As chief of staff, Meadows enables a rogue president

The first voice on the now infamous recording of President Trump badgering Georgia elections officials to reverse Georgia’s presidential vote isn’t the voice of the president. It’s the voice of former North Carolina congressman and now White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows: “OK. Alright. Mr. President, everyone is on the line.”

It’s fitting that Meadows opens this attempt to undermine democracy that may have broken the law. As outrageous as the president’s behavior has been on this and so much else, the fault lies also with his enablers, be they supine Republicans in Congress or sycophants in the White House.

Meadows has been both, and he now richly deserves to have his complicity made clear. The chief of staff doesn’t say much in the hour-long call, which included the president, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, two other Georgia officials and lawyers for Trump. But Meadows’ reticence is the point.

Chris Whipple, author of “The Gatekeepers,” a 2017 history of White House chiefs of staff, told the Editorial Board, “The most important duty of a White House chief of staff is to tell the president hard truths. Instead, Meadows has enabled Trump’s worst, delusional, anti-democratic instincts.”

On a recording of the call obtained by The Washington Post, Trump rambles on about dead people voting, “300,000 fake ballots” and a slew of other nonsense he has absorbed from conspiracy theorists and social media. Meadows, however, provides no check on the president’s baseless claims. At one point Meadows tells the Georgia officials there’s still time to find reasons why a certified vote result should be changed. He says, “What I’m hopeful for is there some way that we can, we can find some kind of agreement to look at this a little bit more fully?”

Trump, who lost Georgia by 11,779 votes, later makes the point bluntly: “So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes.”

As political careers go, Meadows’ hasn’t been long, but it has been deeply damaging. A former real estate developer, Meadows rode the Tea Party wave in 2012 to become a four-term Republican congressman from North Carolina’s 11th District. In Congress, his loyalty to Trump made him such a confidant of the president that he was known as the “Trump whisperer.” In March 2020, he parlayed that access and trust into becoming White House chief of staff.

The New York Times reported that it was Meadows who persuaded Trump last summer not to issue a national mask mandate. Trump’s pollster said a majority of Trump supporters approved of wearing a mask and, according the Times, Trump’s top adviser, his son-in-law Jared Kushner, urged him to wear a mask and encourage all Americans to do so. Meadows, however, opposed Trump trying to require masks. He warned: “The base will revolt.” Trump agreed. How many lives have been lost as a result?

Meadows also helped block prompt approval of a second wave of coronavirus economic relief. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin had success getting bipartisan support for the first package, the CARES Act, but once Meadows joined the negotiating team, negotiations bogged down. How much economic pain could have been avoided had Meadows been more positive and flexible?

With the Georgia episode, Meadows’ role in enabling a divisive and destructive president is clear. But responsibility also rests on North Carolina’s political system.

Prior to Meadows, the 11th District in western North Carolina was represented by Heath Schuler, a conservative Democrat. But after the Republican state lawmakers aggressively gerrymandered the state’s congressional districts, Schuler decided not to seek reelection.

The deep red 11th District favors ideologues, or at least those willing to pander to “the base.” That’s what North Carolina got in Mark Meadows. And that’s what the nation has endured from the Trump whisperer who guided the president as he bungled the response to the pandemic and threatened the democratic process.

This story was originally published January 5, 2021 at 4:00 AM with the headline "As chief of staff, Meadows enables a rogue president."