White House Aides Try and Fail to Fix Trump’s Rob Porter Problem

“I think the president is shaped by a lot of false accusations against him in the past.”

President Donald Trump in the Oval Office on February 9, 2018.Olivier Douliery/Abaca Press(Sipa via AP)

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

White House aides hit the Sunday news circuit to try to fix President Trump’s latest public relations nightmare: His defense of former staff secretary Rob Porter, who resigned this week amid allegations that he abused his two ex-wives. Trump and Chief of Staff John Kelly have been accused of failing to take the allegations of violence seriously and of protecting an abuser; on Saturday, Trump tweeted, “Peoples lives are being shattered and destroyed by a mere allegation. Some are true and some are false. Some are old and some are new. There is no recovery for someone falsely accused – life and career are gone. Is there no such thing any longer as Due Process?”

Aides’ attempts to explain the defensive response from Trump and Kelly only raised more questions. In an interview Sunday, Legislative Affairs Director Marc Short said that Trump’s handling of the accusations against Porter has been shaped by the fact that the president himself has faced allegations of assault from more than a dozen women.

“I think the president is shaped by a lot of false accusations against him in the past,” Short said on NBC’s Meet the Press. Short described Trump as “saddened,” “disturbed,” and “disappointed” by the Porter situation, and he said that the president believes Porter’s resignation was the right move. But Short did not respond to directly to the question of whether Trump believes Porter is innocent.

White House advisor Kellyanne Conway also mentioned Trump’s accusers Sunday in response to the question of whether Trump believes Porter is innocent. “The president believes, as he said the other day, you have to consider all sides,” Conway told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on This Week. “He has said this in the past about incidents that relate to him as well.” Conway stressed that Porter “is no longer the staff secretary.”

Conway also responded to a Saturday tweet by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) that said, “If [Trump] wants due process for the over dozen sexual assault allegations against him, let’s have Congressional hearings tomorrow.” Conway suggested that media attention counts as due process: “Those accusers have had their day on your network and elsewhere for a long time. They were trotted out again late last year.”

Meanwhile, budget director Mick Mulvaney attempted to defend the handling of the Porter situation and Trump’s Saturday tweet, but the explanations were not very flattering to the White House. He said on Fox News Sunday that Trump and Kelly had a “very human reaction” to the allegations against Porter. Mulvaney is reportedly a likely candidate to become the next chief of staff if Kelly leaves the White House, but Mulvaney said Sunday that the rumors are “much ado about nothing.”

Mulvaney also defended the president’s Saturday tweet by suggesting it was a reference to casino magnate and former RNC Finance Chair Steve Wynn, who faces accusations of sexually harassing employees in his casinos for decades. Wynn, who stepped down as CEO of Wynn Resorts this week due to these allegations, is hardly a sympathetic figure.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate