In the lead-in to an interview on the publication’s new HBO documentary news series on Sunday evening, Axios’ National Political Reporter Jonathan Swan called Alabama native and former Yellowhammer Multimedia CEO Cliff Sims “one of the most interesting people you’ve never heard of.”
Sims served as special assistant to President Donald Trump and director of White House Message Strategy, but Swan said “his title was irrelevant.”
He added, “I think one thing that people don’t really understand is there are all these people that are not household names, that actually see a lot more of the president than anyone realizes.”
Sims, Swan said, was one of those people.
“The stories Cliff tells are the kinds of stories we hear when we go and have an off the record dinner or an off the record drink with a with a White House official,” Swan explained. “He’s just got the stones to say it on camera.”
During the wide-ranging interview, Sims discussed how he developed his relationship with the president while being the point-person for all of his video recordings.
“I had the opportunity to work with Trump in one of his most intimate settings, which is anytime he’s recording videos,” Sims outlined. “And so the way I could tell the progression of my relationship with the president was, he always asks in a video setting, the person that he trusts the most, what they think about what he said. And it was like ‘Hope what do you think about that?’ Or Keith Schiller would be there, ‘Keith what do you think about that?’ And at some point it was ‘Cliff, what do you think about that?’ And that’s when I realized that he at least trusted me on some level.”
Sims told Swan and Axios editor Mike Allen that Trump is always open to ideas on ways to effectively communicate his message, including through his favorite medium: Twitter.
“He’s meticulous with not just the words that he wants to use, but the punctuation, too,” Sims detailed, speaking of how Trump dictates his tweets. “So he’ll say, you know, ‘Jonathan Swan at Axios is an awful, terrible reporter, dash dash capital S capital A capital D exclamation point.’”
“There is also a process in the White House by which you can submit tweets,” he continued. “In the White House I had a difficult time writing in my own voice because I had written so much in Donald Trump’s voice. So people started bringing their policy issues to me so I could craft a Trumpian tweet, because he’s not going to put out a lame tweet. If a tweet doesn’t get any retweets, that’s a fail.”
Trump, Sims said, is “cognizant of the power that he has through” Twitter, and often watches the reaction his tweets generate in the media.
“He wants CNN to freak out,” he advised. “He gets to say, ‘Look at these lunatics out there. They’re so disconnected from middle-America.’ It gives him an opportunity to build a bond with his people because he’s like, ‘We’re in this together against these people.’ He loves watching them freak out.”
Sims also addressed the reports of staff in-fighting in the White House, pointing back to the transition period between the campaign and the administration as a time when certain “fatal flaws” were introduced.
He said there was a “built-in frustration” among many Trump loyalists from the campaign, who suddenly found themselves subordinated to formerly anti-Trump aides once inside the White House.
“It was the single most toxic working environment that I have ever experienced, by far,” Sims said.
He continued, “There was a scientific study that was done where they put two rats in water. One of the rats, after a little while, they took it out for a few seconds, then dropped it back in there. That rat was able to swim for hours longer than the other one — the other one drowned. And the reason is quite simply, hope … that he would survive. For me, interacting with the President was like getting plucked out of the water — that I would get the opportunity that I would never have again in my life probably to have conversations with the most powerful person on the planet to impact who knows what, in who knows what ways.”
Those with HBO GO access can watch the entire interview here, starting at the 18:35 mark.
Sims’ upcoming memoir about his time in the White House, titled “Team of Vipers,” is set for release January 29 and is available for pre-order now.
Sean Ross is a staff writer for Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on Twitter @sean_yhn
