The President I Met in the Oval Office

A white door opened across the Oval Office and President Donald J. Trump stopped in the doorway backlit by windows on a bright summer day. He tapped his fists on his thighs as he looked at the people waiting for him in the white room with the golden drapes and the pantheon of paintings of American history’s iconic leaders—Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin Franklin, Andrew Jackson … .

President Trump then strode into the Oval Office, which before he entered felt like an empty stage. But now, with him inside, the historic room seemed to expand, as if the gilded walls were literally flying away on the caliber of his charisma and the aura of the highest elected office.

He stopped behind his ornate Oval Office desk and became a showman for a moment for photos, but he soon settled himself into his chair behind an intricately carved desk he made look small, and shooed the cameras out with a wave of his hand. The room grew church quiet.

President Trump then leaned on his elbows on a desk blotter of the Declaration of Independence, and tightened his eyes into a concentrated squint directed across the Oval Office at me.

I had sat down in a Sheraton-style chair placed a dozen feet from his desk. The White House press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, took a chair on my left.

In this polite moment, a Secret Service agent stopped in a doorway on my far left. He was big and in the characteristic dark suit agents wear and he was asking the president with his hands and a slight lean in of his body if the president wanted him to stay or go.

President Trump smiled and waved at him with his right hand as he said, “You can go relax. It’s okay. If he does anything, I can handle him.”

As the Secret Service agent grinned and closed the door, I said, “Mr. President, I think you could take me.”

President Trump nodded and the corners of his mouth came up, just a little, before he said, “Let’s get started.”

I briefly thought of the media members who were then just a few doors away in the Press Room. As I waited for this interview in the Press Room, I met various journalists—people that anyone who watches the news might recognize—and so experienced their personal animosity for President Trump. They were not impartial or even interested in the battle of ideas over policies and world events. They weren’t even all that clever about it. They were like snarky school kids who hate their teacher.

Revealingly, as I waited for the results of a COVID test before meeting the president (all of this occurred in 2020), I also saw a team of two snipers pass by with their rifles slung in soft tactical cases on their backs. The shift they replaced on the White House roof walked out along a path outside the Press Room a few minutes later. The reality that these men in black, with their rifles, are necessary didn’t seem to penetrate these media members’ insulated perspectives. Though they’d passed through layers of Capitol Hill Police and Secret Service to get into the White House, they couldn’t make the obvious leap that, on a much smaller scale, normal, everyday people also must hope for the best but prepare for the remote possibility that someday they might meet the worst—and they can do this, at least in most of America, thanks to our Second Amendment-protected rights.

The president and I spoke for 20 minutes—my allotted time—and then I thanked him for his time and candor. This surprised McEnany, who is now a FOX News host, and she said, “No one just takes the time we’ve given them. They all try for more.”

I laughed and said, “He answered my questions.”

There was a short moment before I left the Oval Office with the president. He called me over as he stood beside his desk. He was very human and spoke easily and even softly to me about his sons and other things. When I spoke, he listened completely. He is not the caricature many of the members of the media in that Press Room pretend him to be. I found him to be a dynamic, thoughtful man with mind always looking for what’s really happening and with eyes seeing what’s before him. There is much more to say about Trump, but he is not a simple man; he is large, he does contain multitudes, to paraphrase the great American poet and sage Walt Whitman.

I wonder now, if he’d been president in a more polite age, would more Americans meet this man I spent 20 minutes with. In other words, how much of his trolling and more is a reaction to how he has been treated? I don’t know if he could have won in a more polite age—but then, America has gone through many heated periods where political rhetoric gets hot and the media becomes hyper-partisan—but I did leave the Oval Office with the impression that this man, despite all his flaws, is an can do many great things within the confines of our constitutional system.