American Carnage

by Tim Alberta

  But Cruz wouldn’t go away. For several weeks in April, he put a full-court press on Pence: phone calls, text messages, emails from mutual friends. He finally secured a lengthy private meeting, and later, a formal invite to the Indianapolis GOP spring dinner, where Cruz gave a speech and sat at the governor’s table. The senator implored Pence to do what was right, not just for his candidacy but for the conservative movement.

  The governor began to wear down. For all his political ambition and keen sense of self-preservation, Pence was a true believer. All the way back to his earliest days as a think tank president and talk radio host, Pence had approached politics with a zealot’s sincerity. In 1999 he wrote an opinion piece trashing the Disney film Mulan, the story of a Japanese girl who disguises herself as a man to join the military. “I suspect that some mischievous liberal at Disney assumes that Mulan’s story will cause a quiet change in the next generation’s attitude about women in combat and they just might be right,” Pence warned.10

  With his party’s nomination potentially hanging in the balance, and a like-minded conservative pleading for support to stop someone they both viewed as unfit for the office of president, Pence thrilled Cruz by informing him of his endorsement. There was one condition: Pence said he would not, could not, disparage Trump the way Walker had in Wisconsin. He would endorse Cruz but say nothing negative about Trump.

  As the final arrangements were made for Pence’s endorsement, Cruz offered another surprise to the voters of Indiana. On April 27, six days before the state’s primary, Cruz introduced Carly Fiorina, the onetime Hewlett-Packard CEO and a former rival in the Republican race, as his running mate.

  Cruz was desperate for a shift in momentum. One day earlier, Trump had swept him in the April 26 primaries in Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island, with Cruz failing to break 25 percent in any of the contests. Fiorina made perfect sense as a vice-presidential pick: She had endorsed him sometime ago and proved herself to be an effective surrogate, especially when it came to connecting with conservative women who liked Cruz’s policies but found him personally unpleasant.

  The National Enquirer was not impressed. “Carly Fiorina Plastic Surgery—Fake Face of Ambition,” its headline screamed.

  Two days after the Fiorina announcement, on April 29, Pence announced his support for Cruz—in a fashion even more lukewarm than anyone in Cruz’s camp had anticipated.

  “I particularly want to commend Donald Trump, who I think has given voice to the frustration of millions of working Americans with a lack of progress in Washington, DC,” the governor said on a local radio program. “And I’m also particularly grateful that Donald Trump has taken a strong stance for Hoosier jobs when we saw jobs in the Carrier company abruptly announce leaving Indiana not for another state but for Mexico.”

  Only then did Pence transition to his endorsement. “I’m not against anybody, but I will be voting for Ted Cruz in the upcoming Republican primary,” he said.11

  Pence later noted his admiration for John Kasich as well, and encouraged Indiana voters to make up their own minds.

  Cruz had Fiorina and Pence in his corner; Trump had Bobby Knight. The legendary University of Indiana men’s basketball coach, more famous for his chair-chucking antics than for his 763 career wins on the Hoosier bench, campaigned with Trump around the state in the days before the primary.12 “That son of a bitch can play for me!” Knight cried at one campaign event.

  Cruz, for his part, tried to reenact a scene from the film Hoosiers, staging a rally inside a local gym and measuring the ten feet between the floor and the bucket. He called it a “basketball ring,” a jarring malapropism in the hoops-mad state that did little to quell talk of his weirdness.

  As they scratched their heads over Pence’s tepid show of support, Cruz’s staff discovered that the governor was of little use anyway. Their polling revealed that Pence was more unpopular than originally thought. Only in two areas of the state were the governor’s numbers right side up among Republicans. Having once envisioned a four-day sprint across the state with Pence in tow, Cruz’s team now worried that it might do more harm than good. Ultimately, the governor did not join Cruz on the stump until May 2, one day prior to the primary. Meanwhile, Trump missed no opportunity to mock Pence’s endorsement, calling it “a very weak one” that came in response to pressure from big donors.

  “I think what he said about me was nicer than what he said about Cruz,” Trump said the day before the primary.13 “All the pundits said, ‘You know what, I think that was maybe the weakest endorsement in the history of endorsements.’ In the end, they had to re-run the tape just to find out who he was endorsing.”

  A game-changer in the Republican primary Mike Pence was not.

  CRUZ KNEW THE END WAS NEAR. ON SATURDAY, APRIL 30, AS HIS WIFE campaigned in Indiana on his behalf, he flew to California for the state’s Republican convention. With its June 7 primary marking the grand finale of the GOP primary schedule, and a whopping 172 delegates at stake, California had become an object of obsession inside the party. Trump led Cruz by more than 400 delegates heading into Indiana, but the question remained whether he could reach the “magic number” of 1,237 needed to clinch the nomination.

  Cruz had long taken a defiant stance, insisting to his top aides and biggest donors—and to himself—that he would remain in the race all the way through California. Very recently, however, he had begun to reconsider. He was only four years into his national political career; at forty-five years old, his future in the Republican Party was limitless. While Cruz was painstakingly close to the biggest prize in party politics, Trump’s lead appeared increasingly insurmountable. And for as much as he had come to despise the GOP front-runner, Cruz had also come to recognize the transcendent connection Trump had with the party’s base. Would it be worth making so many enemies, and tarnishing his strong second-place showing, in the pursuit of a victory that seemed unattainable?

  Complicating this question was the continued presence of John Kasich. The Ohio governor had won exactly one nominating contest—in Ohio—yet remained an active candidate. He had no money and no campaign infrastructure across the country, but the media coverage of his centrist messaging was effective enough to peel off chunks of delegates in any number states. If the nominating fight was going to result in a brokered convention, every single delegate would count. And if Cruz was going to pursue the long-shot strategy of winning under such a scenario, he needed Kasich out of the race.

  In the bowels of a Hyatt Regency near the San Francisco airport, not far from where the state’s GOP convention was unfolding, the Texas senator stepped into a top-secret meeting with the Ohio governor.

  “We can’t beat Trump two on one,” Cruz told Kasich. “One of us has to drop out. That’s the only chance we have for a Republican to win the nomination.”

  “Do what you need to do, Ted,” Kasich replied. “But you need to understand under no circumstances am I getting out of this race. I’m going all the way to the convention in Ohio. Nothing can change that.”

  Cruz frowned. “John, do you realize the consequences of that? You are making it certain that Donald Trump will be the nominee.”

  “Ted,” he replied, “I am not leaving this race.”

  Dismayed, Cruz flew back to Indiana and informed his senior staff that preparations should be made for his withdrawal from the primary. He had employees all over the country, most especially at the headquarters in Houston, who had never been out on stump with him. He and his campaign manager, Jeff Roe, wanted them flown to Indiana on Tuesday. It would be their last chance to feel the heat of the campaign trail.

  Cruz was nursing open wounds as the final hours of his campaign wound down. Naturally, Trump found a way to fill them with salt and lemon juice.

  “His father was with Lee Harvey Oswald prior to Oswald’s, you know, being shot. I mean, the whole thing is ridiculous,” Trump said about Cruz’s father, Rafael, during a Fox News interview on the morning of the India
na primary.14 “What was he doing with Lee Harvey Oswald shortly before the death? Before the shooting? It’s horrible.”

  Trump’s remark was in reference to a National Enquirer “World Exclusive!” published on April 20 that implicated Rafael Cruz in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Shockingly, it could not be confirmed by other news organizations or corroborated by law enforcement sources.

  Cruz had tried to discover a peace about his pending departure from the campaign. But Trump’s provocation triggered something he had buried deep inside: a gush of pure, unrestrained hatred for the man Republicans were choosing as their standard-bearer.

  “I’m going to do something I haven’t done for the entire campaign. . . . I’m going to tell you what I really think of Donald Trump,” Cruz told reporters shortly after Trump’s Fox News appearance.15 “This man is a pathological liar. He doesn’t know the difference between truth and lies. He lies practically every word that comes out of his mouth, and in a pattern that I think is straight out of a psychology textbook, his response is to accuse everybody else of lying. The man cannot tell the truth, but he combines it with being a narcissist—a narcissist at a level I don’t think this country’s ever seen. Donald Trump is such a narcissist that Barack Obama looks at him and goes, ‘Dude, what’s your problem?’”

  Calling his archnemesis “a serial philanderer” who is “utterly amoral,” Cruz concluded, “Donald is a bully . . . Bullies come from a deep, yawning cavern of insecurity. There is a reason Donald builds giant buildings and puts his name on them everywhere he goes.”

  Trump’s response was vintage: “Today’s ridiculous outburst only proves what I have been saying for a long time, that Ted Cruz does not have the temperament to be president of the United States.”

  Hours later, Trump trounced Cruz in the Indiana primary, winning by 16 points and capturing all of the state’s 57 delegates.

  Cruz promptly quit the race. “From the beginning I’ve said that I would continue on as long as there was a viable path to victory,” he said, his wife, Heidi, standing by his side. “Tonight, I’m sorry to say, it appears that path has been foreclosed.”

  The next morning, Kasich headed for the Columbus airport. He had back-to-back fund-raisers scheduled in Washington. Sitting on the runway, however, he experienced an abrupt change of heart. “Screw it,” he told his traveling companions. He wanted to drop out of the race, too.

  When Cruz learned of Kasich’s decision, the color went out of his face. He looked gravely ill for the day’s remainder. Two friends who were with the senator worried for his health.

  Reflecting on the campaign in its final hours, Cruz believed he had been done in by two incidents he would give anything to have back: the perceived cheating against Carson in Iowa and Rubio’s refusal to form a ticket in early March. Now there was a third: Kasich’s bluff in California. The trilogy of regrets would haunt Cruz in the months, and years, to come.

  As Kasich walked off his plane in Columbus, and Cruz rued the hand of providence back home in Houston, their opponent celebrated with friends and family in New York City.

  Reince Priebus called to offer congratulations. Donald J. Trump would be the Republican Party’s nominee for president in 2016.

  Chapter Fourteen

  May 2016

  “Now that you’ve gone this far, there’s no going back.”

  HUNDREDS OF PROTESTERS, REPORTERS, AND UNAFFILIATED GAWKERS swarmed outside the offices of the Republican National Committee on First Street Southeast, a few short blocks from the Capitol. The circus had come to town. As Donald Trump’s entourage pulled up, sneaking him into a side entrance of the building, the gawkers gawked. The reporters shouted questions. And the protesters hoisted signs: “R.I.P. G.O.P.”

  Inside the party headquarters, Paul Ryan stewed. This wasn’t what he had signed up for. Trump had looked increasingly viable when the new Speaker took over for John Boehner the previous October, but Ryan never, ever, took seriously the prospect of the reality TV star winning his party’s nomination. Everything Ryan knew about politics told him that it couldn’t happen. Nervous nonetheless, he checked in often with his old pal from Wisconsin, Reince Priebus, to make sure. Priebus’s answer was steady throughout the summer and fall: “Not gonna happen.” Yet, as the calendar turned to 2016, the chairman’s certitude softened. When they talked just before Christmas, Priebus broke the news. Trump, he told Ryan, might just win the nomination after all.

  This sent the Speaker into a panic. Having been on the GOP ticket four years prior, having seen the devastation wreaked by Mitt Romney’s insularity, Ryan had returned to Congress a changed man. Everything he had done, including accepting the promotion to Speaker, had been in service of softening the GOP’s brand to reach a broader swath of a diversifying nation. This would allow Republicans to win elections and subsequently pass meaningful policy reforms.

  Trump was dashing those dreams. Ryan had to remain neutral in the race; as Speaker, he would be chairing the party’s convention later that summer. But as Trump’s momentum built, so, too, did Ryan’s naysaying. He denounced Trump’s proposed Muslim ban, saying it’s “not what this party stands for, and more importantly, it’s not what this country stands for.”1 He slammed him for his strange hesitation in disavowing David Duke and the KKK. He blasted him for suggesting there would be “riots” in Cleveland if he were denied the nomination.2

  As Ryan worked himself into a lather, whispering to Republican allies about Trump’s instability and immorality, the GOP front-runner was busy steamrolling the competition. By late April, Trump was already turning his attention to Hillary Clinton. “I think the only card she has is the woman’s card. She has nothing else going. Frankly, if Hillary Clinton were a man, I don’t think she would get 5 percent of the vote,” Trump said. “The beautiful thing is, women don’t like her.”3

  Ryan’s warnings about Trump—that he was exploiting voters’ fears; that he was using “identity politics” to turn working-class whites against brown and black Americans; that he was ethically bankrupt and dangerously divisive—were shared by his peers in the governing class. But the Republican primary voters felt differently. They had elevated the brash political neophyte over a primary field that many party elders felt was their deepest, strongest, and most diverse in at least a century.

  The Speaker was not ready to follow the voters’ lead.

  “I’m not there right now,” Ryan told CNN on May 5, two days after Trump became the GOP’s de facto nominee. “I think what is required is that we unify this party. And I think the bulk of the burden on unifying the party will have to come from our presumptive nominee.”

  Trump responded in a statement that read, “I am not ready to support Speaker Ryan’s agenda.” Trump also suggested that Ryan ought not to serve as the convention’s chairman.

  Ryan, in turn, offered to step down if Trump so requested. The Speaker’s performance was that of a political Hamlet, pondering the existential ramifications of subjugating himself to the evil new king.

  It was against this backdrop, on May 12, that Trump arrived at RNC headquarters. On the itinerary was a roundtable discussion with all the GOP congressional leaders. But first, privately, Trump would meet with Ryan and Priebus.

  The party chairman was desperate to broker a truce. Sitting them down in his office, Priebus tried to clear the air, talking of “party unity” that could only come from the two men setting aside their differences. Trump and Ryan, like a pair of high-schoolers called into the principal’s office after fisticuffs, listened silently, recalcitrance written across their faces. When Priebus finished, Ryan told Trump he wanted to show him something. It was a PowerPoint presentation. The country was drowning in red ink, Ryan explained, and could be saved from a debt tsunami only by a reforming of the tax code and a restructuring of Social Security and Medicaid. Flashing the first slide onto a monitor, Ryan prefaced his remarks by clarifying the basic distinction between mandatory spending and discretionary spending.


  After Ryan popped the second slide onto the monitor, Trump interrupted him. “Okay, Paul, I get the point,” he said. “What’s next?”

  Ryan was astonished. He shot a look at Priebus. The party chairman avoided eye contact.

  “The meeting was great,” Priebus tweeted a short while later, after Trump convened with the larger group of congressional officials. “It was a very positive step toward party unity.”

  The Speaker played along. He told reporters that Trump had been “warm and genuine” in their interactions. But Ryan, the last holdout among the GOP’s elected leadership, remained cold to the idea of endorsing the party’s presumptive nominee. Indeed, he still couldn’t get his head around the fact that Trump was the party’s presumptive nominee. With all that baggage, after all those years of all those controversies, how had no opposition research surfaced to sink his candidacy? And what would happen if it finally did, just in time for the general election?

  TRUMP DIDN’T LIKE RYAN. HE FOUND THE SPEAKER DULL AND SUPERCILIOUS, “a fucking Boy Scout,” as he told friends after the meeting. But the party’s new standard-bearer was not averse to being schooled by the GOP establishment. Trump did not suffer from a lack of teachability; he simply preferred to dictate the flow of information, rather than be dictated to. Lengthy briefings and conference calls were never a staple of his executive style. He favored an aggressive, inquisitive approach, learning about issues, and about people, with rapid-fire questioning, consuming what he needed from the answers and discarding the rest.

  After eliminating his final competitors in early May, Trump knew that he needed a crash course on what lay ahead. This was how he came to sit down with Karl Rove.