"LAW & ORDER" (profanity alert):

Trump had staked nearly his entire campaign in 2016 around a law-and-order image, and now groaned that the criminal justice reform that Kushner had persuaded him to support made him look weak and--even worse--hadn't earned him any goodwill among Black voters.

"I've done all this stuff for the Blacks--it's always Jared telling me to do this," Trump said to one confidante on Father's Day. "And they all f------ hate me, and none of them are going to vote for me."

The weekend after Father's Day, Trump canceled a trip to Bedminster at the last minute--after Kushner had already left for the New Jersey golf club--and instead scheduled a round of political meetings at the White House without him.

A month after the murder of Floyd, Trump was dumping on his son-in-law, and he was also abandoning the chance to improve his relationship with Black leaders and Black voters during a particularly tumultuous moment in U.S. race relations and the presidential campaign. The story of this month, from the murder of Floyd to Trump's assertion that his outreach to Black voters wasn't working, is one of missed opportunities and bungled messaging, even in the eyes of some of Trump's closest advisers, who described their firsthand accounts with me during the past year. Many of the sources spoke to me on the condition of deep background, an agreement that meant I could share their stories without direct attribution.

Trump had long struggled with addressing the nation's racial issues, and his senior staff hadn't included a single Black staffer since he'd fired Omarosa Manigault Newman--a former contestant on his reality television show--at the end of 2017. In August 2018, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway had been asked on NBC's Meet the Press to name the top Black official in the Trump White House and could only come up with his first name: Ja'Ron.

But Ja'Ron Smith was two pay grades below the top ranks. After Conway's interview, Smith asked for a promotion to formalize his role as the West Wing's senior-most Black official and close the $50,000 salary gap. Kushner agreed but then put him off for the next two years.

Still, Smith remained in the White House, where he continued to work on Kushner's criminal justice issues and played a crucial role in outreach to Black community leaders. In June 2020, Smith was writing a proposal for Trump to make Juneteenth a federal holiday. But the outcry over Trump's rally on the day that commemorated the end of slavery convinced Smith to shelve the plan.

Trump hadn't thought to ask his seniormost Black official about holding a rally on Juneteenth.

Trump's first test at addressing the country's racial tensions came in the summer of 2017. On a Saturday in August, 32-year-old Heather Heyer was killed, and 19 others injured, when a 22-old neo-Nazi drove his souped-up 2010 Dodge Challenger at about 30 miles per hour into a crowd in Charlottesville, Virginia. Heyer, who was white, and the others were protesting a white supremacist rally organized to oppose the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee, a Virginian who commanded the Confederate States Army during the Civil War. Trump had been golfing at his Bedminster club that morning. It had been about two hours since Heyer's death, and Trump said he wanted to "put out a comment as to what's going on in Charlottesville."

"We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence on many sides--on many sides," Trump said.

The White House tried in vain to focus cable networks and newspaper reporters on the first words of his statement instead of the final phrase--"on many sides"--that he'd ad-libbed and then repeated. But the obvious question they couldn't answer was how the president could put any blame on the peaceful counter-protesters. His remarks seemed to justify the white supremacist violence, and Trump's silence over the next 24 hours unnerved even those around him.

Back at Trump Tower in New York two days later, Trump had a news conference scheduled to discuss the nation's infrastructure. Responding to questions about Charlottesville, he again blamed the counterprotesters.

"You had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides," Trump said.

The next day, Stephen Schwarzman, a longtime friend of Trump's and chief executive of Blackstone Group, called the president and told him he had disbanded the White House Strategic and Policy Forum, a coalition of businesses chaired by Schwarzman that Trump had convened in February 2017 to advise him on economic issues. There weren't enough executives left who would stand by Trump after his repeated failures to adequately address Charlottesville, Schwarzman said. Trump hung up and beat his friend to the punch by quickly tweeting that he was shutting down the panel.

Gary Cohn, the president's top economic adviser--and a registered Democrat--was even more despondent. Raised Jewish on the East Side of Cleveland and a longtime New York resident, he stood next to Trump for the infrastructure news conference and grew increasingly alarmed and uncomfortable. Later, in a private meeting inside the Oval Office, Cohn unloaded on the president.

Cohn told Trump that his lack of clarity had been harmful to the country and that he'd put an incredible amount of pressure on people working in the White House. He told Trump that he might have to quit. No one backed Cohn up. Others in the room, including Pence, remained quiet.

Cohn returned to his office after the meeting broke up. Following a few minutes behind, Pence climbed the flight of stairs and appeared at the threshold of Cohn's door.

"I'm proud of you," Pence told him, safely out of earshot of the president.

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