American Carnage

by Tim Alberta

  He became a cult hero to the progressive base. Clinton couldn’t hope to match his raw enthusiasm, but she boasted the one thing Sanders lacked: support from within the party institution. Democratic nominating contests had come to rely heavily on so-called superdelegates, the elected officials and party heavyweights given automatic votes at the party’s convention. Clinton’s virtual monopoly on superdelegates angered Sanders supporters and fueled allegations of a fixed election, even though she won nearly four million more votes and would have prevailed on the strength of her regular delegate count versus his.

  A defiant Sanders remained an active candidate all the way through the final primary contest on June 14, well after Clinton’s victory was assured, and he did not endorse her until July 12.6

  The divisions exposed by their unexpectedly competitive and prolonged race loomed large as the Democrats prepared for their convention in late July. She was the prohibitive favorite heading into the general election; Trump lacked the raw numbers to win a high-turnout election. What he did have, however, was a passion in his base that Clinton could only dream of.

  The flame that Trump carried—populism, nationalism, nativism—was beginning to light up the entire Western Hemisphere. Over the next several years, far-right parties advocating strict immigration crackdowns and protectionist economic policies took Europe by storm, some sweeping into power and others becoming the primary opposition voice in national governments.

  The surest sign of the revolutionary times: On June 12, two days before the conclusion of the Democratic presidential primary, residents of the United Kingdom stunned the global community by voting to leave the European Union. “Brexit,” as the move was dubbed, represented to some a return to sovereignty; to others, it was a misguided rejection of the century’s geopolitical realities.

  Brexit was strongly opposed by the White House. Unsurprisingly, it had a staunch ally in Trump.

  RIGHT AROUND THE TIME FALWELL JR. WAS POSING IN FRONT OF THAT cover of Playboy, the news reached Pence: Trump was seriously considering him for the vice presidency.

  A month earlier, Pence’s longtime pollster, Kellyanne Conway, had visited Trump Tower for lunch with Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump. Having spent the previous year leading a pro-Cruz super PAC, Conway was now a free agent. Kushner was keen on bringing her aboard and asked Conway who she thought made the most sense as his father-in-law’s running mate.

  Conway replied that it wasn’t about “who,” but rather, “what,” and laid out her criteria: someone with appeal in Middle America, someone trusted by conservatives, someone who added stability, not excitement—“because we’ve got all the excitement we need”—to the ticket. She was making the case for Pence, just not by name.

  When informed soon after that meeting that Trump’s campaign wanted to vet him, Pence scoffed. No two human beings could have less in common, the governor joked to friends. Pence was a lifelong free-trader; Trump wanted to rip up NAFTA. Pence supported a path to citizenship for many illegal immigrants; Trump had floated the idea of a “deportation force.”7 Pence was a devoutly religious midwesterner who refused to attend alcohol-related functions without his wife or work alone in a room with female staffers; Trump was a thrice-married Manhattanite who worshipped at the shrine of his magazine covers.

  And yet, as time passed, the governor had grown more intrigued. The wholesome, aw-shucks, milk-drinking routine mastered by Pence belied the beating heart of a shrewd and ferociously ambitious politician, and he saw in Trump someone who had achieved a preternatural connection with the electorate, channeling voters’ anxieties in a way he had never witnessed. The longer Pence watched, the more he gravitated toward this source of power.

  There was also the matter of self-preservation. Pence’s reelection was looking bleak: Public polling showed the race neck and neck, but private surveys conducted that spring showed the governor’s numbers looking dreadful all across the state. The religious liberty debacle had cost Pence a shot at the White House, and now it might cost him a second term. If Trump might rescue him from his predicament in Indiana, was the governor in any position to refuse?

  Dazed by this set of circumstances, Pence reached out to a number of friends for advice. One of them was David McIntosh, the former Indiana congressman who was now president of the Club for Growth, an organization that had spent millions of dollars attacking Trump during the primary. “What if he offers me the position?” Pence asked.

  “That’s a no-brainer,” McIntosh replied. “The most likely result is you don’t win in the fall, but you’re probably the next presidential nominee. Or, who knows—you might even be vice president.”

  “You don’t think it’ll be damaging to my career to be associated with Trump?” Pence pressed.

  “No,” McIntosh said. “You’re still going to be Mike Pence.”

  The Indiana governor decided to make a request of Trump’s campaign. Before proceeding any further—and certainly before answering, if the offer were extended—Pence wanted his family to spend time with Trump’s family. He assumed that such an ask was unrealistic given the time constraints on a presidential campaign; if Trump could not accommodate him, Pence figured, he would know that it wasn’t meant to be.

  Almost immediately, however, Trump responded in the affirmative. His campaign invited Pence’s family to spend the July Fourth weekend at his private golf club in New Jersey. On his way to the airport, Pence placed an anxious call to Conway—who, it so happened, had been formally hired by the campaign one day earlier. All the concerns he had about Trump were flooding over him. She wouldn’t hear it. “You crossed the Rubicon. Now that you’ve gone this far, there’s no going back,” Conway told Pence. “I’m going to make sure you get it.”

  The access he was given to Trump that weekend proved surprising—and surprisingly reassuring. “Morning, noon, and night, we got to be around them,” Pence recalls. “That first time we got together, I was really struck by what an inquisitive person he is. He literally leads by asking questions. The first time we were together, we had breakfast and played a round of golf. Then we had lunch and dinner together. He must have asked me a thousand questions.”

  About what?

  “Everything,” Pence says. “My background. Politics. People. Policy. I mean, we were talking through things. But he never stops. And I’ve learned from him, it’s a leadership style in which he’s constantly asking questions.”

  Trump was also fun to be around—unpredictable, comfortable in his own skin, and often, hilarious. Picking up the phone as he sat with Pence on Saturday, Trump dialed Steve Scalise, the House majority whip. “Steve, question for you,” he said. “I’m thinking of making Mike Pence my vice-presidential pick. What do you think about him?”

  Scalise gushed with positive feedback on Pence, his friend and fellow alumnus of the Republican Study Committee. “Well, that’s good, real good, Steve,” Trump said. “Because he’s sitting right here!”

  As the weekend wore on—and especially after a breakfast in which Trump charmed the Pences’ twenty-three-year-old daughter, Charlotte, who had accompanied her parents on the visit—Pence found himself smitten with Trump. The Indiana governor began to believe that his friends in the governing class had gotten their nominee all wrong. No longer would he be the pursued; Pence became openly desirous of the position. (Boasting to reporters that Trump “beat me like a drum” on the golf course was a good start.8)

  By the time he departed New Jersey with his wife and daughter, Pence felt sure that he wanted the job. He was less certain that Trump would offer it.

  PENCE’S FRIENDS WERE FLOORED TO HEAR OF HIS HUNGER TO JOIN THE Republican ticket. There were the obvious differences: Pence was a known foreign policy hawk and democracy promoter, while Trump had spent much of the campaign flattering foreign strongmen, most conspicuously Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Yet stranger still, to the governor’s old friends and allies, was how Pence could bring himself to ignore the man’s behavior. Trump’s history of ad h
ominem ridicule, of sexual innuendo, of routine deception, was well established. And he seemed intent only on adding new chapters to this legacy.

  In June, as Pence found himself coming around to the campaign’s entreaties, Trump found himself embroiled in a fresh controversy. A federal judge named Gonzalo Curiel, an American by birth whose parents were naturalized U.S. citizens from Mexico, was presiding over multiple court cases related to Trump University. The plaintiffs alleged they had been conned into paying tens of thousands of dollars for an education that never materialized. After the judge repeatedly ruled against him in the various proceedings, Trump criticized Curiel for having “an inherent conflict of interest” in the case.9 The reason: Trump was campaigning on a pledge to build a wall along the Mexican border, he said on CNN, and the judge was “of Mexican heritage, and he’s very proud of it.”10 Trump repeated the claim at his rallies: Curiel could not rule fairly because of his Mexican roots.

  Republicans rushed to denounce their nominee.

  “It’s time to quit attacking various people that you competed with, or various minority groups in the country, and get on-message,” Mitch McConnell told reporters.11

  South Carolina senator Tim Scott called Trump’s remarks “racially toxic.” Scott’s home-state colleague, Lindsey Graham, one of Trump’s former rivals for the GOP nomination, told NBC News, “It’s pretty clear to me that he’s playing the race card.”12 Nebraska senator Ben Sasse, an outspoken critic of the GOP’s nominee, tweeted, “Public Service Announcement: Saying someone can’t do a specific job because of his or her race is the literal definition of ‘racism.’”

  And then there was Ryan.

  The Speaker had urged Trump, during their RNC détente, to stop attacking fellow Republicans. In the weeks thereafter, Trump had mocked Romney (for being a “choker” and walking “like a penguin”), Rick Perry (for initially opposing him and then reversing course), Jeb Bush (for not having the “energy” to endorse him), South Carolina governor Nikki Haley (for opposing him in the state’s primary), and New Mexico governor Susana Martinez (for “not doing the job” well). The day after the Martinez putdown, Ryan blew up at Trump during a private phone call, explaining that Martinez was a friend—and the GOP’s most prominent Latina elected official. Ryan suggested that it would behoove the Republican nominee to focus his fire on Clinton. Instead, two days later, Trump picked a new target: Judge Curiel.

  Standing with community leaders outside a drug-rehabilitation house in one of Washington’s poorest neighborhoods, Ryan winced as he looked out at the assembled press corps. Here he was, attempting to promote the GOP’s solutions to fighting the endemic scourge of poverty, and all anyone wanted to ask about was Trump’s attacks on a judge for his “Mexican heritage.” Making matters worse, Ryan had finally given in and endorsed Trump just days earlier.

  “Claiming a person can’t do their job because of their race is sort of like the textbook definition of a racist comment,” Ryan said. “I think that should be absolutely disavowed. It’s absolutely unacceptable.”

  If Ryan assumed that such a forceful response—the textbook definition of a racist comment—would satisfy the reporters, he was mistaken. The next question came: Did Ryan worry that Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric would “undercut” the House GOP’s agenda? Yes, Ryan said; their exchange was proof that Trump was overshadowing their “Better Way” proposal, a blueprint for governing the country. The third question was also Trump-related; so were the fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh. When a reporter finally asked about the minimum wage, Ryan let out a laugh. “Thank you so much.”

  Among the more tepid rebukes, Pence called Trump’s commentary “inappropriate,” then added, “But that being said, if I wanted to comment on everything that’s said in the presidential campaigns, I would have run for president. I’m focused on the state of Indiana.” (Incidentally, Judge Curiel had been born, raised, and educated in Indiana.)

  Pence was wise to tread carefully. Any slight of Trump, real or perceived, could mean the difference between running mate and historical footnote. Two other VP finalists, former Speaker Newt Gingrich and Tennessee senator Bob Corker, had rebuked Trump for his Curiel comments. But a fourth candidate, Chris Christie, had distinguished himself from the field.

  “People are always gonna express their opinions,” the New Jersey governor said in response to the uproar.13 “Those are Donald’s opinions and he has the right to express them.”

  THE “SHORT LIST” OF POTENTIAL TICKET MATES GOT SHORTER IN A hurry, thanks to a revamped campaign operation manning the controls inside Trump Tower.

  On June 20, at last hearing the pleas of his adult children, Trump fired his campaign manager. Corey Lewandowski had been a disruptive presence for good and for ill, encouraging Trump’s primal political instincts but never refining them. Replacing him atop the campaign was Paul Manafort, the veteran scoundrel who’d sworn to friends that he was joining Trump’s team solely to oversee the convention mechanics.

  The following week, Trump tapped a new communications director, Jason Miller. It made for an interesting interview: Miller had spent the past sixteen months helming Cruz’s messaging machine and was responsible for a flurry of brutally negative tweets directed at the GOP front-runner. Trump worried about the operative’s allegiance. In a conference room on the twenty-fifth floor of Trump Tower, the presumptive nominee squinted at Miller with a mischievous sneer.

  “You just came over from Cruz? I guess you want to join the winning team, right?” Trump said. “Ted is a little nasty. Sometimes he’s nice.”

  Miller didn’t speak.

  “Let’s see where your loyalties lie,” Trump continued. “Tell me something negative about Ted. Give me some dirt.”

  “I can’t do that,” Miller replied.

  “No?” Trump said. “C’mon. You have to give me something.”

  Miller still refused. After two more rounds of this, Trump abruptly turned angry. “Okay, I’m not fucking around anymore,” he told Miller. “Give me something on Cruz or you’re outta here.”

  The room went silent. The assembled cast—Manafort, Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump, and her husband, Jared Kushner, who had extended the job offer to Miller—wore concerned looks. Miller sat speechless, expecting to see security coming for him at any moment.

  Then Trump broke into a grin. “Right answer!” he cried, pounding the table. “Jared, did you coach him?” (If this smacked of a mafioso scene, it wasn’t coincidental: Trump had learned at the knee of legendary New York City fixer Roy Cohn, who was famous not just as Senator Joseph McCarthy’s general counsel but as consigliere to some of America’s biggest mobsters.)

  Finally, a few days later, Trump hired Conway, the veteran pollster who had been waging a stealth lobbying campaign on behalf of her longtime client, Pence. As it happened, Trump and Conway were already well acquainted; she had polled on his behalf in 2011, when he was flirting with a 2012 presidential run. They were a natural pairing: Conway had spent her career pushing the party establishment to ditch its concerns about “electability” and embrace outsider candidates who could reach new voters. In this sense, although he’d defeated her preferred candidate in Cruz, Trump’s vanquishing of the GOP was the realization of her life’s work.

  “The Republican Party was always looking for the next Ronald Reagan, but it kept picking Bushes,” Conway says.

  Trump reveled in such assessments, feeling disrespected even after spanking a sprawling field of sixteen well-regarded Republican opponents. That summer, as he neared a decision on his running mate, he agreed to meet with a small group of GOP-friendly corporate kingpins. They represented a range of industries, from banking to energy, and were convened by Jeff Sessions for a private get-to-know-you at Trump’s new hotel in Washington, DC.

  The property, once home to the historic Old Post Office, was still under construction, and laborers in hard hats milled about as the conversation commenced. After the Republican heavyweights introduced themselves, and
Trump broke the ice by grilling an automotive executive about the productivity of Mexican workers, he surveyed his audience with a question: How many of them had supported him during the primary?

  Nobody raised their hand. The men looked around nervously. Trump, leering in a way that implied some combination of delight and disgust, went around one by one, demanding to know whom they had voted for and why. Most of the attendees said Jeb Bush, out of loyalty to the family; a handful said Marco Rubio, believing he was best equipped to beat Hillary Clinton.

  A long silence hung in the air. “Well,” Trump finally told them. “At least none of you supported Lyin’ Ted Cruz.”

  AT THE URGING OF HIS NEW AND PROFESSIONALIZED CAMPAIGN STAFF, Trump began weeding out the field of prospective running mates.

  He had floated the idea of “America’s mayor,” Rudy Giuliani, giving the Republican ticket a pair of tough-talking New Yorkers. But Rudy was, among other things, pro-choice, a nonstarter with the already wary evangelical community. He was out.

  Trump saw similar benefit in selecting Christie. The New Jersey governor would reinforce his strengths—brassy, unflinching, in-your-face leadership—while adding valuable executive experience. But Trump didn’t need reinforcement; he needed balance. Moreover, the “Bridgegate” scandal had blown up back home, plunging Christie’s approval ratings to all-time lows.14 (“Why not save Christie for attorney general?” Manafort asked Trump. “Because,” Trump replied, “that guy would prosecute my own kids and not think twice about it.”) Christie was out.

  Seeking a wild-card option, Trump began whispering to allies that he was high on a retired Army lieutenant general, Michael Flynn. Trump had made a habit of mocking the efficacy of the U.S. armed forces, even going so far as to say, “I know more about ISIS than the generals do.” Yet beneath the bluster, Trump, having attended a military school, was enamored of the institution. He believed the military embodied a toughness that was fast diminishing in American society. He loved the imagery of a soldier on the ticket with a businessman, a tandem of unbeholden outsiders taking Washington by storm.