Let Trump Be Trump

by Corey R. Lewandowski

  From that night on, campaign politics would never be the same—not that anybody knew it then, not even those of us who are supposed to know what we’re doing in the business. Heck, we still didn’t believe he would run.

  Even though he’d beguiled the press, the mainstream reporters were reluctant to interview Donald Trump after the event for fear of being laughed off the phone by their editors. That wasn’t the case with Bannon, then the host of Breitbart on Sirius Radio. Bannon couldn’t wait to get Trump on the air.

  It was Dave who introduced Bannon to Trump back in August 2010. Dave and Bannon have been friends and business partners since 2006, churning out documentary films including Fire from the Heartland, which chronicled Tea Party women, including Ann Coulter and Michele Bachmann, and Generation Zero, about the global roots of the financial meltdown. Dave was the producer on the films, which Steve wrote and directed. One morning, Dave asked Bannon if he’d be interested in meeting Donald Trump.

  “Why?” Bannon asked. He was swamped with movies and running Breitbart full time.

  “He’s thinking of running for president,” Dave said.

  Steve let out a short laugh. “Yeah? Of what country?”

  Though his answer was glib, Bannon did not think of Trump as the lightweight that most people in politics then did. He’d be willing to meet him, so long as he was serious.

  They met in Trump’s office on the twenty-sixth floor of Trump Tower. Dave had prepared a presentation and went over every single aspect of a presidential primary campaign for Trump. In extensive detail, he walked him through what he would need to do for each of the first three primary states: Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. Dave compared an early campaign for president to running for governor in three states. He told Trump whom he would have to hire, and what each hire’s job would be. He went over the field that Trump would be up against and the issues that would matter in the race. He told him how much it would cost. It was a master class in primary politics, and Trump was enthusiastically engaged. Bannon, who at the time was the executive chairman of Breitbart News, was impressed with Trump’s mastery of the Socratic method of learning.

  As they walked out of Trump Tower that day, Dave asked Bannon what he thought the chances were of Trump running for president in 2012.

  “It’s amazing how quickly he picks up on stuff,” Steve said. “But he’s got a zero chance. Less than zero.”

  But that was then. By 2014, Bannon had completely rethought his assessment. By 2016, he would be helping to steer Trump’s campaign.

  It was after Trump’s interview with Bannon at the New Hamp-shire Freedom Summit that Dave introduced Corey to his future boss. Trump was there with Keith Schiller and Sam Nunberg. They chatted with us for a few minutes. We had our hands full. We had handled, line-by-line, the travel arrangements for all of the speakers and were then dealing with the logistics of getting everyone home. We didn’t have to worry about getting Donald Trump home, who seemed in no hurry to leave. Instead, he asked Dave if his son liked helicopters.

  A short while later, Dave and Griffin, along with Dave’s friend Matt Palumbo and his son Dean piled into Trump’s SUV and headed to the nearby airfield. There the Sikorsky S-76, the one with kid leather seats and 24-karat plate gold fixtures, lifted off, tilted north, and headed for a quick, ten-minute spin over the White Mountains. When we landed, Mr. Trump told Griffin that the ride just cost him $5,000. “That’s how much I like your dad,” he said. It wouldn’t be the last time Donald Trump gave kids helicopter rides. And the next time would prove to be one of the greatest campaign spectacles ever.

  Corey was impressed by Trump. The thought of working for him, however, never entered his mind. But Fate and Dave had already begun to conspire to align the two men’s paths. The next step that brought Corey closer to Trump came a few weeks later.

  Dave was in Virginia watching his daughter Isabella play softball in a tournament when his phone rang. Mr. Trump was on his way to the 2014 White House Correspondents Association Dinner, held at the Washington Hilton.

  “Are you going to the dinner?” Trump asked.

  Dave wasn’t going anywhere. Isabella was playing her third of four games that day. Besides, he’d already been to his fill of correspondents dinners. He also didn’t get why Trump was going. Year after year, it seemed, he ended up the butt of the jokes. In 2011, Seth Myers torched him, and then Obama took his shots.

  “I don’t have a tux,” Dave said.

  “Come on,” Trump insisted. “We need to talk.”

  “We can talk on the phone,” Dave said

  “You’re missing the game!” Susan said to him.

  “You have to get me a campaign manager,” Trump said. “You promised to get me one, now let’s get it done.”

  The call, covering a broad range of issues and topics, lasted nearly an hour. By the time Dave hung up, he knew that he had better find Trump a campaign manager.

  Over the next few months, Trump and Sam Nunberg called Dave regularly. There might have been only a handful of people in Washington with more connections and political knowledge than Dave. He could come up with a list of names and phone numbers right off the top of his head. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was twofold: One, finding someone who believed that Donald Trump would run for president. It was a significant risk, and the people Dave knew were already working in jobs and had families and mortgages. Those who were looking for jobs with campaigns were looking for candidates with stable political operations. Few would be willing to take a chance on something that might dry up in a few weeks or months.

  The second reason might have been even more challenging. And that was finding someone with the right personality to work with Trump. The boss, as we would come to call him, was someone who liked to call the shots and wouldn’t stand for anything less than all you had. Though he knew him to be incredibly loyal and generous, Dave also knew he could be abrasive, to say the least. The big thing was, however, that Dave knew that Trump would not fit into a traditional campaign strategy or get along with a traditional political handler.

  That’s when Corey Lewandowski came to mind.

  Dave was aware that Corey had been involved in a bunch of statewide campaigns. He also knew he was running a division of the Koch Brothers’ Americans for Prosperity, which had cohosted the Freedom Summit without a hitch. Dave knew Corey had the temperament, personality, and character to handle Trump. But mostly he believed Corey was tough enough to work for the boss.

  Corey grew up in Lowell, Massachusetts, a blue-collar old mill city of about 100,000. He lived in a small home on Coburn Street right next to a low-cost housing development, which, during the late 1980s, was overrun with crack cocaine and crime. One night, the police conducted surveillance of a drug operation right in his kitchen, watching through the window at the apartment complex next door. His parents separated early in his life, and his father died when he was in high school. His role model was his maternal grandfather, a union printer and World War II veteran, who lived with Corey’s grandmother about three city blocks away. It was his grandfather who instilled in Corey the value of hard work. From a paper route when he was nine, to working at Dunkin’ Donuts, to driving a forklift at Somerville Lumber, to his time in politics, Corey had been working hard his whole life.

  He attended college at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. The only reason he could afford it was because his mother worked in the financial aid office. Still, at first, his college career looked like it was going to end before it got started. The core undergraduate courses—psychology, sociology, and English 101—bored him to tears, so he spent more time attending parties and chasing girls than he did in class. At the end of the first semester he was given a choice: go on academic probation or take a semester off. He opted for option number two. He was friendly with a girl whose family owned a dairy farm in upstate New York. He thought it would be an adventure. It turned out to be the hardest work he ever did—that is, until he became Donald Trump’s ca
mpaign manager. All day long, he was hauling hay and cleaning barns. The cows had to be milked twice a day, every day, in rain and snow and cold. In upstate New York, it snows a lot. His experience on the farm taught him two things. One was respect for farmers and the hard work they do—because of them you can just waltz into a store and pick up a container of milk. And two was that he’d better take school more seriously, because he sure didn’t want to be a farmer the rest of his life.

  Back in school, he took all the core classes over again and aced all of them, doing especially well in the writing course. He would end up graduating cum laude from UMass and being accepted into graduate school at American University in Washington, DC, where he obtained his master’s degree in American Government and Public Policy.

  In the fall of 1997, he applied to the Republican National Committee’s campaign management college.

  Soon after graduating from the course, he researched every incumbent Republican member of congress who had received less than 55 percent of the vote in his or her last election. He then sent a résumé and followed up with a phone call to every one of them. His efforts paid off. Dave DiStefano, the chief of staff to Congressman Robert W. Ney (R-OH) called back and asked Corey if he would come to Ohio to discuss the congressman’s upcoming reelection effort.

  Corey stayed with Ney through two successful campaign cycles, during which time he forged a close relationship with the congressman. In 2000, Corey went to work at the Republican National Committee as the Northeast’s legislative political director, a position in which he raised funds, recruited candidates, and served as the liaison to the national committee. Though he loved building resources for Republican campaigns, he longed for one of his own.

  He got his chance in 2002, but it was short lived. After Smith lost the primary to John E. Sununu Jr., who had the full backing of the Bush family, Corey turned his attention to matters outside of politics. He married Alison and started a family. He sold real estate for a while and worked for a PR firm. He then considered a career as a police officer. He enrolled in the New Hampshire police academy and graduated in 2006, a week before his daughter, Abigail, was born. Still, round-the-clock tours and small paychecks were hard to manage for a guy with a growing family. Besides, there was something else calling him away from any other career.

  By 2008 he was back in politics, where he belonged, taking the job with the Kochs’ Americans for Prosperity.

  It was in October 2014 when Dave first approached Corey with the idea to work for Trump. It was just before the midterm elections, and Corey was overseeing voter registration for the whole country. By that time, Corey had been with Americans for Prosperity for seven years. The organization had opened an office for him one exit from his home in Windham, New Hampshire. In addition to the importance of his position, which Corey took very seriously, he was in a pretty good situation. He liked what he was doing and where he was doing it. That said, Corey will always consider an opportunity when presented with one. So when Dave said, “Hey, Trump may be running. Do you have any interest in speaking to him?” Corey answered, “Sure.”

  And with that one small word, his life changed forever.

  CHAPTER 4

  YOU’RE HIRED

  When I have a meeting, I don’t waste time. It’s quick, short, and to the point.

  —DONALD J. TRUMP, FROM THE APPRENTICE, NOVEMBER 4, 2005

  THE MEDIA TALKED almost exclusively about Donald Trump’s most controversial statements and never about what he said and did the other 99 percent of the time. But we both knew, long before we became involved with Donald Trump as a political candidate, that there was a lot more to him than sound bites or what anyone saw on The Apprentice or during his other public appearances. The Donald Trump we came to know was the incredibly generous one who built a multibillion-dollar corporation and employed thousands of people over the years. That takes a lot more brains, dedication, and hard work than any television audience will ever see.

  The boss was interviewed about his hiring strategy back in 2014. He surprised the guy interviewing him with his answer, but it wouldn’t surprise anyone who has worked for Mr. Trump. When asked what he valued in an employee, Mr. Trump gave the interviewer a one-word answer: loyalty. It was something the boss had for everyone on his team and required from everyone in return. Corey used to tell the staff all the time that the campaign was about two things: the staff’s loyalty to Donald J. Trump and Donald J. Trump’s loyalty to the staff. Although he demanded excellence from us and could be very rough when he didn’t get it, Trump always stood by us when we were under fire from the outside.

  The other value high on the boss’s list was work ethic. He got that from his father, Fred Trump, himself a successful businessman, who worked seven days a week. Mr. Trump once said his father used to go to church on Sunday and then right out to check on a building or to attend to some other part of his business. Fred Trump worked right up to the day he died at ninety-three years old. “I have a lot of friends, they take vacations for six weeks and eight weeks and three months and they’re never happy. So, I watched my father. So, I like to work,” Mr. Trump once told Steve Forbes.

  There are a lot of people in politics with fancy degrees and long, impressive résumés, but not quite so many with that kind of work ethic. There are even fewer with loyalty. Donald Trump happened to have all of the above. He was looking for people who’d be as loyal and hardworking as he was. Dave knew Corey Lewandowski was one of them.

  At noon, on Monday, January 5, 2015, Corey sat alone in the Starbucks in the atrium of Trump Tower wearing his best suit, a crisply ironed shirt, and shoes he had shined the night before. He’d used hair spray that morning, which, when you consider he’s from Lowell, is hilarious. The town Corey grew up in isn’t a guys-use-hair-spray kind of place. And besides, he didn’t need it. Corey wears his hair the length of a drill sergeant’s.

  At 12:15 p.m., a man in his early thirties with a receding hairline and wearing an expensive suit with a pocket square walked into the coffee shop. Corey had met Sam Nunberg briefly at the Freedom Summit in New Hampshire. Sam had also emailed Corey a couple of times since then, including that morning to tell him he’d meet him at the Starbucks at noon. Corey had been in Manhattan since eight o’clock that morning. He’d left his home in Windham at three thirty just in case there was traffic. Nunberg being fifteen minutes late bothered him.

  I drive from New Hampshire, and I’m four hours early, he thought, and this guy only has to ride down in an elevator, and he’s late.

  The relationship hadn’t gotten off on the best foot.

  After the requisite greetings, Nunberg led Corey back up to the office on the twenty-fourth floor. There he asked Corey if he minded if he vaped.

  “Knock yourself out,” Corey said. Strike two, he thought.

  In between drags on his vape pen, Nunberg told Corey about some of the things he’d done on Donald Trump’s political behalf, including writing the early political speeches. Although Nunberg had some good points, he also could be blind to the deceptiveness of the press.

  A few months before the Freedom Summit, Nunberg arranged for a one-on-one interview with Trump for a writer from the tabloid website Buzzfeed. The boss didn’t want to do the interview; he knew the website trafficked in junk journalism, especially when it came to covering him. But Nunberg promised that the writer would be fair. Mckay Coppins, the writer, was a friend of his, he said. Inaccuracies, sarcasm, and “wise guy,” remarks, as Mr. Trump would call them, filled the piece. The title told the whole story: “36 Hours on the Fake Campaign Trail with Donald Trump.” Trump fired Nunberg immediately but then hired him back. That wouldn’t be Nunberg’s last whirl through the revolving doors of Trump Tower.

  When it came to his relationship with Trump, Nunberg had nine lives.

  By the time they left to go to Trump’s office, the whole interaction with Sam on the twenty-fourth-floor office hadn’t impressed Corey at all—not Nunberg himself, and certainly not Trump’s
political operation. Corey couldn’t believe that Donald Trump, one of the biggest brands in the world, had a political team that consisted of one guy, a desk, and practically nothing else.

  However lacking the political apparatus around him was, Donald Trump himself was everything Corey had imagined.

  When Corey first walked into his office, Mr. Trump was on the phone—no surprise there. Magazines, folders, newspapers, and photocopies of news stories, mostly about him, and marked up with a black pen in a handwriting Corey would become intimately familiar with, filled the desk in front of him. During the campaign, the amount of mail he received was insane—banker’s boxes filled with notes, photos, letters, magazines, news articles, items both small and large. Mr. Trump would go through every piece of mail. Behind Trump was just glass, through which was the most spectacular New York City view Corey had ever seen. The Plaza Hotel and Central Park looked like miniature models of themselves. Awards and plaques filled the shelf under the windows. Plaques like a humanitarian award from the Jewish National Fund, and photos with famous people, like a young Donald shaking hands with Ronald Reagan, filled the walls. He’d collected hundreds of them over the years. To his right was a bench seat filled with sports memorabilia that was a collector’s dream: Shaq’s shoe, a Jeter-signed bat, Mike Tyson’s championship belt, a Tom Brady Super Bowl–worn helmet.