson notes. “They include former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, ex-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, former national security adviser H.R. McMaster and former chief of staff John Kelly.”
Nielsen waits for Trump to disembark from Air Force One on Friday in California so he can visit the border. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)
The proliferation of “acting” secretaries continues.
Trump announced that Kevin McAleenan, the commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, will take over as acting DHS secretary. Normally, the deputy secretary would take over on an acting basis, but the president hasn’t nominated a No. 2 – despite all his talk of there being a national emergency. Nielsen tweeted that she’ll stay on through Wednesday — the day after tomorrow — “to assist with an orderly transition.”
This means that there will be interim leaders, who have not been confirmed by the Senate for the jobs they hold, atop the departments of Defense, Interior and Homeland Security. There is also not a permanent director of the Office of Management and Budget, and Mick Mulvaney remains the acting White House chief of staff.
Trump has said that he prefers it this way, and he’s “in no hurry” to name permanent replacements who can hold the jobs indefinitely. He wants his people at places like the Pentagon to feel like they’re on a tight leash. It means they’re constantly trying to curry favor.
[…]
It’s not clear that someone who will be “tough” enough for Trump can get confirmed to lead ICE or DHS.
Trump said Friday that he wants someone “tougher” to lead ICE after he unceremoniously dumped Ron Vitiello, a 30-year veteran of the U.S. Border Patrol, just weeks before he was poised to win confirmation. No one from the White House bothered to tell Vitiello he was being dumped. He found out the nomination had been formally rescinded in the press. His staff initially thought it was a clerical error. The challenge is finding someone who will be as “tough” as Trump wants without turning off moderate Senate Republicans.
Former Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli is under consideration to replace Nielsen and has been at the White House recently, according to my colleagues on the White House beat. But he could run into trouble over his efforts to block Trump from winning the Republican nomination in 2016.
One name getting a lot of attention is Kris Kobach, the former Kansas secretary of state who lost the governor’s race in November. He’s a hard-liner who co-chaired Trump’s ill-fated commission to explore voter fraud. For several reasons, a Kobach nomination would put a bunch of Republican senators in a tough spot. The likeliest role for him would be a post that doesn’t require Senate approval.
Energy Secretary Rick Perry is seen inside the White House as the most confirmable of the names being floated, per Bob Costa.
Conservative provocateur Ann Coulter, who has publicly soured on Trump over his failure to deliver the wall, celebrated Nielsen’s departure but worriedon Twitter that her replacement won’t be any better.
Stephen Miller listens as President Trump meets with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer in the Oval Office on Dec. 11. That was the meeting at which Trump said he would take responsibility for shutting down the government. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Stephen Miller is ascendant.
The White House policy adviser has recently gotten more control over this issue internally. Trump said in a recent Oval Office meeting that Miller is now in charge of all immigration initiatives. He’s encouraged Trump’s nativist tendencies and criticized both Vitiello and Nielsen to the president.
“Miller has pushed for someone to take over the ICE role who would be more receptive to his policy ideas,” per Nick, Seung Min and Josh. “He also is ‘particularly adept,’ one administration official said, at placing blame on others in the White House when ideas he promotes do not work. ‘Ron Vitiello has spent as much time defending our nation’s borders as Stephen Miller has been alive,’ one official said of Miller, who is 33. One senior official said: ‘This is part of an increasingly desperate effort by Stephen to throw people under the bus when the policies he has advocated are not effective. Once it becomes clear that Stephen’s policies aren’t working, he tells the president, “They’re not the right people.”’”
“Miller has also recently been telephoning mid-level officials at several federal departments and agencies to angrily demand that they do more to stem the flow of immigrants into the country,” Politico reports. “The officials at the Departments of Homeland Security, Justice and State, who each handle different parts of the immigration process, were initially surprised that a high-ranking White House official like Miller would call them directly, rather than contact their bosses. ‘It’s intimidation,’ one of the people who was briefed on the calls [said]. ‘Anytime you get a call like this from the White House it’s intimidation … Under normal circumstances, if you were a deputy in one of these agencies, it would be very unusual.’”
The story quotes “a person close to Nielsen” saying: “They failed with the courts and with Congress and now they’re eating their own.”
Nielsen’s departure is also a win for John Bolton, who has consolidated power since John Kelly left as chief of staff.
The national security adviser has repeatedly told the president that Nielsen isn’t the right fit for her job, a senior administration official told The Post.
Nielsen, 46, was Kelly’s chief of staff when he was the secretary of homeland security and replaced him when he became White House chief of staff. With her protector gone, and her enemies in such close proximity to the president, Nielsen struggled to survive.
