Former Trump aide dishes on toxic workplace

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 16/03/2019 (2745 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

This aptly titled recent addition to a flurry of books already written about America’s unconventional president adds to the debate over the questionable legacy he will leave his country.

It’s yet another peek into a world of hiring and firing, infighting, extreme partisanship and media leaks that has come to define the administrative style of the narcissistic leader currently occupying America’s White House, revealing the mistrust and disloyalty amongst minions who seek to curry favour with him.

It supplements Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury and Bob Woodward’s Fear, and may even convince skeptical readers that the world’s most powerful nation is indeed experiencing a historic and potentially damaging change to its long-heralded democracy.

Following its release, Team of Vipers garnered a harsh tweet from the White House, prompting its author, Cliff Sims, to sue the 45th president of the United States, citing First Amendment rights to free speech.

The White House suggests the book may be violating a non-disclosure agreement, while the author is claiming he doesn’t remember signing such an agreement during the chaotic first few months of the new administration, setting the stage for yet another “I said/he said” confrontation.

Sims is an unabashed Republican, former CEO of a right-leaning multimedia political news company in Alabama and a staunch supporter of longtime state senator and former attorney general Jeff Sessions, which explains his invitation to join the Trump campaign in August 2016.

It also explains his eventual dismissal from the president’s inner circle, given Sessions’ own fall from good graces when he recused himself from investigations into Russian collusion.

A background in journalism and talent for creative political messaging led to Sims’ role as special assistant to the president and director of White House message strategy, weighty job descriptions that included opportunities to craft soundbites for the media and “run the message on tax reform.”

The job gave him frequent access to Trump, even being entrusted with the Trump’s favourite hairspray for last-minute touch-ups to his unique coiffure.

Yet by simply tweeting that his former staffer was just a lowly gofer and someone he barely knew, Trump has diminished Sims’ relevance in the same way he has dealt with high-profile friend and lawyer Michael Cohen, effectively casting doubt on the writer’s veracity.

The former host of TV’s The Apprentice thrives on limelight, even when observations and accusations threaten to disrobe the emperor, but Sims’ personal narratives, based on recollections and hundreds of pages of notes he purportedly kept, will resonate positively with readers, while self-deprecatory confessions to lapses in judgment reveal a sense of humility contrasting sharply with the president’s well-known “killer instinct.”

Admitting he was blinded by his own arrogance when “the knives came out for me,” Sims displays his own snake-like tendency, claiming it was significantly enhanced during his tenure in Washington.

His hyperbolic depiction of former White House chief of staff Gen. John Kelly as a disloyal Trump-basher supports his contention that working at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. negatively affects all who work there.

By the book’s end, readers can sense that Sims’ professed proclivity toward harmonious relationships with journalists other than those from the president’s favourite TV network, Fox News, likely sealed his fate.

He consistently proclaims — staff infighting aside — that he was always loyal to the president, even dredging up the Great Man Theory of history, positing that human events are largely determined by highly influential individuals, writing “there’s an argument to be made that Trump is such a man.”

It’s perplexing that he then diminishes such high praise, resorting to Dickensian contradictions by calling the president “a man of extraordinary talents and stunning shortcomings” and further befuddling readers by proclaiming, “I’m proud that the president I served was Donald Trump,” while admitting staffers “were all disposable.”

It’s a complex chronicle displaying a venomous, twisty tale, arguably befitting the man at its centre.

Joseph Hnatiuk is a retired teacher.

 

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