The Wilderness

by McKay Coppins

  A few weeks later, my story was published at BuzzFeed under the headline “Thirty-Six Hours on the Fake Campaign Trail with Donald Trump.” It focused primarily on what I called the “long con” of his supposed political career, and explored why he seemed so driven to keep it going. The story channeled a widely held sentiment in the political-media complex at the time that had been eating at Trump, and he quickly declared a fatwa on my head. The war that he and his online followers waged on me in the weeks and months to come presented a tiny microcosm of the influence Trump could still wield within politics—and it would foreshadow the wild, disruptive, scorched-earth assault he was planning for 2016.

  It began simply enough with Trump firing off tweets denouncing me as a “slimebag reporter” and “true garbage with no credibility,” and soon his followers were also hurling angry, all-caps insults my way, while posts on obscure right-wing blogs and message boards derided me as a corrupt media “libtard,” and cryptic emails from apparent Trump allies landed in my inbox—including one admirably economical missive from Carl Paladino, the Republican nominee in New York’s 2010 gubernatorial race, who wrote simply, “Big joke. Fuck you, asshole.” To exert financial damage, Trump’s office sent me an addendum to the $850 bill BuzzFeed had already paid for my stay at Mar-a-Lago, claiming that they’d neglected to tack on the cost of the flight: $10,000. Meanwhile, a Buffalo-based public relations employee with ties to Trump named Michael Caputo began circulating an email to every Republican press secretary in Congress, accusing me of being a “partisan flibbertigibbet” and warning that I was not to be trusted.

  Next, Trump turned to Breitbart, which began publishing stories about me, kicking off the series with a masterpiece of its genre, right down to the pitch-perfect headline: “EXCLUSIVE—TRUMP: ‘SCUMBAG’ BUZZFEED BLOGGER OGLED WOMEN WHILE HE ATE BISON AT MY RESORT.” Written by Boyle, the 2,100-word yarn relied on interviews with Trump and his yes-men to chronicle a vivid alternate-reality version of our trip to Mar-a-Lago, starring myself as a “quiet, reserved, and nervous” geek of a reporter who spent the flight to Florida cowering in the presence of The Donald’s gravitas—and then promptly mutated into an untamable lout upon arriving at his estate, crudely hitting on every pair of legs that sashayed across the carefully manicured grounds. In one particularly colorful passage, a hostess at Trump’s club identified as “Bianka Pop” recounted the vulgar tactics I had employed in my efforts to seduce her. “He was looking at me like I was yummy… [like he wanted] a cup of me or something,” she said, adding that my come-ons were “a little bit nasty” and that she was “not feeling comfortable.” One of Trump’s yes-men regretfully recalled having to apologize to waitresses for my creepy “ogling” as we dined on bison burgers. And toward the end of the piece, Trump himself took the opportunity to shake his husbandly head at my wandering eye: “There were two beautiful girls walking around Mar-a-Lago. He said to me, ‘Boy, I wish my wife looked like that,’ while he was gawking at them. Unbelievable. What a scumbag.”

  For the next two weeks, the site’s editors scoured the archives for past hit pieces they had published about my stories at BuzzFeed, and splashed them across the home page. They began calling up advisers to prominent Republicans, and tried to get them to bash me on the record. Most of them, it seemed, declined or demurred, but several days into Breitbart’s crusade, the editors struck gold: “EXCLUSIVE—PALIN CALLS FOR BOYCOTT AFTER BUZZFEED HIT PIECE ON TRUMP.” There was her quote in black and white: “This nervous geek isn’t fit to tie The Donald’s wing tips. Don’t ever give him attention again.”

  But the most disquieting moment came when I was up late one night working in my apartment. A notorious right-wing blogger and opposition researcher popped up in my Gchat with a brief, cryptic note reporting that someone had tried to enlist him for a “project” in which I was the target. Somewhat startled, I prodded him for more information, but he wouldn’t give much. He had turned down the offer, he said, but he knew there were “others.” The goal was to dig into my personal life until they unearthed something scandalous enough to “finish” me. He logged off.

  Over the next few days I found myself growing increasingly paranoid—looking around in an agitated, twitchy sort of way and trying to figure out how to know if someone was tailing you. It was fairly embarrassing. I wondered if this was what it was like to be a full-time citizen of the fever swamps.

  Trump’s earliest political experience came when he was a young entrepreneur working to expand his father’s New York City real estate empire from the outer boroughs into the glitzier, more competitive Manhattan market. As he went about the requisite favor trading with city bureaucrats who got to decide how tall his skyscrapers could be, Trump came to understand political loyalties as bargaining chips. “When you need zone changes, you’re political… You know, I’ll support the Democrats, the Republicans, whatever the hell I have to support,” he later explained. Now, with Trump stewing over his dwindling political relevance, he spent much of 2014 trying to buy some loyalty of his own. He forked over cash to the Republican National Committee, headlined fund-raisers for state parties, wrote checks to conservative candidates, and offered support to a variety of right-wing outfits.

  Inside Breitbart News, employees privately complained that the company’s top management was increasingly turning their outlet into a Donald Trump fan website. Staffers told me Trump and his yes-men would often place calls to Breitbart executive chair Steve Bannon to discuss the site’s coverage, and that those calls were treated with the utmost seriousness. Indeed, a search of Trump’s name in the site’s archives yielded thousands of articles hyping his political prospects, attacking his enemies, and breathlessly covering his every politically tinged utterance—including a series of perfectly credulous stories about his years-long birther crusade. Trump’s typical coverage tended to center on his serial flirtations with running for office, staffers told me, but his constant presence on the homepage and knack for pandering to the fever swamps had won him a true following within the site’s readership.

  One Breitbart editor, who considered Trump a fraud when it came to the conservative cause, called his site’s water carrying “despicable” and “embarrassing.” He and others in the editorial ranks came to believe the billionaire had a financial interest in the company that explained the fawning coverage. Bannon denied the allegation, telling me in a statement, “We have no financial relationship with Donald Trump as an investor, advertiser, or in any other capacity at this time—nor have we ever. The insinuation that we do—or did—is a lie.” (As a privately held company, Breitbart doesn’t make the sources of its financial backing public.)

  Meanwhile, Trump generously contributed to conservative groups that hosted the sort of high-profile political conferences that were populated by TV cameras. Because these organizations generally weren’t required to disclose their donors, Trump was able to claim that organizers were constantly clamoring, pleading, begging for him to grace the stage at their events—simply because he was such a big-time star.

  Back in 2013, many on the right had been dismayed to see Trump with such a plum speaking slot at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington. With the exception of a small die-hard fringe, most Republicans were by that point frustrated with The Donald’s exhausting self-promotion and birther drumbeating, and the speech he gave was not well received. The next year, when organizers began planning the 2014 conference, some on the board strongly opposed inviting him back, arguing that he was “not a serious movement leader.” But then Trump wrote a $50,000 check to the group that put on CPAC—and hosted then-chairman Al Cardenas at Mar-a-Lago—and the billionaire was back in the lineup. Cardenas would later confirm the donation to me, but he denied that the money bought Trump a speaking slot. “He’s entertaining,” Cardenas said of The Donald, comparing him to Ann Coulter and arguing that CPAC had always featured “personalities that I didn’t consider serious, thoughtful leaders.”

  But Trump expected mor
e than backhanded compliments and half-hearted support from the allies he procured. For all of the investments he had made in the Right, the returns in political clout were unacceptably puny. If The Donald was going to get the attention and respect he deserved, he was going to have to do something big.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Inner-City Education

  After an early workout on the morning of March 12, 2014, Paul Ryan called in to a nationally syndicated talk radio show hosted by one of his many old mentors, Bill Bennett. Ryan had recently given a speech on what he had learned so far during his poverty tour, and he’d agreed to come on Bennett’s show and elaborate on his observations. He was still struggling with his transition from the role of modest, observant student during his visits with Woodson to authoritative poverty expert in Washington, and the uneasiness came through on the radio. It wasn’t long before Ryan’s sensitive tone began to strain under the demands of a skilled partisan interviewer.

  “You lost your dad at an early age,” Bennett said during the show. “Who taught you how to work?”

  Ryan replied by talking about his mother’s strong example, and the influence of his tight-knit family and network of friends in Janesville—but that wasn’t the answer Bennett was looking for.

  “But, I mean, a boy has to see a man working, doesn’t he?”

  “Absolutely,” Ryan responded. “That’s the tailspin or spiral that we’re looking at in our communities… We have got this tailspin of culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work, and so there is a real culture problem here that has to be dealt with.”

  The assault from the Left began immediately. The liberal website ThinkProgress posted a portion of the transcript under the headline “Paul Ryan Blames Poverty on Lazy ‘Inner City’ Men.” Eager to advance its scoop, the site then began sending its story to Democratic congressional offices, asking for reaction quotes. Soon Representative Barbara Lee, Ryan’s Democratic colleague on the House Budget Committee, released a blistering statement calling the congressman’s comments “a thinly veiled racial attack,” and charging that “when Mr. Ryan says ‘inner city,’ when he says ‘culture,’ they are simply code words for what he really means: ‘black.’” Nancy Pelosi’s office piled on, dubbing Ryan’s quote “shameful, disturbing, and wrong.”

  Ryan was stunned by the force and violence of the reaction. When he consulted the transcript of the interview later that day, he could see how he should have been more precise in his language—but did all these people really believe he was a racist?

  Ryan’s phone rang, and he answered to find Woodson on the line, chuckling.

  “Well,” Woodson said, “what you said was true, but I’m not so sure you’re the one who should be saying it.”

  Ryan was defiant at first, so Woodson tried to explain the gaffe in terms that the congressman might understand: “It’s the difference between a coach berating a player and a fan berating a player. They can both have the same message for the same reasons, but with one, the player’s head is hung down, while the other gets punched out.”

  At around 5:30 a.m. on a cold April morning a few weeks later, men began filing into Indianapolis’s Emmanuel Missionary Baptist Church. They were ex-convicts and reformed drug dealers, recovering addicts and at-risk youth—a proud brotherhood of the city’s undesirables. Some of them liked to joke that if he were around today, Jesus would hang out with reprobates like them. On this cold April morning, they were getting Ryan instead.

  He had been to this church early on in his poverty tour, but that was before his “inner-city” gaffe turned him into a poster boy for right-wing race-baiting. Now he stood self-consciously in the lobby, just trying not to screw up. Sporting khakis and a new-haircut coif, he clutched a coffee and chatted in a subdued manner with three besuited associates. Despite his discomfort, most of the men rambling in through the front door didn’t seem to recognize the wiry white guy loitering in their church. A few parishioners came up and introduced themselves to him, but most passed by, exchanging quizzical glances and indifferent shrugs.

  After several minutes, a sturdy, smiling pastor named Darryl Webster arrived and greeted the church’s guest of honor.

  “I appreciate you coming,” Webster said as he clasped the congressman’s hand. “You know, when you get up this early in the morning, it’s intentional.”

  “Usually when I get up this early, I get up to kill something,” Ryan cracked.

  The words hung uncomfortably in the air for a moment, this not being a congregation of bowhunters. Ryan hastened to clarify.

  “This is the first time I’m getting up this early without wearing camouflage,” he explained.

  The joke landed, the group chuckled, and Ryan shuffled toward the chapel, looking weary and uncertain.

  Since his ill-fated radio interview, Ryan had endured an onslaught of criticism. Many on the left argued that Ryan’s comments were rooted in bigoted stereotypes about black men being lazy, and exposed a sinister streak of racism lurking beneath his Homecoming King of Congress act. Others accused Ryan of cynically using the remark as a “dog whistle,” meant only to be heard by his target audience of racist white conservatives. Ryan’s office had been flooded with press inquiries as serious Washington reporters asked communications director Conor Sweeney whether the congressman “really hates black people.”

  In truth, what Ryan’s foot-in-mouth moment revealed wasn’t bigotry but a debilitating lack of experience in interacting with the urban poor and people of color—a problem that afflicted his party at large. Ryan wasn’t racist, nor was he trying to curry favor with racists; he was a tone-deaf white guy who had never developed the vocabulary required to talk about race and urban issues, because as a professional Republican he never had to. While he had always gone through the motions of minority outreach, Ryan still hailed from a hometown where “diversity” meant neighbors swapping genealogical trivia about their Swedish and Norwegian ancestors. (According to the 2010 census, the population of Janesville was 91.7 percent Caucasian.)

  Now Ryan was receiving his sensitivity training on the job—and it was a frustrating experience. “Dog whistle,” he grumbled to me at the time. “I’d never even heard the phrase before, to be honest with you… When I think of ‘inner city,’ I think of everyone. I don’t just think of one race. It doesn’t even occur to me that it could come across as a racial statement, but that’s not the case, apparently.”

  If the outrage over his gaffe had brought Ryan a heightened degree of self-awareness, it had also infected him with a persistent strain of insecurity. At Emmanuel Missionary, he was endlessly preoccupied with his diction, prone to halting self-censorship, and acutely conscious of his own out-of-placeness. Like a singer who suddenly discovered his lack of relative pitch while onstage, Ryan was now worried that every note he belted out was off-key. It was a humbling experience to a guy who had been a few hundred thousand swing state votes short of the vice presidency.

  The congressman followed Pastor Webster and Woodson into a spacious, warmly lit chapel, where about a hundred men were sitting in pews, cheerfully chattering as they waited for the proceedings to begin. Woodson introduced Ryan to Ken Johnson, a stout man with an eye-popping cross swinging from his neck, who served as the chaplain for the Indianapolis Colts.

  Johnson’s eyes narrowed as he came face-to-face with Ryan. “I know you,” he said, trying to remember from where. “Are you…”

  “I’m Paul.”

  Nothing.

  “I’m in Congress,” Ryan tried.

  “Oh,” the chaplain said tentatively. “Yeah. Okay. I guess that’s how I know you.”

  “Back home, I just tell people I’m the weatherman.”

  When it came time for the service to begin, Ryan took a seat in the front row next to a small gaggle of aides and allies. They were there to observe a “boot camp” that Pastor Webster hosted for th
e men of Martindale-Brightwood, a rambling stretch of concrete and crumbling houses on the northeast side of Indianapolis. Like many of the places Ryan had been visiting, the neighborhood had long ago been poisoned by drugs, bloodied by violence, and starved of cash. Webster’s ministry focused on helping the community’s underachieving dads, husbands, and sons to get off drugs, fix their marriages, write résumés, and (with the ministry’s vouching) land jobs with suburban business owners. Every couple of months, Webster invited the men to a series of early-morning spiritual workouts, where they shared testimonials, listened to uplifting sermons, and chanted refrains in unison, like “You’ve got to know yourself to grow yourself” and “Life is in session. Are you present?” Since 2005, Webster had put nine hundred men through the program, and nearly 70 percent of them had overcome an addiction, according to the church.

  Ryan sat practically motionless as the service progressed, one of his long arms draped over the back of the pew, his eyes fixed intently on whoever was speaking, his angular face registering only the faintest reactions to the sermons.

  Woodson delivered an impassioned speech about African Americans taking responsibility for their communities. “In black America, we have a 9/11 every six months,” he declared. “Which means that three thousand young black men are being killed every six months.”

  As the audience erupted with “Mm-hmm”s and “Yeaaah”s and “That’s right”s, Ryan turned his eyes downward and mouthed, “Wow.”

  Woodson continued, “And that’s not gonna change by changing whoever’s president. It’s gonna be changed on the ground, by boot camps like this around the country.”

  Later, in a sermon about redemption, Pastor Webster illustrated his message by encouraging the congregation of former criminals and gangbangers to remember their lives on the street. “How many of y’all have got some nicknames?” the pastor asked. “You got some nicknames you used to live by. What was your nickname, Thomas?”