President Trump spent the final days of August dutifully performing his job. He tended to the massive recovery from Hurricane Harvey. He hit the road to sell his tax-cut plan. And he convened policy meetings on the federal budget and the North Korean nuclear threat.
Behind the scenes during a summer of crisis, however, Trump appears to pine for the days when the Oval Office was a bustling hub of visitors and gossip, over which he presided as impresario. He fumes that he does not get the credit he thinks he deserves from the media or the allegiance from fellow Republican leaders he says he is owed. He boasts about his presidency in superlatives, but confidants privately fret about his suddenly dark moods.
And some of Trumps friends fear that the short-tempered president is on an inevitable collision course with White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly.
Trump chafes at some of the retired Marine Corps generals moves to restrict access to him since he took the job almost a month ago, said several people close to the president. They run counter to Trumps love of spontaneity and brashness, prompting some Trump loyalists to derisively dub Kelly the church lady because they consider him strict and morally superior.
Hes having a very hard time, one friend who spoke with Trump this week said of the president. He doesnt like the way the medias handling him. He doesnt like how Kellys handling him. Hes turning on people that are very close to him.
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But Trump sometimes defies and even resents the new structure. He has been especially sensitive to the way Kellys rigid structure is portrayed in the media and strives to disabuse people of the notion that he is being managed. The president continues to call business friends and outside advisers, including former chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon, from his personal phone when Kelly is not around, said people with knowledge of the calls.
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On Tillerson, Trump has come to see his top diplomats approach to world affairs as totally establishment, in the words of one Trump associate. Several people close to Trump said they would be surprised if Tillerson stays in his post past his one-year mark in January. They hinted that his departure may come far sooner, with one describing it as imminent.
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Trump was especially upset that Cohn went public with his complaints about the presidents handling of Charlottesville, even after Trump listened to Cohn vent during a private meeting on Aug. 18 in Bedminster, N.J.
The president has been quietly fuming about Cohn for the past week but has resisted dismissing him in part because he has been the face, along with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, of the administrations tax-cut strategy.
