Let Trump Be Trump

by Corey R. Lewandowski

  Corey had volunteers rush around and hand out MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN T-shirts to the building’s workers. By eleven, he had enough people lining the balcony, some wearing MAGA T-shirts.

  Mr. Trump and Melania took the elevator down to the lobby level and then stepped out from behind a curtain. Then, with Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World” blaring from the speakers, expertly cued by George (whom the boss had allowed, begrudgingly, to take a shot at handling the audio), Donald Trump, in a dark blue suit, a white shirt, and a red tie, with his beautiful wife, Melania, wearing a pearl-white dress preceding him, took the now-famous ride down the escalator.

  It would be the last time any part of his campaign moved in a downward direction for a while.

  For two days leading up to the announcement, Corey and George had partly sequestered themselves in a Midtown hotel to write the announcement speech. They were able to file the speech down to a manageable seven and a half minutes. Corey even released it to all of the press, so that they would have the text in advance.

  He shouldn’t have bothered.

  In his office just before the announcement, Trump gave a quick look at the sheet of paper Corey handed him, folded it up, and put it in his breast pocket, never to look at it again. Then, in front of the microphone on the stage inside the dried-out waterfall, with hundreds of members of the media present, the boss delivered what is arguably the most memorable announcement speech of any candidate for office in history. It was a forty-five-minute freestyle soliloquy that included these thirty words: “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best,” he said. “They’re sending people that have lots of problems… they’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime; they’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

  It’s funny. The media’s reaction to those remarks was at first a flat nothing.

  When people asked Corey or Hope Hicks how the speech went, all he had to say was, “Great, just as we planned.”

  Sometimes, however, the spark nearly goes out before the forest catches on fire.

  Right after the announcement, team Trump, which included Dan, Hope, George, Keith, Corey, and Donald Trump, boarded Trump Force One at La Guardia. The 757 climbed, banked, and headed west toward Des Moines, Iowa. Kevin Chmielewski had gotten Hoyt Sherman Place ready for the candidate. The boss delivered virtually the same message as he had at Trump Tower, with similar words. In the theater, his speech was wildly received. Among the press, there wasn’t so much as a ripple.

  On the way out of the theater, the boss asked Corey why he thought it would be so hard for him to win in Iowa. “They love me here,” he said.

  The next day, Trump and his whole team were in New Hampshire, where they announced in a college basketball arena. The plan was to then head to the third of the first three primary states, South Carolina.

  We wouldn’t make that trip until two weeks later.

  There is nothing that can change a campaign more quickly than a national tragedy.

  While the team was still in New Hampshire, a racist maniac named Dylann Roof walked into a historic black church in downtown Charleston and murdered nine people in cold blood.

  On the boss’s insistence, we canceled all planned trips to South Carolina for three weeks. Some things should be and are above politics.

  But not everyone stayed so quiet about it. Just a few days after the tragedy happened, we learned that Hillary Clinton had gone on Ralston Live and tried to push some of the blame for Roof’s actions onto Trump.

  “A recent entry into the Republican race,” Hillary said, “said some very inflammatory things about Mexicans. And decent people need to stand up against that. Things like that can trigger an unstable person.”

  The negative fallout was immediate. News headlines blared reports of a mass exodus from all things Trump: Macy’s dropped the Trump clothing line, NBC said that Trump would never host The Apprentice again. Stars, producers, and sponsors jumped from the Miss Universe contest as if it were a jet ski heading for a jetty. Even Neil Young, who had once been friendly with Trump, the boss, told the campaign that it could no longer use his music.

  But lost in the clamor was a popular uprising that had gone all but unnoticed by the Left and the media, who were, of course, the microphone of the Left.

  Clinton had called out Trump’s thirty words in the hope of destroying him politically. But all she did was open the eyes of a huge swath of Republicans who hadn’t yet thought of voting for Donald Trump. And those who already wanted to vote for him now wanted to do so even more.

  Sometime after the tragedy, the phone rang in Rhona Graff’s office. The voice belonged to Pam Gross, a friend of Rhona’s, who handled booking for CNN Tonight, anchored by Don Lemon. We would come to deal with her quite a bit by the end of the campaign.

  “We need Mr. Trump on tonight,” Pam said. “Will he be available?”

  It’s hard to remember exactly how this went, since the same scenario would play out so many times, but Corey seems to remember Trump yelling from his office when he heard about the offer, barely looking up from the newspaper on his desk.

  “Tell her I’ll do a phoner!”

  If you get out the map, Trump Tower is about eight blocks from Don Lemon’s studio. Seriously, if we’d cracked a window in Trump’s office, the boss could probably have hit a three wood halfway there.

  Now, if this were Ted Cruz? Ben Carson? Even Hillary Clinton?

  Click. No thanks.

  There was a long pause on the other end of the line.

  News networks do not take call-ins from political candidates. Audio alone doesn’t work well on television, and phone reception can be spotty or cut out altogether, which the boss would use to his advantage. Easy as they are to set up, phone interviews make for a real lack of control on the network’s end. Plus, the host usually looks like an idiot—looking at nothing, waiting for answers to come down from the ceiling. So, for years, there was a rule: Unless your candidate is trapped in a mineshaft somewhere, you’d better get him to the studio. If you didn’t like that, you could find some other way to get him on television.

  But this was Donald Trump, the first Republican front-runner in the history of American politics who brought viewers to the networks, not the other way around. If Trump wanted to send in his comments by carrier pigeon, CNN would schedule a full hour for Jake Tapper to read out his notes.

  “Fine,” Pam said.

  By the end of the interview, the boss had taken all of Don Lemon’s jagged questions, flipped them, and doubled down on the points he had made in the first place. He had stats and hard facts in front of him (the kind of thing you can’t look at in a studio) and kept slinging them till Don had no choice but to throw in the towel. The team would look back on that night as the evening that Trump picked up a few thousand undecided conservative voters—all because he wouldn’t back down.

  Lemon disputed the data on which the boss had based his remarks about Mexican rapists in his announcement speech. In Trump’s hand was a magazine article with data showing the increase in rapes, which might or might not have cited Mexican illegals as the cause. It didn’t matter to the people who listened to Trump whether the boss had gotten the details correct. His words captured the way they felt, and that’s all that mattered to them. His was a language the Left couldn’t and wouldn’t ever understand.

  It was a virtuoso performance in total, but it is probably best remembered for a single line the boss said. Two weeks later, the same words would start to appear on lawn signs. After Lemon disputed his rape statistics, the boss said: “Well, somebody’s doing the raping, Don.”

  CHAPTER 7

  UP IN THE AIR

  I employ thousands and thousands of Hispanics. I love the people. The Latinos. I love the people. They’re great; they’re workers. They’re fantastic people. But they want… legal immigration.

  —DONALD J. TRUMP, LAREDO, TEXAS, JULY 23, 2015

  EVERYONE KNOWS what the media said about the bos
s’s campaign after he announced his candidacy. Every time he said anything not politically correct, they declared his campaign over. But after weeks of having those thirty-six words from his announcement speech knowingly misrepresented by the media as racist, the boss accepted an invitation to travel to Laredo, Texas, and meet with its border patrol officers and local officials.

  The media tried to downplay the warm reception that Mr. Trump got from just about everyone involved, including the mayor of Laredo, a Democrat. The border patrol, the local government, and much of the population knew there was a problem with border security, and they were glad someone had finally dared to propose real solutions. Border security and immigration were Donald Trump’s campaign issues.

  There was an awfully small group of Latino protesters there when we arrived. But, unfortunately, they were protesting a lie the media told them. They had been told Donald Trump called all Mexicans or all Mexican immigrants rapists, murderers, and so forth. But go back and read those thirty-six words again. He didn’t even call all illegal immigrants rapists or murderers. He distinctly said he assumed some were good people.

  So if the boss is a racist, why did he say, “They’re not sending their best?” If he believed all Mexicans were the same, based on their race, that wouldn’t make much sense. Neither would his statements about some of them being criminals and some being good people.

  Those thirty-six words were as close to the opposite of racism as any words could be.

  So, no matter how hard the media tried to spin the story on his trip, it was a total success. The people there saw through the smoke CNN and others were blowing, just as the boss figured they would. We rolled into town to cheering crowds and appreciation from everyone we met with.

  Come to think of it, we rolled into just about every place we visited the same way. Donald Trump knew how to roll—and fly.

  When Donald Trump listed the aircraft he had during Corey’s job interview, Corey shrugged it off as a random boast. But Trump wasn’t boasting. He was pointing out the military equipment he had for the war ahead. A candidate with a jet has a formidable advantage over rivals without one. A candidate with an air force was going to be tough to beat.

  And we’re not talking cargo planes here.

  Trump Force One is a 24-karat-plated, plush-leather-adorned, first-class aircraft complete with a master bedroom, dining room, galley, big-screen TV, and concert-level sound system. The Rolls Royce engines on the 757 can blow the wings off most commercial airliners. It has every amenity you can imagine. And though the jet was the crown jewel of the fleet, there were also other gems, including the Cessna Citation X, the fastest corporate jet available, and the multitude of helicopters.

  When you flew with Trump, you flew first class times ten.

  Except, that is, when it came time to eat.

  The first time Dave told his wife Susan that he was going to be on Trump Force One, she asked him to take some photos of what they served him to eat on the plane. She had read somewhere that Mr. Trump had a personal chef who traveled with him. When dinner came on the flight, Dave pulled out his BlackBerry and snapped a picture of the bag of McDonald’s hamburgers and unopened package of Oreo cookies and emailed it to Susan.

  On Trump Force One there were four major food groups: McDonald’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken, pizza, and Diet Coke. There were also ancillary groups, including Vienna Fingers and the ubiquitous Oreo, before the boycott (after it was Hydrox). The reason the package of Oreos was unopened was because Mr. Trump would never eat from a previously opened package. If you’ve seen the Seinfeld episode in which George double-dips his chip, you have a pretty good idea of the boss’s reasoning. Packages of cookies, along with small airliner-size bags of pretzels and potato chips, filled the plane’s cupboards. An army might march on its stomach, but Trump’s team flew on junk food. And those snacks would have to sustain us during long flights and even longer days.

  The candidate would hardly ever eat lunch and would eat dinner only after he finished the last event of the day. We’d be in the jet or on the road from seven or eight a.m., make however many scheduled stops we had, and after the last one, perhaps around nine p.m., Mr. Trump would clap his hands and say, “Let’s eat!” And the food needed to be hot and ready for him. Some of the time, especially when he was pleased with his performance at a rally or event, he’d say, “Do you think I deserve a malted today? I think I deserve one.” Trump, a city kid, grew up drinking malteds, so that’s what he always called a milkshake. Whatever you want to call it, it better be there and it better still be thick.

  The orchestrating and timing of Mr. Trump’s meals was as important as any other aspect of his march to the presidency.

  In the beginning weeks of the campaign, with just the core five—Hope, Keith, Dan Scavino, George Gigicos, and Corey—the job of getting Mr. Trump his dinner fell to Corey and Keith, and the task needed teamwork and coordination to accomplish. There were variables to take into account. For instance, we didn’t know how long the candidate would spend working the rope line. He could shake hands for ten minutes or half an hour. We had to take into consideration traffic patterns, last-minute chats with VIPs, and other unexpected diversions. There were lots of moving parts. At the end of the day, however, the boss’s meal had to arrive on time.

  As soon as Mr. Trump came off the stage, Corey would peel off in a car to the local McDonald’s while Keith kept him apprised of the candidate’s progress.

  In no time, they had it down to a science, with Corey arriving at the jet’s steps just as Mr. Trump would climb out of the car on the tarmac.

  As the events started to get bigger, and Corey had to let others take over the meal run, it became more challenging. Corey hired Michael Glassner in July 2015. He had been Sarah Palin’s top adviser in 2008. Later, Corey would promote Glassner to deputy campaign manager. Michael’s first job on the campaign, however, was taking over Corey’s duty as the food runner.

  One time in Chicago, when our motorcade blew through red lights with a police escort, the boss’s dinner—two Big Macs, two Fillet-O-Fish, and a chocolate malted—sat in bumper-to-bumper traffic. In times like that, the “run” would become like a scene out of Fast and Furious: burning rubber, up on two wheels, donuts. Well, close to that.

  And, if you were late, you got no mercy.

  We were on the road one time in South Carolina when the boss decided he was ready for dinner. Sam Nunberg was in the follow-up SUV when Keith and Corey went in to get the food. Sam went in also, leaving just Hope and the boss in the car. A few minutes later, Corey came out with the bag that contained dinner for himself, Hope, Keith, and the boss’s meal in a separate bag. But Sam had decided he wanted a special order: no pickles, extra onion, hold the lettuce, along those lines. Mr. Trump was sitting with the bag on his lap. We had the SUV’s door open for Sam like it was a getaway car. Two minutes went by. Three minutes passed by.

  “Keith, go get him, would ya?” he said.

  When Keith returned without him, the boss had had enough. “Leave him,” he said with absolute finality. “Let’s go.”

  Roger that.

  Corey turned and looked out of the back window to see Sam, empty-handed, waving and running after the SUVs. The lesson here is that there is only one boss, and when he is ready to go, you go. Period.

  When traveling in the air with the boss, you also learned pretty quickly to like Elton John. Donald Trump really likes Elton John. Anthony “the Mooch” Scaramucci got in all sorts of hot water—which is not at all an unfamiliar position for him—when he told an interviewer that Elton John would play at President Trump’s inaugural. It had been wishful thinking on Mooch’s part, probably because he’d been on the plane when the boss had “Tiny Dancer” or “Rocket Man” playing as loud as the concert-level speakers could bring it.

  We’re telling you, when the boss cranks up Elton, you can’t hear yourself think. The music is loud enough to rattle your brain.

  Still, suffering through a brain-r
attling “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” is far more preferable than the boss going off over something on Fox News, CNN, or MSNBC—and yes, we would even watch MSNBC, perhaps just to hear what the liberals were saying about him.

  In all the time Corey flew with him, some thousand hours plus, he saw Mr. Trump close his eyes maybe five times. And by “close his eyes,” he means for three minutes, tops. Donald Trump is an absolute machine. He is the single hardest-working person we have ever seen. You could count the number of times on one hand when, once in a blue moon, when it was a long flight, like coming back from Vegas to New York, he might go into his room and come out thirty minutes later. We’d think at first, Finally! Now we can watch something other than CNN or Fox. And then the TV would start changing channels, because the remote he had changed the channels on all the TVs on the plane. It got to the point where he was getting so much airtime not even the boss could take it.

  “Too much Trump for Trump,” he said one day.

  During that flight, instead of news, we watched a film, Deliverance. It would be Hope’s first and last time she watched the movie.

  Speaking of Hope, the last thing we’ll tell you about life on Trump Force One is the steamer. Mr. Trump was a stickler when it came to how he looked onstage and at events. He had a steamer on board that would take the wrinkles out of his suits. When we landed, it was Hope’s job to steam him.

  “Get the machine!” he’d yell. And Hope would take out the steamer and start steaming Mr. Trump’s suit, while he was wearing it! She’d steam the jacket first and then sit in a chair in front of him and steam his pants.

  One time, Hope forgot to bring the steamer on the jet.