How 'chief enabler' Mark Meadows spent months 'living and breathing to serve Trump'

Although former President Donald Trump is reportedly upset with Mark Meadows over parts of his new book “The Chief’s Chief,” the former White House Chief of Staff and Republican ex-congressman still conducts himself like a Trump loyalist. The U.S. House of Representatives has voted to recommended contempt of Congress charges against Meadows for being uncooperative with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s select committee on the January 6 insurrection. Meadows was certainly a Trump enabler during his months in the Trump Administration, and that enabling is the focus of an article written by Washington Post reporters Ashley Parker, Josh Dawsey and Jacqueline Alemany and published on December 15.

“Now, his proximity as Trump’s former gatekeeper and top aide has thrust Meadows into legal jeopardy — even as the revelations in the texts and his new book also threaten his standing with Trump,” the Post reporters explain. “Meadows, in recent weeks, has veered between steps aimed at bolstering his former boss and actions that, intentionally or not, have undermined him. His new book treats the former president as a hero but also angered Trump by revealing that he was much sicker from COVID-19 than previously known and that his first positive coronavirus test was kept hidden. And Meadows has now stopped cooperating with the January 6 committee after first supplying thousands of pages of damning material, leading to a House vote this week holding him in contempt of Congress.”

In their article, Parker, Dawsey and Alemany describe some of the ways in which Meadows was a major Trump “enabler” in the White House.

“The panel’s months-long investigation has revealed the myriad ways in which Meadows is inextricably bound to the January 6 attack, serving less as chief of staff than chief enabler to a president who was desperate to hold onto power,” the reporters note. “He joined a January 2 call now under investigation in which Trump pressed Georgia’s secretary of state to ‘find’ enough votes to defeat Joe Biden. He repeatedly passed on conspiracy theories and falsehoods to top (Trump) Administration officials, encouraging them to overturn the election. And he participated in discussions about the January 6 rally that turned violent, saying the National Guard would be present to protect ‘pro-Trump people.’”

The Post discussed Meadows’ time in the Trump Administration with Chris Whipple, author of the book “The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency.” According to Whipple, Meadows was willing to go to dangerous extremes in service of Dear Leader.

Whipple told the Post, “He didn’t just hold Trump’s coat while he led an insurrection or play feckless consigliere on a call with the Georgia secretary of state — he was deeply involved in efforts to overturn democracy…. It really ought to be ‘The Anti Chief’ or ‘The Un-Chief,’ because the chief of staff is, above all else, supposed to tell the president hard truths, and Meadows has just raised sycophancy to an art form.”

The Post also spoke to Stephanie Grisham, who served as White House Press Secretary in the Trump Administration after Sarah Huckabee Sanders and before Kayleigh McEnany. Grisham stressed that when Meadows was in the White House, rigid obedience to Trump was expected.

Grisham told the Post, “You had all these people around him at that point that if Meadows was going to be the one to disagree, it was going to be four-to-one, and he had watched everyone who disagreed with Trump too much just get thrown out. That was the culture we always dealt with, and at that point, I think rather than doing the right thing, he was doing anything he could to survive.”

Michael Pillsbury, a former Trump adviser on foreign policy, described Meadows as totally obsequious to Trump.

Pillsbury told the Post, “He was trying to please the president. He was living and breathing to serve Trump.”