Donald Trump is going to be a busy boy this week, though not so much for his administration’s “Infrastructure Week” plans. Rather, his packed itinerary centers around the upcoming Senate Intelligence Committee testimony of James Comey, the former FBI director he fired, but ultimately chose not to invoke executive privilege against. Throw in mounting stories about Trump’s growing frustration with the Russia probe, and subsequent tweet storms complicating it and other pressing issues, and you’ve got a rather volatile cocktail that just so happens to be the President of the United States.
To make matters worse, the previously reported “war room” the White House was creating to handle and and all questions, requests and media matters pertaining to the Russia probe, is no more. Politico broke the news Monday night after confirming the demise of Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner’s brainchild with four White House advisors. Instead, per Sean Spicer’s press briefing last Wednesday, all Russia-related inquiries will go to Marc Kasowitz, the president’s personal counsel based in New York. NBC News later confirmed Politico’s story, quoting sources who claimed, “There’s no war room. Zero,” and it “never took off.”
Creating a special task force to contend with a specific issue isn’t a novel idea for a president. As Politico noted, Bill Clinton did the same when the Monica Lewinsky scandal reached a fever pitch. Yet Trump’s particular “war room” would have rekindled the boisterous political outlier’s relationship with two former employees — former deputy campaign manager David Bossie, and former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. The latter, who gained notoriety for allegedly assaulting former Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields, was apparently “scouting office space in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building last week.”