Y Is It Bad That Trumo Masterd the Art of Lawsuit
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The Man Behind the President's Tweets
Unraveling the mystery of Dan Scavino, the White Firm social media director, whose job is to assistance @realDonaldTrump stay unpresidential.
Credit... Photo illustration by Paul Sahre. Scavino source photo: MAI/Rex/Shutterstock.
50 ast July, President Donald Trump was sued in federal court over his Twitter habits. It wasn't the tone or content of Trump'due south approximately 37,300 tweets that had landed him in trouble. Instead, it was the possible unconstitutionality of the mode he uses ane characteristic of the platform: the block button. The plaintiffs, represented by Columbia Academy's Knight First Amendment Institute, were seven individuals — ranging from a freelance journalist to a New York comedian to a Texas police officeholder — who had sent negative replies to an @realDonaldTrump tweet and were afterwards blocked by the president. Though Trump's Twitter account purports to be a personal one, the plaintiffs argued, his writings invariably involved government business organisation and executive opinions — making his posts a public forum to which all American citizens should exist guaranteed access.
Though @realDonaldTrump reads similar the unabridged representation of a atypical man'due south impulses, three other defendants were named in the accommodate, which is expected to be ruled upon in the Southern Commune of New York in the coming months. One of them was Promise Hicks, long a public face of Trump World, the 29-year-old former model who spent the past three years as Trump'southward media liaison before leaving the White House in belatedly March. A 2d was Trump's press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the president'south designated mouthpiece. Only the third, unlike Hicks and Sanders, was someone most Americans have never heard of: a man named Dan Scavino Jr.
Scavino was some other of the "originals" on Trump'due south 2016 entrada, and I saw him numerous times on the trail, but I could never quite ascertain what he was doing to further his boss's presidential ambitions. Aggressively nondescript, Scavino could often be seen in a suit at the side of the stage, taking photos of the immense rally crowds with his iPhone and after, while scowling at his laptop aboard Trump's 757, posting the images to Facebook. The other fixtures on Trump'due south plane — Hicks, the entrada manager Corey Lewandowski, the policy adviser Stephen Miller and the security director Keith Schiller — had roles that, in a famously unorthodox campaign, at least seemed familiar. But Scavino's sole task, from what I could tell, was to document Trump's popularity.
My perplexity over Scavino deepened after Inauguration Solar day, even as he got an official championship: assistant to the president and director of social media, a position that had never existed before and 1 that paid him the maximum White Firm staff salary of $179,700. The Trump White House continued to employ an official photographer (Shealah Craighead) as well every bit a principal digital officer (Ory Rinat). This small digital team shared a suite across the street, in the Executive Office Building. But Scavino got an office on the footing floor of the W Wing, just down the hall from the leader of the free globe.
The only official function Scavino filled that might justify his bacon and his prime number White House real estate was detailed in the lawsuit's stipulation of facts. "Scavino," both parties to the lawsuit agreed, "assists President Trump in operating the @realDonaldTrump account, including past drafting and posting tweets to the business relationship." No one else, besides Trump himself, had access to the most consequential and controversial social media account in the earth.
A couple of months afterwards the lawsuit was filed, I paid a visit to the White Business firm to inform Promise Hicks that I wanted to write about Scavino and his value to the president. Hicks was not enthusiastic. The story had already been washed, she maintained vaguely, before adding that Scavino was himself unlikely to pull dorsum the mantle any further about his life — and likewise, she hastened to clinch me, there really wasn't much of a drapery to pull back. (Scavino declined to exist interviewed for this article.) Dan, she said, was but a selfless public servant who worked tirelessly for the president of the The states. Equally to his actual value, Hicks offered a curious descriptor I would also hear from several others: Scavino was "the usher of the Trump Railroad train."
For those who take forgotten the history of that particular phrase, the "Trump Train" began early in the campaign as a quixotic rallying weep. At the fourth dimension, Trump's presidential ambitions seemed similar a populist caricatural rather than anything that could seriously be called a political movement. But the reality-TV star's fan base continued to grow, in defiance of polling and Beltway groupthink and in direct proportion (or then information technology seemed) to his mounting pile of scandals and outré policy proposals. The Trump Train, information technology soon became clear, was a juggernaut, and soon the phrase became 2nd but to "Brand America Not bad Again" as Trump fans' well-nigh cherished meme.
In hindsight, the phrase's rise is also a good illustration of why Scavino, every bit the behind-the-scenes cheerleader and relentless documentarian of the Trump movement, deserves significant credit for its success. Perhaps the most profound effect of Scavino's countless iPhone videos and photos is that they served as proof to so-called "shy Trump supporters" that they were non lonely — that they were in fact (regardless of what the mainstream media reported) poised to brand history. As Jason Miller, the campaign's senior communications adviser, puts information technology: "You lot could brand the example that without Dan fulfilling his core mission of conveying the excitement, people wouldn't accept realized that they were part of a movement. It was absolutely disquisitional in encouraging people to plough out."
But now that they had turned out for Trump and he was America's 45th president, what did he all the same need Scavino for? I spent the next 6 months trying to find out, even equally the ranks of "originals" dwindled. Keith Schiller left in September. Soon subsequently Hope Hicks exited the building on March 29, Scavino — at present the longest-tenured Trump employee in the White House — took over her function, just exterior the Oval. Past these measures, he was one of the most powerful people in Washington, despite the fact that no one could explicate what Scavino did for a living.
Dorsum in November 2013, earlier Twitter had fully transformed into the cesspool of outrage and vitriol information technology is today, a 37-yr-old homo named Dan Scavino decided to post his ain contribution to a trending hashtag, #MentionSomeoneYoureThankfulFor.
"Simple!" he wrote. "I would not be where I am today w/o him. Thank you @realDonaldTrump!!"
Scavino was and so leading the placid life of a suburban striver. Together with his wife of xiii years, their 2 sons and two Portuguese water dogs, he lived in a 4-bedroom firm in Dutchess County, N.Y., looking out onto the sixth pigsty of the neighborhood golf grade. An English schoolteacher's son, he had played tight end and defensive terminate on his high school football team the year they won land and had kissed the ring of Pope John Paul II. He had in fact twice finagled forepart-row seats to see the pope, just as he had talked his way into a sales job at Coca-Cola while polishing the company president'south golf game clubs during his summer employment equally a caddy. His genial hustling had earned him minor celebrity upstate: Scavino ofttimes dropped in on the studio of the K104.7 "Woodman in the Morning" radio bear witness, and as a philanthropically minded Catholic, he could exist counted on to judge a charity cupcake contest and to walk the track in a "Best Legs in the Hudson Valley" competition.
Merely what propelled Scavino'southward rising more than than any other factor was his relationship with Donald Trump. The two first met in 1990, when Scavino was a teenage caddy at a Westchester County course that Trump would eventually purchase and rename the Trump National Golf game Social club. Scavino carried Trump'south clubs, earning a $200 tip from the developer — who subsequently in the society's Grille Room told the caddy, "You are going to work for me one day."
Scavino went on to major in communications at the Country University of New York in Plattsburgh; he did a six-month internship at Walt Disney World, then after got a chore with the Texas-based Galderma Laboratories as a pharmaceutical rep; he married and settled down. Simply throughout it all, he held onto the two hundred-dollar bills that Trump had given him. When that aforementioned Westchester golf gild, which now diameter the billionaire's name, offered Scavino a chore as an banana manager in 2004, he accustomed. Four years subsequently, he was the society'due south general manager, whizzing around America in the big man'southward individual plane. After a brief and not birthday successful stint running his own consulting firm, Scavino reached out to Trump's son Eric in Nov 2014 to meet if he could come back into the fold. On Nov. viii, having heard the rumors of a possible presidential bid, Scavino buttonholed his old boss at Eric's wedding and said, "When you run, I'1000 in."
What Scavino was offering were the services of a registered independent who had no experience in politics. He had only i qualification: He was a Trump die-hard. Lewandowski hired him on the spot. In June 2015, the two men, along with Hicks and the political adviser Sam Nunberg, moved into a cramped office on the 24th floor of Trump Belfry. Scavino's first assignment was to try to find big-ticket contributors to Trump's campaign, an effort that proved fruitless, every bit the Republican donor grade did not take his candidacy seriously. Scavino would subsequently be enjoined to cultivate relationships within the Republican National Committee, which at that time viewed the bombastic New York businessman and reality-Tv set star with centre-rolling skepticism. He had no luck with that attempt either.
A more suitable job for Scavino materialized shortly afterwards Trump's formal annunciation of his candidacy on June 16, 2015. The campaign had been trying to curry favor with the powerful publisher Joe McQuaid, whose endorsement in The New Hampshire Spousal relationship Leader was amidst the almost highly coveted in the early on master states. Merely this amuse offensive threatened to come undone when, during Ivanka Trump's visit on June 24 to denote the opening of a entrada function in Manchester, McQuaid'southward daughter was unable to get her photo taken with the socialite. Trump was infuriated when he learned of this. To preclude similar dust-ups in the future, Scavino had another duty added to his portfolio: going to the early primary states to tend to the needs of the local kingmakers.
In this new role, equally with so many of his roles for Trump over the years, Scavino connected to serve as a kind of caddy. He went on food runs for the candidate to McDonald's and KFC. He faithfully typed out Trump's tweets as the candidate dictated them. He too wandered the events, climbed the rafters and snapped smartphone pictures, which he and then posted on both his and the campaign's diverse social-media accounts. It happened that the campaign already had a professional lensman on the payroll. Merely this was condign a liability, in that she tended to take hundreds of images at each issue, and the candidate would insist on spending hours of valuable time poring over every last 1 of them. The campaign did nominally have a social media specialist — Justin McConney, son of the Trump Organization's controller — but he lacked Scavino's instinct for the base, and in any event, McConney was stationed back at Trump Tower, away from the existent action on the campaign trail. By early 2016, Scavino had become in essence both the Trump campaign's traveling lensman and its social media chieftain. And considering the self-funding candidate had no intention of spending a dime on media coverage, Scavino with his Facebook videography also became the closest matter the Trump entrada had to an in-house ad maker.
Scavino's willingness to take on other people's online grunt work made him indispensable to the campaign. Early in the primary, the candidate's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, argued to Trump that Facebook was much more powerful than his preferred platform, Twitter. "Every Facebook user is probably worth x to 12 times more than one of your Twitter followers," Kushner told him. "And wait, I call back your Facebook page is totally underutilized." The candidate responded, "Congratulations, then — you're now in accuse of my Facebook." Kushner turned around and handed over that chore to Scavino.
Even as Scavino's deployment of campaign imagery onto Facebook helped accelerate the Trump Train, it was Twitter, with its visceral impact, that remained Trump's abiding honey. "Somebody said I'grand the Ernest Hemingway of 140 characters," he crowed during an effect in South Carolina in November 2015. (The "somebody" was most probable i of his employees.) On his aeroplane or in limousines, he would dictate tweets for Scavino to postal service. Others, including Scavino, would goad Trump with their own suggestions. (Hope Hicks would supply the choicest put-downs, recalls a one-time campaign official: "She'd have absolute daggers.") Trump would give his cannonball a last read to brand sure that information technology had not been watered downward, and Scavino would hit "Tweet."
Now and again, Trump would enlist Scavino — whose followers today exceed 475,000 — to human activity as a proxy, attacking the entrada'due south enemies from his own account. At other times, Scavino took the initiative himself. Presently, the personal feed that had once been a totem of cornball folksiness included harsh attacks on Megyn Kelly, "Lyin' Ted" Cruz and other perceived antagonists. In March 2016, Scavino retweeted a conspiracy video purporting to demonstrate that Cruz was having an matter with a quondam adjutant, Amanda Carpenter. Carpenter, who is married with children, went on the air and heatedly denied whatsoever impropriety. She also condemned Scavino past name, calling his attack a "smear task."
"It was a campaign, and they fight dirty, and they didn't mind if I was collateral impairment in the procedure," Carpenter told me. "And they won. And no consequences. What Scavino did to me and what he still does to others would become whatsoever other professional fired. In Trump'southward universe, it'due south a qualification. A willingness to engage in lies and smears on behalf of Donald Trump is a sign of loyalty that Trump treasures."
"It's so great that I have Twitter now, considering I can knock the crap out of people," Donald Trump told me 1 afternoon in belatedly March 2016 at his Due south Florida country club Mar-a-Lago. "I accept my own printing printing at present!" he added with Falstaffian relish.
Withal, nothing in Trump's earliest social media forays would prefigure the towering role that Twitter somewhen played in his political branding. Trump opened his @realDonaldTrump account in March 2009, merely to ignore it for the better role of two years. Giving in to the urging of his political advisers Roger Stone and Sam Nunberg, Trump began to tweet about his hotel properties and his TV prove. Soon he offered up sundry nuggets on his importance to the Yankees ("They always win when I am there") and on how to succeed in life ("Show me someone without an ego, and I'll testify yous a loser"). Like a fading matinee idol, Trump had an embarrassing tendency to preen, particularly once his musings turned to politics, around the run-up to the 2012 ballot. "My girl Ivanka thinks I should run for president," he tweeted on Jan. 25 of that year. "Maybe I should listen." ("He'd be phenomenal!" Ivanka exclaimed in the linked Hollywood Life commodity.)
Of grade, at that point the microblogging platform played a marginal-at-best role in American political life, fifty-fifty less and so in presidential politics. Barack Obama was a reluctant pioneer in this regard. Tweets from his @POTUS business relationship would undergo a policy and legal vetting procedure, and it could sometimes take days or even weeks earlier they were finally posted. The thought of using Twitter as a political cudgel "would accept been completely confronting our values," says Macon Phillips, Obama'south starting time digital director. "I think I would have left. I think a lot of u.s.a. would have."
At the time he announced his candidacy in the summertime of 2015, Trump himself was unsure of the role Twitter would play in his campaign. His tweets and then seemed to demonstrate but the fundamental unseriousness of his presidential ambitions. Every bit the campaign wore on, nevertheless, the candidate'south online disparagements no longer suggested a man bent on cocky-immolation. Rather, they reinforced the campaign talking indicate that here, at long last, was an honest political leader who did not bother to conceal his bottom angels. His incessant howling of personal grievance only helped to prove that the aristocratic titan of Fifth Avenue, mythologized in "The Apprentice," had a tender underbelly. In baring his smallness, the billionaire New York developer managed to plummet the differences between his gold life and that of white Middle America.
Today Trump has not so much tuckered Washington's swamp as convulsed information technology with daily electroshocks of presidential id. Journalists at present routinely awaken to the sound of a notification on their smartphones, telling them that the president is already up and driving the news in 280-grapheme gonzo fusillades. A far more common spectacle today than a legislative signing ceremony is the paradigm of House Speaker Paul Ryan facing the microphones and, with a mortician's smile, trying to explain away his party leader's latest tweet: "It's what he does. We've kind of learned to live with it." (Or maybe not: Ryan fabricated it less than halfway through Trump's get-go term before announcing his retirement from Congress.) The question of whether Trump's social media outbursts plant actual news has been rendered moot by his front-page-worthy announcements on Twitter: that his secretary of Veterans Affairs has been replaced, that he considers his own attorney general "beleaguered," that "trade wars are practiced," that "DACA is dead." The Trump presidency's defining feature — its resolute aberration — is above all the handiwork of @realDonaldTrump. It therefore stands to reason that Trump's most valued aide is the ane whose job description has no precedent.
Scavino's importance to the president certainly helps explain how he has managed to survive a succession of internecine bloodlettings in the West Wing. But it's as well the example that he is well liked amid his colleagues, several of whom offered to assistance me understand his intrinsic value. Typically such efforts descended into cliché: "I've never met anyone who's as difficult-working or equally loyal." "The 1 guy who outworked me." "The president has zero concern that Dan has whatsoever interest in anything but serving him." "You never see Dan out at that place hogging the limelight." 1 senior White Firm official told me that the president trusts Scavino when information technology comes to personnel decisions. "Dan's a very practiced guess of people," he told me. When I asked if he could supply me with whatever examples of Scavino's advice-giving, the official replied coolly, "Absolutely not." But i longtime friend of Scavino'due south offered an illuminating analogy. "Golf is a sport of the least mistakes," he said. "That's how someone similar Dan might bladder to the top — by non doing anything wrong."
One of Scavino's main roles is the intendance and feeding of his dominate'south ego. He has learned how to fend off whatever negativity with a set supply of superlatives. While Hope Hicks would inform Trump about how some matter might exist playing in the mainstream media, Scavino, Hicks told me, would "tell him how things are playing with his people. That's a gauge for him that the president takes seriously." Checking in with the base is every bit piece of cake as looking at his phone. Scavino'southward quondam friend offered an example: "Dan would scroll through his Twitter feed and if Franklin Graham says something particularly complimentary, he'll say, 'Look what Franklin Graham just wrote.' Or if [CNN show host] Brian Stelter says something particularly stupid, he'll run over and say, 'Await what Fake News is doing.' "
More than anyone else in the White Business firm, the managing director of social media spends his mean solar day online, monitoring the #MAGA congregation. "Dan talks to the base more than than everyone else after the president," one senior White Firm official told me. "He's the conductor of the Trump Train, and these people know he's true blueish, and he also knows all the influencers." A yr agone, the former chief strategist Steve Bannon shared a West Wing part with Scavino. "He has his hands on the Pepes," Bannon recalls, referring to the cartoon frog that serves as mascot to the alt-right. "He knew who the players were and who were non. He'd bring me Cernovich — I didn't know who Cernovich was until Scavino told me." Bannon was referring to the alt-right blogger Mike Cernovich, who has frequently promoted debunked and scurrilous conspiracy theories.
When I asked Cernovich most his relationship with Scavino, he claimed they had none. "No, never met him, never emailed with him, never D.K.'ed with him, and I don't think he'due south always tweeted at me," Cernovich said. In fact, by Cernovich's standards, the Trump social media director was something of a lightweight. "Scavino's non an ideologue," he said disapprovingly. "I don't think he wakes upwards and says, 'Holy hell, I want to break things today — who do I go after?' Information technology's more, 'I like my job and the Trump family unit.' " Still, Cernovich best-selling that Scavino had nearly likely served as a conduit between the alt-right and Trump, if only through his eagerness to bring passionate fans to his dominate's attention.
Since arriving in the nation's capital, Scavino has kept attacking President Trump'due south opponents from his own Twitter account: Nancy Pelosi, Bill Kristol, Kathy Griffin. Last April, he went after Justin Amash, a Republican congressman from Michigan and frequent critic of Trump. Calling Amash "a big liability," Scavino's tweet urged, "#TrumpTrain, defeat him in primary." Not easily intimidated, Amash replied, "Bring it on." But what instead was brought on was an investigation by the Role of Special Counsel, which concluded that Scavino had violated the Hatch Human activity, the law that forbids engaging in political activity while acting in your capacity equally a government employee. On June 5, the O.Southward.C. disclosed that it had put Scavino on notice. Though its statement made clear that future violations could event in harsher penalisation, it neglected to say that only ane individual could mete out that punishment: the president of the United States.
The full extent of Scavino'south role in Trump'due south Twitter regimen has never been fully disclosed. White Firm officials initially maintained to me that he simply typed and posted verbatim what Trump dictated to him, while occasionally contributing anodyne tweets relating to the president's schedule. ("News conference at the White House concerning the Omnibus Spending Bill. i:00 P.1000.") Somewhat begrudgingly, one senior official did non deny that Scavino likewise sometimes corrected Trump'southward spelling errors. But the Knight Institute lawsuit had named Scavino, Hicks and Sanders considering, as communications staff members, they are probable to "propose content" for Trump'due south tweets, just as Trump's subordinates did during the entrada.
In particular, said i individual who witnessed this interactivity on the campaign trail and another who saw information technology in the White Business firm, Scavino often supplied the litany of details in Trump'due south tweets about, say, claims of Crooked Hillary'due south various malfeasances or of the F.B.I.'southward corrupt activity. "Fifty percentage of the time, Trump is ripping these out himself, and 50 pct is going to Scavino," one of them told me.
Prove of Scavino'due south active participation in Trump'south tweets emerged last autumn. On the morning of October. iv, Scavino posted to his own account one of the social media director'due south usual rants against the media: "NBC news is #FakeNews and more dishonest than even CNN. They are a disgrace to good reporting. No wonder their news ratings are fashion downward!" One minute afterwards, the identical bulletin was posted on his dominate's account as an original Trump tweet. Scavino hastily deleted his first tweet, only not before eagle-eyed users took screen shots.
None of this should be so controversial, of class. No one believes that Trump writes the speeches he delivers whatever more than they believe he wrote "The Art of the Deal." And in the stop, merely a fool would suggest that his tweets represent the essence of someone other than Donald J. Trump. All the same, my suggestion to a senior White House official that Trump might have some aid in producing his mini-masterpieces was met with heated indignation. I was insulting the president'due south capabilities. I was engaging in rank speculation. I was rewriting American history.
However, the White House official did not once categorically land that Trump was the sole author of every word of his tweets. And in the meantime, Scavino, in the way of any caddy who knows his place, continually avoided taking credit. He refused to answer even my basic question: What, exactly, did he practise?
"When I was a get-go-yr authorities student," recalled the onetime Republican National Commission chairman and Bush strategist Ken Mehlman recently, "one of the start articles we had to read was Norman Mailer's 'Superman Comes to the Supermarket,' which explained how J.F.K. was the man for the television age. Information technology'southward very possible that just as Kennedy possessed unique skills for that age, Donald Trump does for the social media historic period." With Twitter, Trump has succeeded in subverting the news media, then-called allies and the annoying constraints of human civility. Trump's frequently-repeated vow that he volition never stop tweeting may count as his about rational act as president. It may as well explain why Scavino could outlast everyone else in the White House.
He has outlasted Hope Hicks, who used to steam the president'south pants, and Keith Schiller, who — equally I one time witnessed backstage at a campaign event in Buffalo — used to help use hair product to the postmodern sculpture atop Trump's caput. Managing Trump's Twitter account, as it turns out, is an even more intimate act, something merely Scavino has ever been trusted with. "I told Dan many times during the campaign, 'One time we win, you'll have an entire team,' " Corey Lewandowski recalls. "I've seen him many times since and then, and it's still a one-man operation."
On a contempo Monday in late March, I dropped by the West Fly to have i last in-person visit with some of Scavino'southward colleagues and hopefully catch a glimpse of the social media managing director. The evening earlier, Yashar Ali of The Huffington Postal service had cleaved the news that Scavino'due south wife, Jennifer, had filed for divorce several weeks earlier. I had heard rumors of the dissever from a former White House staff fellow member who, while praising Scavino's crazed piece of work ethic and fealty to Trump, casually added, "By the way, it also destroyed his marriage." Scavino had long struggled to balance his ambitions with caring for his married woman, who suffers from chronic Lyme disease. That twenty-four hour period in the West Wing, he was nowhere to exist seen past the fourth dimension I arrived. Scavino had boarded Air Force One with Trump and flown to Manchester to capture images of the president somberly proposing the death sentence for opioid dealers.
The personal toll of being Trump's social media director may not end at Scavino'southward union. Final December, The Washington Mail reported that an executive with Vkontakte, Russia's version of Facebook, had twice emailed Scavino and Donald Trump Jr. during the presidential entrada, offering to promote Trump's candidacy on the platform. According to an email read to The Post, Scavino's response to the American intermediary, Rob Goldstone, was effusive: "Please feel free to transport me whatever you take. Thank you so much for looking out for Mr. Trump and his presidential campaign."
A calendar month after the Mail service story, Dianne Feinstein, the ranking Autonomous member of the Senate Judiciary Commission, wrote Scavino a four-folio letter. Noting media reports that Scavino is a "constant presence at Trump'southward side," Feinstein speculated that Scavino would know about the president's decision to fire the F.B.I. manager James Comey, every bit well as Russia's interference in the 2016 election. The senator therefore was writing "to request documents and to schedule an interview with you in January 2018."
Scavino retained the services of an attorney, who informed Feinstein that Trump'due south social media manager would non be responding to her requests. Without bipartisan prodding from the Judiciary Committee, and with Trump'due south backing, he was free to ignore the Senate inquiry. All the same, Scavino's tweet from November 2013 proved prescient in ways he had non expected: He would not be where he was today without @realDonaldTrump.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/16/magazine/dan-scavino-the-secretary-of-offense.html
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