But, even with the additions of McGahn, Cobb, and George, Donald Trump’s early campaign team didn’t exactly strike fear into the hearts of any other presidential aspirant.
They never saw us coming.
The next big event for Trump was CPAC, which was held in late February 2015 at the National Harbor Hotel in Maryland. There, expectations were low, because Rand Paul, with his Tea Party followers, had been the perennial favorite, due to his father’s supporters.
Knowing this, Corey bussed some Trump supporters down from New Hampshire, just to bolster appearances. He also set up a suite in the hotel, and Hope booked a half dozen or so interviews. The small campaign team was working hard, except for Sam Nunberg, who went missing. The night before Trump’s speech, Sam went to a karaoke bar that was filled with Rand Paul supporters. The rumor was, he got into a Trump-Paul argument that quickly escalated and ended with a straight right hand to Nunberg’s nose. The erstwhile political op walked into the interview room late with a nose that was spread halfway across his face. Trump, who was busy with the media interviews, just glared at him. Later the boss asked Corey if he thought Sam was going to last in his job. “I don’t know, boss,” Corey said. People who don’t know Donald Trump often see him as a cold, calculating mogul bereft of feelings for people. Yes, the boss can certainly be merciless when business is on the line, which for him is almost always. But he sees the humanity in people, and he has a soft spot for those who battle demons.
As the team began slowly expanding, Corey went searching in Trump Tower for more space.
He found it on the fifth floor. It was a raw, empty space—really just one big room. It took up half of the entire floor. The staff of The Apprentice had used it to store their camera equipment, and had occasionally set up temporary office space there. The ceilings were unfinished, and fluorescent light bays hung from them, along with exposed pipe and internet wires. The walls to the offices, of which there weren’t many, were three-quarters high and made from unfinished plywood. The floor was bare concrete.
Perfect, Corey thought.
He sent interns and staff on a scavenger hunt throughout the building, telling them to grab any unused desks, office chairs, and plastic tables. The interns decorated the walls with letters, photos, American flags, caricatures of Trump and other items, all received through the mail from fans and supporters. Corey took a prefab office with Sheetrock walls and a glass door that opened onto a balcony. He had a clean wooden desk, appropriated from somewhere else in the building, and a big fluffy chair with one haggard rip down the center. There was no heat in the room, so in the winter the campaign bought space heaters that would invariably blow the building’s fuses.
When Pope Francis visited New York that June, Mr. Trump and his whole family watched the pontiff ride down Fifth Avenue from Corey’s balcony. The interns and Johnny McEntee rode hover boards and skateboards around the room. It looked more like a start-up than a campaign office. There were no pollsters, media coaches, or focus groups. No speechwriter, no “senior strategist” or any of the other types of “professional” political consultants like the ones who had failed for the last eight years to elect a Republican president.
What we did have was a receptionist, Dorothy Blumenthal, who came back to work even after a piece of concrete from the bare walls fell on her.
We were the island of misfit toys.
CHAPTER 6
THE GOLDEN ESCALATOR
The fact is I go down the streets of New York and the people that really like me are the taxi drivers and the workers, etc. I mean I really get a better response.
—DONALD J. TRUMP, 1988
ONE THING no one can accuse Donald Trump of is not being authentic. We should know; we’ve been in politics for a long time, and we seen plenty of folks who aren’t.
Donald Trump has never changed his message. Just do a Web search on “Donald Trump 1988,” and you’ll find him preaching the same political message he’s preaching now: America First. He appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show in 1988 and said the same things about our lousy trade policies then that he said during his 2016 presidential campaign. And that was before NAFTA.
The boss hasn’t been calling out crooked trade deals for thirty years because it benefits him. He’s done it because he cares about the taxi drivers and the workers running Bobcats and jackhammers, and they know it. That’s why he’s always been well received by regular Americans. That’s why we called him “the blue-collar billionaire.”
Do you want to know why no politician had a chance against Donald Trump in the primaries? He told it like it was. While other politicians were prepping for debates and drilling talking points, Donald Trump was walking out onto stages and saying what he’d been saying for thirty years. It was like no political campaign ever. They never had a chance.
In any story, but especially one with an outcome as unexpected as ours, there are moments when the course of the plot shifts ever so slightly toward the improbable. The call Corey took in Aruba was one of those moments. Maybe it was the voice of Michael Cohen over the speakerphone telling him when the announcement date would be that lit his fire. Or maybe it was that Corey then learned the most valuable lesson you can learn about working for Donald Trump: Proximity to the boss is power.
On the one hand, you couldn’t blame Corey for thinking he could go on vacation without causing too much of a disruption. During that first winter, Trump would fly to Mar-a-Lago just about every weekend, spending time with guests and some old friends who lived full time in Florida, working from an office that he kept at the resort. And Corey was still traveling back and forth to New Hampshire to spend some weekends with his family whenever his schedule would allow. And besides, he’d planned the trip months before he took the job with Trump. The whole family was looking forward to it.
In his bathing suit and flip-flops, with his kids laughing and splashing nearby in the pool, Corey paced the blistering hot cement with his iPhone to his ear. Since Corey had been in Aruba, Trump had probably called him ten times a day. He shuddered to think of his phone bill at the end of the month. This day, the boss had him on speaker, and he could tell a few people were in the room. Then he heard Michael Cohen’s voice.
“We’ve set a date,” the boss’s lawyer said. “Mr. Trump will announce on a Monday in late May.”
It wasn’t a surprise that Mr. Trump was going to announce. Corey had been working hard to convince him to enter the presidential race. He had even begun to plan the announcement, partly to help show Mr. Trump he could run a winning campaign. But the date Michael recommended was crazy. Hard as it was to argue while poolside in paradise in a bathing suit, he was going to give it a shot. Though he wasn’t dressed the part at that moment, Corey was about to assert himself as Donald Trump’s campaign manager.
He told Cohen and the boss, and anyone else who was listening, that a late May announcement date wouldn’t work. He needed at least five weeks to plan the event.
“And a Monday wouldn’t work either,” he said.
Corey explained that Mondays and Fridays are terrible days to try to make news. Monday everyone is still in weekend mode, and Friday is news dump day.
“Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday would be best.”
Still, on the call, he lowered his iPhone a little to look at it, squinting to make out the screen in the sun. He opened the calendar app. He knew he wanted to hold the event on some date that would amplify the slogan of the campaign—Make America Great Again. Doing that would give the rally what’s known in politics as a hook. June 14, which is not only Flag Day but also Mr. Trump’s birthday, would’ve been perfect. Unfortunately, that year it fell on a Sunday.
“June sixteenth,” he said. Equidistant from Memorial Day and Fourth of July. Perfect.
The boss agreed with everything Corey said. The next morning, while eating breakfast with the family, Trump called again, this time without anyone else in the room.
“Where are you?” he said.
“I…
I’m in Aruba, sir,” Corey said.
“Get your ass back here,” Trump said. Then, click.
Leading up to the announcement, the boss did what the boss does best: he built excitement. The press followed him around like a waddle of deranged penguins, just as it had for years. They swallowed his Twitter-announced promises for a “big surprise” the next Tuesday, or Friday, or the week after like they were slurping down pickled herrings, only to see the dates come and go, only to get fooled again. On May 9, Trump participated in the South Carolina Freedom Summit, held at the Peace Center in Greenville and hosted by Dave and Congressman Jeff Duncan of South Carolina—it was a monster. On May 21, Trump took a trip to DC to see the hotel he was building in the Old Post Office building. The press was sure that he would use that property as a backdrop for the announcement. And the boss did little to dissuade that notion. He had banners put up at the construction site that read TRUMP 2016. Once the press was gathered around him, he assured them the date on the banners was when the hotel was going to open, and that it had nothing to do with the presidential race.
Trump campaign attorney, Don McGahn, had his hands full with a candidate that had such vast real estate holdings and was in the middle of a renovation of a GSA building while entertaining a run for the presidency.
Though he was having fun with media, he was also taking some serious steps toward a candidacy. He began to float policy balloons. Recorded radio ads ran in New Hampshire in which he railed against the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal. In early May, he told Matthew Boyle at Breitbart News that the trade agreement would be a disaster.
Much was written after the election touting the notion that Trump had gotten his policy ideas during nine interviews he did at early campaign (and precampaign) events with Steve Bannon on Breitbart radio. Trump looked forward to the interviews with Bannon. “Where’s my Stevie?” he would ask when he was finished speaking at the events. But Bannon would be the first to tell you that the idea that he, somehow, through some subliminal urging, had placed those ideas in the boss’s head is a total fallacy. What the boss learned from his interviews with Bannon was how his policies would play with voters and which ones would reach the most people.
By the way, Mr. Trump learned something from every interview. It didn’t matter whether it was Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Matt Lauer, Don Lemon, the New York Times, Michael Savage, or Mark Levin. In each, he would ascertain what was important for him to know by the questions he was being asked. When you look back at his interviews, you can see how they helped him prepare for the debates, both in the primary and the general election. It was political genius and a talent for which he gets very little credit. If anyone but Donald J. Trump showed the same skill, he or she would be called a mastermind. Trump knew what he stood for, but having never run for office, this education helped him craft his message.
Mr. Trump had decided to hold the announcement at Trump Tower. Corey hired union carpenters to build a stage and a three-tier riser for the press. As this was New York, he also had to hire a few friends, cousins, and uncles of people who worked at Trump Tower. Corey had booked the food court on the lower level. Though the space had a few pluses—the famous escalator, for instance—it was rather small. To make room for the stage, they had to turn off the waterfall that was built into a wall.
Matt Calamari, who was chief operating officer of Trump Properties, has been with Donald Trump since 1981. Trump first met Calamari at the US Open tennis tournament, where he was working as a security guard. The story goes that the boss watched him escort a couple of hecklers out of the stadium, which is a nice way of describing what happened that day, and then hired him on the spot to oversee security at Trump Tower. At six foot three, Calamari is a formidable presence. What makes him even more intimidating is that he speaks a little like Joe Pesci from either My Cousin Vinny or Goodfellas—take your pick—but only if you added about a hundred pounds to the voice and made it a foot taller.
Calamari runs Trump Tower like he owns a piece of the place. He watched Corey’s carpenters carry gear and lumber for the stage through the main lobby of the tower like they were conspiring to rob the joint.
“Whoa, Whoa, Whoa!” he yelled at one. “Don’t put that hammer on my floor! That’s fucking marble!”
The real owner of the building also had his ideas on how things should work in Trump Tower.
As it would be for the rest of the campaign, Mr. Trump picked the music for the event. He never worried about getting permission to use the songs. He’d say things like, “Use Pavarotti, he loves me!” All he cared about was that the tunes were upbeat and loud—very loud.
Corey had hired Tim Unes, a seasoned pro in the world of political events, to help plan the announcement. Unes then introduced Corey to George Gigicos, who was also an expert at staging—he’d done campaigns for John McCain, Mitt Romney, and George W. Bush. Plenty of experience. Still, for whatever reason, the boss was leery of letting an outsider get his hands on the audio knobs, especially when it came to controlling his walk-on music. Hearing for the first time that someone named George Gigicos, whom he had never met, would be in charge, Trump scanned the lobby, looking hard for a familiar face. He spotted an older gentleman near the wall, who, as Corey recalls, appeared to be no younger than ninety. (And this was in good light.)
“Johnny!” Trump yelled. “Come over here, Johnny!”
The man looked confused but came over anyway. Trump and Corey stood waiting for him.
“My name’s Fred, sir,” he said. “I was—”
“Are you working tomorrow, Johnny?” Trump said.
Fred, it turned out, had been working in a couch-size fire control room on the main floor of Trump Tower since shortly after they broke ground on the building.
“Yes, Mr. Trump,” he said. “I’m working tomorrow.”
“All right, Johnny. Then you’re in charge of the music.”
Tread lightly, Corey thought. “But, sir,” Corey said. “We’ve got George, sir.”
“I don’t want George!” Trump yelled, pointing at Fred. “I want Johnny!”
“My name’s Fred, sir.”
“Whatever!” Trump said, now joking with the guy.
Corey kept trying. “Sir,” he said. “I know George is going to get this right. He’s done this stuff for the pope! Can we please put George in charge of the music?”
Trump thought for a second and, despite the fact that he didn’t know George, said, “I have no faith in this guy, Corey.”
Just as an aside, George ended up heading the advance team for the campaign, a job that was like no other in political history before. He would book and stage events in venues like airplane hangars and football stadiums all over the country at a rate that would increase to six a day toward the end. Later, he would work for President Trump in the White House.
In the days before the announcement, Corey pounded Red Bulls and, along with George, worked about thirty hours straight to get the event staged.
At around two a.m. on the morning of the event, someone noticed that the lanyards for the invites and press, some five hundred passes, had the date “June 16, 2016,” printed on them, which would have been fine if the event was going to take place the next year. It was a disaster. Corey knew that both the press and the boss would kill him, with the boss being the worst of the two. He sent his most trusted staffer, Joy Lutes, out to find an all-night printing store. She had never been to New York City before but somehow found one open in Harlem and returned with the revised passes at five a.m.
At about six thirty, Corey ran home to shower and change into a suit.
When Corey first took the job with Trump, the plan was to stay in New York during the week and fly home to New Hampshire on the weekends. The thought of renting an apartment in Manhattan was out of the question for him. Far too expensive. But he figured he could work something out with his new boss. After all, Trump owned hotels and buildings all over town, right?
That first day, Corey approach
ed Rhona Graff, whose office is right next to Trump’s, and inquired about staying in a room in one of the Trump properties. As Corey remembered it, she recommended the Trump SoHo, but she also let him know that he would have to pay for the room. Corey was pretty sure it would be a campaign expense but went to Trump a little later in the day to talk about it.
“Why would you want to stay at one of my hotels when I can get you a place for free?” he asked.
Mr. Trump owned several beautiful four-story town houses on East Sixty-First Street in Manhattan and kept an apartment on the second floor of one of them for friends and visitors. He had invited the family of the ex-NFL star Jim Kelly to stay there while the quarterback was at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan, battling for his life in a fight against cancer in his jaw.
That first night he stayed in the apartment, Corey received a lesson in Manhattan hospitality.
Keith Schiller gave him the keys, and Corey had written the address down. But when he showed up at the building and tried to get in, the key didn’t work. He called Keith.
“Just buzz the woman who lives in the first-floor apartment,” Keith told him. “She’ll let you in.”
Corey did as instructed and buzzed the first-floor apartment. The woman who answered the buzzer told him in no uncertain terms that if he didn’t stop trying to get into her building, she would call the cops. Corey was at the right building number, but on the wrong block—he had written down Sixty-Third Street instead of Sixty-First.
When he finally got into the right apartment, it was like walking onto a movie set. He would have the same reaction later when he saw Mar-a-Lago for the first time. The apartment was like a mini version of Trump’s Palm Beach club—lots of gold leaf and old oak. Corey would end up staying at the apartment for his entire eighteen-month tenure as Trump’s campaign manager and even longer. Throughout that time, he never once used the living room, never turned on the cable TV, and brought every bit of his clothing with him when he went home for the weekend. He was so afraid of ruining something that all he did in the apartment was sleep and shower, which he did before heading back to Trump Tower on the morning of the announcement.
Let Trump Be Trump Page 7