The Swamp: Olivia Nuzzi

Trump’s Rolodex His phone friends may be more important than his staff. What’s that about?

SHORTLY AFTER NEWS broke this month that Bill Shine would resign as the White House communications director and deputy chief of staff, a person knowledgeable about his decision told me the former Fox News exec had come to understand the counter-intuitive dynamic that defines many of Donald Trump’s relationships: Proximity can be meaningless, as those who have his ear are often out of his sight. “When you talk to him at night, you’re gonna have more impact than sitting in a room with six people,” the person said, referencing the president’s after-dark practice of calling and fielding calls from a vast network of informal advisers.

Trump abides by what I call the “Groucho Marx Law of Fraternization,” meaning anyone choosing to be near him is suspect, while everyone else gets points simply for existing elsewhere. “He always kind of wants what he doesn’t completely have,” the New York Times’ Maggie Haberman once said. “You are never more valuable to Donald Trump than when you’re walking away from him.”