by Doug Wead
Donald Trump’s father, Fred, had urged him to stay in Queens and Brooklyn, on his side of the East River, where they knew all the players and knew what to expect. “Don’t go over there,” his father warned him, pointing to Manhattan. “We don’t know those people. They play by different rules.”32 But Donald Trump could not stay in Queens. He saw the towering, shiny buildings and the glittering lights of Manhattan, and ultimately he saw even beyond them, to a whole nation in trouble.
And so, as Ivanka Trump described to me in our first interview, he crossed over the bridge.
NOTES
1. This quote was first given to me by Ivanka Trump, December 14, 2018, and confirmed by others present.
2. CBS Election Night coverage. https://archive.org/details/WTSP_20161109_000000_Campaign_2016_CBS_News_Coverage_of_Election_Night
3. CBS Election Night coverage. https://archive.org/details/WTSP_20161109_000000_Campaign_2016_CBS_News_Coverage_of_Election_Night
4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiBg7JbcYqA&t=366
5. https://www.gq.com/story/inside-donald-trumps-election-night-war-room
6. Unless otherwise indicated, all quotes from Brad Parscale in this chapter come from interviews in 2019.
7. CNN Election Night coverage.
8. CNN Election Night coverage
9. https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-trump-polls-20161109-story.html
10. Unless otherwise indicated, all quotes from Lara Trump in this chapter are taken from conversations, emails, and interviews with her in 2019.
11. http://time.com/4563501/donald-trump-election-night/
12. https://archive.org/details/WTSP_20161109_000000_Campaign_2016_CBS_News_Coverage_of_Election_Night
13. This story and the quotes, including the president’s quotes, were given to me by Brad Parscale and cross-checked with members of the Trump family.
14. This story came from a source within the campaign.
15. https://www.gq.com/story/inside-donald-trumps-election-night-war-room
16. Unless otherwise indicated, all quotes from Ivanka Trump came from conversations and interviews conducted between 2017-2019.
17. https://www.gq.com/story/inside-donald-trumps-election-night-war-room
18. Unless otherwise indicated, all quotes attributed to Eric Trump in this chapter come from interviews conducted in 2019.
19. https://www.bustle.com/articles/194235-transcript-of-john-podestas-speech-leaves-the-election-on-a-hopeful-note
20. Interview with Brad Parscale, January 12, 2019.
21. https://www.gq.com/story/inside-donald-trumps-election-night-war-room
22. http://mediamatters.org/video/2016/10/20/msnbcs-presidential-historian-calls-trump-not-accepting-results-election-absolutely-horrifying/213976
23. Hillary Rodham Clinton, What Happened (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2017), 56.
24. https://www.cnn.com/2016/11/09/politics/donald-trump-victory-speech/index.html
25. https://www.gq.com/story/inside-donald-trumps-election-night-war-room
26. https://www.gq.com/story/inside-donald-trumps-election-night-war-room
27. https://www.gq.com/story/inside-donald-trumps-election-night-war-room
28. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-26/billionaire-donors-led-by-soros-simons-favor-clinton-over-trump
29. https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-clinton-foundation-investigation-russia-20171120-story.html
30. https://www.businessinsider.com/hillary-clinton-endorsements-newspaper-editorial-board-president-2016-2016-9
31. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/what-media-bias-journalists-overwhelmingly-donated-to-hillary-clinton
32. This story was related to the author by Ivanka Trump.
9
MOVING INTO THE WHITE HOUSE
“It had been a long, bitter, divisive campaign, but now the nightmare was finally over.”
—LARA TRUMP1
One of the questions I asked the president and each member of his family was at what time on Election Night they finally realized they had won. They each had different answers. One talked about a growing realization after the win in North Carolina. Others said it was the moment when the networks called the state of Pennsylvania. Most mentioned the phone call from Hillary Clinton conceding the election. This took place in the darkness, backstage at the Hilton Hotel. At that very moment the family was poised to walk out to face the cameras and claim the prize anyway and acknowledge their supporters in the ballroom.
I was completely unprepared for the answer that Donald Trump Jr. gave me. He had experienced the resistance his father had provoked. Resistance from some in the corporate establishment, from the media, from the international banking institutions. From the global consortiums. Trying to understand the driving force behind that resistance gnawed at him.
“The ups and down were so emotionally draining,” he said. “It was happening all day long. One minute something sent you in one direction and the next minute something sent you in another. You almost felt like a caged animal that had been beaten.
“Even on Election Night, even after watching Pennsylvania with ninety-nine percent of the vote reporting, even when they called it, for me, I can tell you, I really didn’t enjoy the moment that much.
“Oddly enough, my moment of joy had come when John Podesta got on stage and said, ‘We’ll see what happens, let’s talk in the morning.’” Don Jr. laughed. “I was told afterward that it was because she [Clinton] had too much to drink, that she couldn’t get onstage. Fair or not, that’s what was being said. But I thought, ‘I finally get it. The establishment is going to play this game. They are going to try to screw us.’
“I was happier about that moment, knowing that I was beginning to understand how this worked than I was about the fact that we had won. This wasn’t personal. This was being driven by the power of the elites and their control over the country. The picture I had been seeing was coming into sharper focus. By the way, that’s how cynical you become in a race like this.
“There was a source of triumph at seeing the curtain pulled back on these sanctimonious people. To see them exposed to the public for what they really were. That night everybody could see it in the faces of many of the television personalities. They had the power. Their bosses and advertisers made the money. They didn’t really care about the country. They were panicked because their power and control were in jeopardy.”
So I asked Don Jr., “When did you finally believe you had won? That it was over, that your father was going to be president?”
“I didn’t fully enjoy the moment until weeks after the election. It was during our trip to Washington, DC, and the visit to Arlington National Cemetery. This is a ceremony that every new president participates in. It takes place the day before the inauguration. Laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
“For some reason I couldn’t let down my guard during the coverage on Election Night or throughout the excitement of the transition. It was on that drive into Arlington that the realization finally hit me that my father had won. He was the president of the United States. This was real. They weren’t going to take it away. It was truly over. My whole body just began to relax.”
Donald Trump Jr. was talking about January 19, 2017, the day before the inauguration. The whole Trump family had been flown by government planes into Washington for the event. But this was two months after the election.
Everyone deals with adversity differently. Some try to be positive and are almost superstitious about negative thoughts. Others prepare for the worst and live delightfully surprised by victories occurring all around them. Don Jr. had almost physically braced himself for defeat. It was if his muscles had hurt from the effort. It had taken days for him to finally accept that his father and namesake, Donald J. Trump, had won the presidency.
“The magnitude of what we had accomplished finally hit me.”2
Each member of the Trump family was experiencing the moment in their
own way. “It’s a beautiful building,” Eric Trump said, “the tomb of the unknown soldier, with the stairs coming down. So there we were, walking out as a family and it was just eerily quiet. I’ll never forget how quiet it was.”
DISCOVERING BLAIR HOUSE
After the wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, the Trump family was taken to Blair House, the government building just across the street from the White House. Their luggage was already in their rooms. The president-elect and his family traditionally stay at Blair House the night before the inauguration. Heads of state visiting the United States often stay there as well. The ghosts of Charles de Gaulle, Margaret Thatcher, and Boris Yeltsin filled the rooms. President Harry Truman had lived there while the crumbling White House was gutted and rebuilt. Queen Elizabeth lived there when she visited the United States.
Blair House looked like a simple street-front colonial apartment, adjacent to others on the same block. Next door was the Renwick Gallery, a branch of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. In fact, Blair House was only the entrance to a labyrinth of rooms and offices, every bit as complicated as the White House itself. Like the innocuous entrance to Number 10 Downing Street, the entrance to Blair House was just the doorway to other connected buildings that seemed to never end. One could reach the ten-story New Executive Office Building from here. And there were reportedly underground tunnel connections to the Eisenhower Office Building, the White House, and the Treasury Department.
Lara Trump was taken by surprise. “I had no idea. Yeah, I had heard of the Blair House, but I got my best explanation while we were in the motorcade on our way over there. We were told that we would be staying in this place where so many important leaders had stayed. And, of course, I am the crazy one who found a small gym with one treadmill. I couldn’t sleep, so I just went to the gym at four o’clock in morning and worked out.
“That whole inauguration experience from start to finish was just unbelievable. You know something? They can try to take that away from us but they will never, ever, completely succeed. We have those memories forever. And we are not going to give them up. It was just really amazing. It was really incredible.”3
News stories abounded about Donald Trump’s hair and what should happen if it rained on Inauguration Day. The media scrambled to cover the new fashion model, First Lady Melania Trump. She could speak six languages and she was stunning. America had not seen such a glamorous first lady since Jacqueline Kennedy. Journalists rushed to file stories. “Her makeup artist—and close confidante of 17 years—Nicole Bryl” was quoted in Stylish.4 Meanwhile Us Weekly reported on her hair: “First Lady Melania Trump chose a deep side-parted updo that she helped style with her longtime hairstylist, Mordechai Alvow.”5
Nor did the media ignore all the other Trump women. The New York Post ran a story with the headline “Why Ivanka Will Be the Most Stylish First Daughter Ever.”6
Was there competition among the Trump women? Jealousy? Each one was so striking.
“There was no jealousy,” Lara insists. “I think we all had kind of texted beforehand about the colors. We were 100 percent sure what everyone else was wearing. I will tell you when we first got to Washington, DC, I didn’t have the outfit I was planning to change into for the concert at the Lincoln Memorial. I was so upset. Nobody would even know, but all the women had changed into their beautiful dresses and matching jackets, and I was there in a pair of pants. I had a plan, I had an outfit to wear, but it didn’t work out.”
In fact, Inauguration Day itself was nearly a disaster for the Trump ladies.
“We had this company approach us in New York,” Lara remembers. “They came to your place of work or to your event or wedding and did your hair and makeup. Well, they were opening a new business in Washington, DC, and offered to help us on Inauguration Day. So we checked to make sure that was okay and we agreed. That would take a lot of the burden off of us. But there was one big problem that we hadn’t thought about. Security.
“Now that my father-in-law was president, the Secret Service was taking over. So when the team showed up early in the morning of the inauguration they couldn’t get near us. They said, ‘We’re here to do the makeup and hair styling for the Trump ladies,’ and the Secret Service said, ‘Why, sure you are. Of course you are. Glad to hear it.’ They wouldn’t let them in.
“So it is getting pretty late and we are beginning to panic. You know, these things take time. We are on a schedule. We have to appear at a church service at a little church nearby and we can’t skip it. Every president since James Madison has gone there for a service on Inauguration Day, so we are going to say, ‘Well, sorry, the Trumps couldn’t make it because we had a bad hair day!’
“So now we are calling all over the place. ‘Where are the folks who were going to help us? Where are you guys?’
“They say, ‘We are just outside on the streets held back by security. They don’t believe us. They won’t let us in.’
“So we finally get that resolved and the race was on to get ready.”
Saint John’s Episcopal Church is right across Lafayette Park, less than four hundred yards from Blair House. Some of the family said, “We can walk it.” It would have been an easy trek, but the Trump family was in what the Secret Service calls “full motorcade.” The president, the first lady, and their children and grandchildren were all trundled into limousines and driven around the block to the front door of the church.
The Reverend Robert Jeffress, the pastor of the First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas, delivered the sermon. Jeffress remembered eating Wendy’s cheeseburgers on the campaign trail with Donald Trump during a stop in Iowa. “I said that I believed you would be the next president of the United States. And if that happened, it would be because God had placed you there. As the prophet Daniel said, it is God who removes and establishes leaders.”7
“Pastor Paula White was there,” Lara Trump remembers. “Joel Osteen was there. And James Robison, who is really a great guy. They each gave short, meaningful remarks.”
Two hours later, Donald Trump, Melania, and the Trump family would stand on the inaugural stage. Donald J. Trump would be sworn in as the forty-fifth president of the United States. After his inaugural address and a Capitol luncheon, at which Trump would ask the audience to give Hillary Clinton a standing ovation, the Trump family would parade down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House.
FIRST TIME IN THE WHITE HOUSE
I was astonished to learn that most of the Trump children had never visited the White House before Inauguration Day. Not ever. Not for a seminar, a photo op, an East Room briefing, or a Rose Garden ceremony. Not even as a tourist waiting in line to walk through the State Floor. They had never heard the guide say, “And this is the East Room, where First Lady Abigail Adams actually hung up her laundry to dry when it was raining outside.”
Donald Trump Jr. had visited Washington, DC, as a teenager. “I came down as part of some school event,” he said. “I was just a kid. We toured Washington, all the monuments, and we actually passed by the White House. Everybody took a lot of pictures. But I never set foot on the White House grounds.”
“Really?” I said. “In all of these years you never even had the tourist visit of the State Floor?”
“Never,” he said. “Not until the day of the inauguration. It’s truly incredible, to just pop into the Lincoln Bedroom. Just the history of everything that’s there. It’s truly incredible.”
It was a new experience for Tiffany Trump, the president’s fourth child, as well. When I asked her about previous visits to Washington, I got this surprise answer. “I had only been to Washington, DC, for a few hours for a college tour in high school,” she said. “Actually, the first time I saw the White House was the same night that we moved in, the night of the inauguration.”8
I asked Lara Trump what it was like, actually moving into the White House and spending the night.
“Oh my God.” She laughed about it. “Well, it was first of all complet
ely surreal. To have been told continuously by everyone that there was no chance that Donald Trump would ever end up in the White House. To have never dreamed in your entire life that you would ever set foot in the White House. I mean, I never thought I would ever be in there under any circumstances at all. And then to be there on Inauguration Day? And as a family having fought so hard and weathered such a storm. Think of what we had to deal with through that whole campaign and then to be there. It was just so incredibly surreal.”
“You had never visited, even as a tourist? A seminar, a briefing, a reception?” I asked.
“No, and really, it’s a process to get into a White House tour. You have to apply online, and sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn’t.”
“But surely, as a tourist, at some point in your life you had walked by the White House. You had stopped and taken pictures.”
“Actually, Eric and I were in Washington, DC, the year before the election. If you can believe this, we went for the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in 2015. So yeah, on that trip we walked by the White House for the first time and took a picture in front. We started to take a selfie and I remember some guy saying, ‘Do you want me to take a picture for you?’
“So I gave him my phone. He suddenly realized who Eric was and he said, ‘Your dad is going to be in there next year.’ Friendly people sometimes say that sort of thing to make you feel good. This was so early, before the primaries or anything. But never did I imagine we would be there and we would be there as a family.”
Eric had lived in Washington, DC. “It’s funny, I went to school at Georgetown. So I knew every square inch of Washington, and yet I’d never been to the White House. Truthfully, when you’re in college, you probably don’t care that much about it, you know?
“I had a lot of mutual friends with Jenna Bush. She lived two blocks away from me, and this was at a time when it was early in her father’s presidency. It’s not that I probably couldn’t have visited the White House for a tour or gotten into a briefing or something. I just didn’t really think twice about it. I mean, who knew what was going to happen?”