The United States of Trump

by Bill O'Reilly

  That statement is pure Trump. Hillary Clinton was a senator for eight years, not twenty-six. But the candidate was referring to her entire public service résumé, First Lady, etc. The media calls Trump’s hyperbole “lies.” But here’s the truth: Donald Trump doesn’t really care about verbal precision; he wants to present his message in a vivid way. And he does.

  The Factor interview continued with a challenge:

  O’REILLY: When she was a senator from New York, you were friendly to her. She and her husband went to your wedding. You weren’t real critical of Hillary Clinton at the time. Did you think she was doing a good job back then?

  TRUMP: Bill, I was a businessman, I was all over the world. I was doing great and, frankly, got along with all politicians. I didn’t go around criticizing them, because when you’re a businessman you have to get along with politicians.

  O’REILLY: Now I’m going to ask you to grade Lester Holt, the debate moderator. A is best, F is worst. You say…?

  TRUMP: When I first did it, I thought he was fine. But when I reviewed it … I realized he was much tougher on me than he was on Hillary. The first half of the show was great, but then he hits me with the birther question, and of course, he likes to correct things where I happen to be right.

  O’REILLY: All right, give me a grade.

  TRUMP: C.

  O’REILLY: He interrupted you forty-one times; interrupted Hillary seven times. That’s more than I interrupt you, by the way.

  TRUMP: He’s worse than you.

  O’REILLY: Really? That’s bad!

  For the record, I worked with Lester Holt at WCBS-TV in New York City. He’s an honest guy.

  During the rest of that interview, it was crime, sanctuary cities, and Colin Kaepernick, the emotional issues that Donald Trump was successfully harvesting across the country.

  After the broadcast that night, I thought about Trump, Clinton, and the campaign in general. If the press coverage were honest, they’d have to report that Trump was doing extraordinarily well for a first-time political candidate. But the coverage was not honest, so that assessment was not widely heard outside conservative precincts.

  However, unbeknownst to mostly everyone, everything about the campaign was about to change—for the worse.

  Lurking about was Donald Trump’s past and a subversive group named WikiLeaks—and the two were about to collide.

  And the sound of that collision would be heard around the world.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  NEW YORK CITY

  OCTOBER 7, 2016

  4:08 P.M.

  Donald Trump’s past has just caught up with him. The year was 2005, and a cocky Mr. Trump was doing a guest appearance on the afternoon soap opera Days of Our Lives. As part of the process, Trump was being interviewed by an NBC-owned show called Access Hollywood. The co-anchor of the syndicated program, Billy Bush, was talking with Trump before the formal TV shoot began.

  Both men were wearing microphones but may not have known the mics were “hot”—that is, they were recording every single word the men were saying.

  For whatever reason, Donald Trump and Billy Bush began discussing women in sexual terms. Again, the banter was being picked up and stored in an NBC camera.

  And there it stayed until now, eleven years later, after Donald Trump has won the Republican nomination for president.

  There are conflicting reports about who dug up the old video and why. What has been established is that NBC executives were made aware of the explosive content but were hesitant to make it public, mostly for legal reasons.

  Then someone leaked it to the Washington Post, which was not at all reluctant to expose Donald Trump. The paper posted the tape on its website, and all hell broke just a few minutes after 4 p.m.

  Wikipedia describes the situation this way: “The Washington Post published a video and accompanying article … [showing] Donald Trump and television host Billy Bush having an extremely lewd conversation about women in 2005 …

  “In the video, Trump described his attempt to seduce a married woman and indicated he might start kissing a woman that he and Bush were about to meet. He added, ‘I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.’”

  The article then goes on to quote an explicit slang term that Donald Trump used in his description of his aggressive interactions with women.

  * * *

  WITH THE SECOND presidential debate just two days away, disaster doesn’t even come close to describing what has now descended on the Trump campaign.

  Damage control? Impossible. Every responsible politician and commentator in the country has to condemn Trump’s words. No one can possibly defend the man. It is Gary Hart times a thousand.1 Even Indiana governor Mike Pence, Trump’s running mate, has severely criticized the behavior.

  Inside the Trump campaign there is anger, especially after Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus calls to discuss Trump quitting the race. The candidate seeks opinions from Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, and his three grown children. All urge Donald Trump to proceed and “go down fighting.”

  Trump immediately puts together a plan. He obviously has experience in the scandal area. Various strategies are discussed with inner circle people, but it is the candidate who will make the decisions.

  But how can Donald Trump continue in the race when many in his own party are calling for him to quit?

  One name answers that question: Hillary Clinton.

  If any other high-profile candidate were running against Trump, the Access Hollywood thing would most likely have ended his candidacy. But Hillary gives Trump cover.

  After some thought on wording, candidate Trump issues a short video statement: “I’ve never said I’m a perfect person, nor pretended to be someone that I’m not. I’ve said and done things I regret, and the words released today on this more-than-a-decade-old video are one of them. Anyone who knows me knows these words don’t reflect who I am. I said it, I was wrong, and I apologize … We’ll discuss this more in the coming days. See you at the debate.”

  In addition to the contrition, Trump and his advisers put forth that his crude words were less serious than the misbehavior of President Clinton and the enabling of his wife Hillary, who, as Trump described it, “bullied, attacked, shamed and intimidated his [Bill Clinton’s] victims.”

  Donald Trump also asserted that “this was locker room banter, a private conversation that took place many years ago. Bill Clinton has said far worse to me on the golf course—not even close.”

  It is the best the Trump campaign can do: a quick apology and a fallback attack on Bill and Hillary’s conduct in the White House and beyond.

  Sensing she has Trump on the ropes, Mrs. Clinton quickly replies on Twitter: “This is horrific. We cannot allow this man to become president.”

  But the American public vividly remembers Hillary Clinton standing by her man while he was under siege in the White House over the Lewinsky affair. The voters also easily recall the “it’s only about sex” mantra many Democrats endorsed during the impeachment of Bill Clinton.

  So, much to the chagrin of the national media, the Trump tape is likely not a knockout punch. In America, voters are now much different than in the past; indeed, they are almost jaded.

  Politicians are routinely smeared so badly on social media and in the press that it’s like rhetorical Novocain. We the people almost expect depictions of bad behavior on the part of the powerful and famous. Also, as a society, we have widely accepted the “but he or she is worse” rationalization. And millions of Americans truly believe that Hillary Rodham Clinton is far worse than Donald Trump, no matter what his indiscretions.

  Finally, the largely phony “virtue signaling” from other politicians and the press just annoys much of the electorate, which understands rank hypocrisy when it sees it. The truth is that every human being is a “sinner,” it’s just a matter of how bad the actions are. These days, many “sins” are forgiven by the nonideol
ogical public.

  Sniping away smugly on cable news panels while condemning Donald Trump (or, for that matter, Hillary Clinton) does not usually sway voters who approve of the candidate. In some cases, press attacks solidify support because the candidate might be perceived to be the victim of media unfairness and overkill.

  That’s how Bill Clinton eventually survived in the court of public opinion—and while impeached, escaped eviction.

  And that’s also how Donald Trump will survive this day. But, behind closed doors in the Trump Tower campaign headquarters, some demoralization had set in—the consensus being that all the hard work the staff has put in might be destroyed by stupid behavior.

  There is just one month to go before the vote. Two more debates, millions of dollars in TV ads yet to come.

  But first, another shocking story on the same day Donald Trump’s knees buckle—this one a direct hit on his competition.

  * * *

  THE “HOT MIC” in Seoul, South Korea, was aimed directly at the president of the United States, Barack Obama, and then president of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev. It was March 27, 2012, and the two men were having a private conversation about future missile defense negotiations that was being picked up by an open microphone.

  “This is my last election,” Mr. Obama told Mr. Medvedev. “After the election I have more flexibility.”

  The Russian replied, “I understand. I will transmit the information to Vladimir.”

  That would be Putin.

  Another hot mic, another embarrassment as Obama’s words certainly empowered Russia and the villainous Putin.

  Fast-forward to 2016, when every American diplomat knows that the Russians are aggressively looking to compromise the U.S. government. And as we saw in July, Russian operatives successfully hacked into the email correspondence of the Democratic National Committee, resulting in its leader, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, having to resign.

  This morning, October 7, another email dump. Working with Russian hackers, the subversive group WikiLeaks dropped twenty thousand Democratic missives, including some from Hillary Clinton’s campaign boss, John Podesta.

  This time the U.S. national intelligence apparatus issues a rare statement, saying that the Russians were attempting to interfere in the American election process.

  According to later analysis by the cybersecurity firm Dell SecureWorks, a group of Russian intelligence–linked hackers called “Fancy Bear” faked out Mr. Podesta by sending him a phony Google security alert that contained a misleading link. Apparently, this con is called “spear phishing.”

  When Podesta answered the email, the hackers were able to get his Gmail credentials.

  Democrats are furious with the hack and release; their Republican opposition, not so much. The face of WikiLeaks, the aforementioned Julian Assange, is becoming famous for all the wrong reasons.

  Her anger rising, Hillary Clinton issues a statement about Assange: “I think he is part anarchist, part exhibitionist, part opportunist, who is either actually on the payroll of the Kremlin or in some way supporting their propaganda objectives…”

  As the story built, reaction to the DNC hack eventually led to the infamous “Russian collusion” investigation into the Trump campaign, which severely damaged governance in America for almost two years.

  So, the Russian intruders won big.

  As for the DNC and Podesta emails themselves, they did not amount to much, although WikiLeaks would drip them out to the public throughout the election cycle.

  Essentially, the stolen emails showed that Hillary Clinton curried favor with wealthy Wall Street firms and received big money from them for speaking engagements.

  Also, left-wing writer Thomas Frank editorialized that the leaks showed Podesta and the Democrat machine cozying up to the “elite” money people.

  Claude Rains might have been shocked, but few others were.2

  The email dump, however, could not compete with the Trump-women controversy, which dominated news coverage for weeks.

  But the hackers did succeed in hurting Hillary Clinton by proving she was deeply involved with securing lucrative paydays from Wall Street at the same time she was trying to convince voters she’d protect them from exploitative capitalism.

  Thus, Mrs. Clinton once again finds herself with an honesty deficit, with her party and liberal zealots saying one thing and Hillary doing the exact opposite.

  At the same time, Donald Trump finds himself with a woman problem, which will expand and be used to attack his character. For American voters, the presidential race has now become another chaotic reality show in which the next episode could bring just about anything.

  What few will understand after the explicit Trump tape and the illegal hack are made public is that one of the candidates has deep experience in the reality show world.

  And that experience will be on vivid display in St. Louis, the site of the second debate.

  It is forty-eight hours away.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI

  OCTOBER 9, 2016

  9 P.M.

  The second debate is getting nasty. Both candidates have dropped all pretense. There’s no handshake upon their taking the stage, and the personal attacks are flying in the auditorium at Washington University.

  Donald Trump, fighting for his political life, is determined to show his supporters that he is still strong and in command after the Access Hollywood disaster of forty-eight hours ago.

  Candidate Trump has decided to go on the offense: he will show no weakness tonight, no uncertainty. It is Trump’s Battle of the Bulge, a brazen counteroffensive against enemy forces who believe he is finished.

  The event in St. Louis begins with Donald Trump holding a press conference before the actual debate. Sitting with him are three women who, in the past, have accused Bill Clinton of sexual misconduct: Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey, and Juanita Broaddrick.

  The ladies reiterate their stories and strong beliefs that Hillary Clinton defended her husband’s behavior and denigrated them in the process. The panel is soon joined by Kathy Shelton, a rape victim at twelve years old whose assailant was represented by Mrs. Clinton when she worked as a public defender in Arkansas.

  Donald Trump refuses to answer questions about his tape situation in the press conference, focusing all attention on the four women who are angry with Hillary Clinton. The Clinton campaign tells the press the stunt is “an act of desperation.”

  Trump’s decision to replay the Clinton saga is aimed not so much at voters as at the Republican establishment, which may abandon him. His strategy is to make it difficult for GOP big shots to throw the election to Hillary Clinton, a woman reviled by millions of Republican voters.

  Donald Trump also understands that conservative talk radio and some TV commentators who support him will embrace the press conference by making a stark contrast between his “words” and the actual misdeeds of the Clintons.

  From left, Kathleen Willey, Juanita Broaddrick, and Kathy Shelton wait for the presidential town hall debate between Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump at Washington University in St. Louis, October 9, 2016.

  Trump is, in effect, providing a new narrative to his media supporters that goes like this: “Yes, I said offensive things. But the Clintons did terrible things to the women you see before you, and they have gotten away with it.”

  After the press conference, the four women are seated prominently at the debate, guaranteeing national TV coverage. Some believe their presence in the auditorium has rattled Hillary Clinton.

  If you examine Donald Trump’s debate strategy without emotion, his plan was effective. And it was his plan. He designed the scenario himself and carried it out. The result was that he somewhat diminished the Access Hollywood thing and reminded wavering Republicans that defecting from him was a gift to a devil named Hillary.

  The debate structure itself features questions from the two moderators, Marth
a Raddatz from ABC News and Anderson Cooper from CNN. But there are also audience queries from preselected folks.

  Both Raddatz and Cooper are perceived to be liberal, and they are. It is simply inconceivable that either of them voted for Donald Trump.

  I worked with Martha at WCVB-TV in Boston. She is an excellent reporter who rarely lets her personal belief system influence her presentation.

  Anderson Cooper is less disciplined but generally does not seek to be unfair. At CNN, he must present a liberal program, and so he does.

  At one point in the debate, Candidate Trump told the world that “it’s three against one,” meaning he was opposed by not only Hillary but also the two moderators. Trump was angry because Raddatz and Cooper did not ask candidate Clinton about the email situation.

  When the focus turned to Trump, Anderson Cooper was the doomsayer, quickly asking the candidate if his comments on the scandalous tape indicated “sexual assault.” That was a question designed to get attention, much like the Megyn Kelly controversy.

  Mr. Trump, however, was ready, quickly replying that his offensive comments were “locker room talk.” Trump then kicked it back to Hillary: “She brings up words that I said eleven years ago—I think it’s disgraceful, and she should be ashamed of herself, to tell you the truth.”

  For her part, Mrs. Clinton completely avoided any defense of her husband and her support of him. Instead, she tried to keep the focus on Trump, running down a list of his most egregious statements.

  Responding, Donald Trump accused Hillary Clinton of a variety of crimes, for example, destroying her private emails in the face of an FBI investigation. He then pledged that, if elected president, he would appoint a special counsel to investigate her and said she’d likely wind up in jail.