Let Trump Be Trump

by Corey R. Lewandowski

  Then, before anyone even knew what was happening, Trump had the receiver of the hotel phone in his hand. He was dialing CNN.

  “This is Donald Trump,” he said. And just like that, as he always does, he took control of the situation.

  He was on the air with Don Lemon again before the crowds had even dispersed, offering a view of his rallies that you could get only from his place on the stage. The boss blamed CNN, and rightfully so, for twisting the narrative and shifting the perspective to make his fans look bad, and he swatted down anything that Lemon threw at him. When Lemon accused the boss of inciting violence against innocent protesters, the boss came right back at him.

  “You know it’s not true when you say that statement, Don,” he said. “You know it’s not true. [The protesters] will stand up and they’ll start swinging at people.”

  It was evident to anyone watching that Trump wouldn’t be intimidated or cowed by a few thugs, and certainly not by Don Lemon. By the end of the night, he had spoken with five anchors on five different live broadcasts, reaching millions of people, all for the price of a phone bill from a hotel that he ultimately owned anyway. The expression is “earned media,” which is a fancy way of saying free media. Donald Trump is the undisputed, undefeated heavyweight champ of earned media. According to mediaQuant, an outfit that figures how much it cost each candidate if he or she had to pay for the coverage he or she was getting, Donald Trump’s earned media was near $2 billion, with a “b,” at this point in the campaign. He had earned $400 million in February 2016 alone. To put it in other terms, he had more free coverage on television, radio, newspapers, Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit than all sixteen other Republican candidates and Hillary Clinton combined. And he had spent only about $10 million on ads at that point, which was $4 million less than Governor Kasich had.

  We’ll admit that it was fun to watch. These were the pundits—geniuses—who said that Trump could never be a serious candidate in the first place. They’d been telling viewers for months that he was going to treat the whole campaign as a game show, maybe stay in long enough to promote a new product or give his brand a few minutes of free air.

  This was March 11, 2016. And our boss was not any daytime host, and his campaign was not a game show. He was on a path to be the president of the United States.

  In like a lion, out like a lamb, they say of March. There were no lambs to be found in our campaign, except maybe a sacrificial one. The month began with Super Tuesday, when we took seven of the eleven voting states. Two days later, Mitt Romney added his name to a growing list of establishment Republicans against Trump by calling the boss a con man in a delivered speech. Then we had to cancel the Chicago rally. The next afternoon in Dayton, a nutjob jumped the barrier and tried to get to our candidate. Secret Service officers rushed the boss from the stage. On March 29, the Jupiter, Florida Police Department processed Corey for simple battery “in that he did intentionally touch Michelle Fields,” as the official report said. Watch the video, Corey says. About five million people have. But it was a new addition on the twenty-eighth that would be the most significant event for Corey and the campaign.

  Not that he had the time to realize it.

  To give you an idea of what our campaign schedule looked like then, consider this: From March 21 to March 29, nine days, Trump Force One flew from Atlanta to Elko, Nevada, from Elko to Las Vegas, from Las Vegas to Reno to Virginia Beach, from Virginia Beach to Houston for the CNN debate, from Houston to Fort Worth, from Fort Worth to Oklahoma City, from Oklahoma City to Bentonville, Arkansas, from Bentonville to Millington, Tennessee, on to Alabama, Virginia, and back to Georgia. In eight days. Thirteen flights, nearly 8,500 miles. With two pilots. Not two sets of pilots. Two pilots, Captain John Duncan, who joined the Trump world in 1989, and copilot Peter Harron. From the beginning of the campaign until Election Day, our two amazing pilots, John and Pete, and our campaign team, along with our flight attendant, Stacy, flew to 45 states, visiting 203 cities and flying 370,725 miles during 722 flight segments. The 757 used 988,991 gallons of jet fuel. Corey once figured out that during his time as campaign manager, he sat next to Donald Trump on the 757 for a total of 1,000 hours. That’s over forty-six days spent in an airplane. Sitting next to your boss. And in that period you get to know someone. It was during that time that Corey saw the side of Mr. Trump few would get to see. The funny, magnanimous, gracious, loyal person who wanted only to change America for the better.

  As tough as the boss could be—and he could be tough—a bond developed between those of us on those flights that was akin to family; in particular, a bond between the boss, Hope, Corey, and Keith. Trump called Hope and Corey, “Hopester” and “Cor.” When they would RON (remain overnight) in Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump would insist they sit with him for dinner. He loved being around “the kids” because they shared his experience of the campaign and they understood his thoughts and feelings about it. But mostly he loved being with them because he liked them, and he knew they liked him. Yes, the campaign was business. And in business the boss could get angry. But he would never sacrifice friendship for business. The friendship between the boss and Corey and Hope—and Keith too—was strong. At dinner, the boss would be charming and entertaining. He would regale them with stories from his amazing life, the people he’d met and the places he’d gone. It’s hard for us to say this without sounding corny. But Mr. Trump, at his core, is a good man. When George Gigicos had to miss his little girls’ ballet recitals because of the campaign, the boss recorded a video message for them:

  “Girls, your father loves you. We’re running for president. If it’s okay with you, I’ll steal your father for the day. He’s a very talented guy, and I need him. Thank you, girls.” There is so much hate and misunderstanding that people rarely get the chance to see the man for who he is. We have. And we consider ourselves lucky.

  But business was business. And by the spring of 2016, Corey’s days as campaign manager were numbered. Though the boss never talked about it, he didn’t forget the loss to Ted Cruz in Iowa, or the embarrassment Ivanka and Jared had suffered at the caucus site. And though the incident with Michelle Fields wasn’t the reason for the fallout between him and the boss, the negative attention didn’t help Corey’s cause. It especially didn’t help his relationship with the boss’s children. Though none of those things was solely responsible for Corey’s being fired, combined, they set the stage. The last act for Corey began at a dinner at Mar-a-Lago on March 28.

  Corey knew the name Paul Manafort; you couldn’t work in Washington, DC and not know the name. The political consulting and lobbying firm Black, Manafort, Stone, and Kelly had been a power broker in town since Ronald Reagan was first elected president. Our hero, Lee Atwater, had joined the firm as a partner in 1984. The Stone in the name is Roger Stone. And the Manafort is Paul.

  Though he knew the name, Corey knew nothing of the man. He wasn’t alone. Not a lot of people working in politics under fifty knew Paul Manafort. His last foray into a political campaign was Bob Dole’s campaign, and there he had been an “informal” adviser. You’d have to go back to 1980 and the relatively small role he played as “southern coordinator” for Reagan to find any real on-the-front-lines campaign experience.

  So when the boss asked to set up a meeting for him with Manafort, Corey had to think for a second before the name made sense to him. It was Tom Barrack, the CEO of the investment firm Colony Capital and a friend of the boss’s for thirty years, who recommended Manafort. Corey made the call, and a dinner was set up for the following week at Mar-a-Lago.

  The first thing the boss said when he met Paul was, “Wow, you’re a good-looking guy,” the same words he’d said when he first met Corey. Significantly older than Corey, by about thirty years, Manafort had had some work done to secure his youthful appearance. By then, Corey, with Hope and others, had had dinner with the boss at Mar-a-Lago at least fifty times. “Come on, kids, let’s eat,” Mr. Trump would say. They always sat outside, where Mr. Trump would inte
ract with his guests. Throughout the meal, members of the club and guests would come over to say hello. But with Manafort, the boss wanted to sit inside by the fireplace, for privacy.

  Later that night, the campaign flew back to New York. On Monday, in Trump Tower, Corey received a call from a reporter asking if Mr. Trump had had dinner with Paul Manafort at Mar-a-Lago the night before. Corey went into Hope’s office and asked her if she’d spoken to a reporter about Manafort. She hadn’t. Then he went up to the twenty-sixth floor and asked the boss if he had. Sometimes Mr. Trump would just talk to a reporter, but this time he hadn’t said a word.

  Corey knew from that moment on that Manafort was a leaker. Corey could also tell good people from bad, and he could tell right away that Paul was a bad guy. And somewhere in his soul, he knew that the addition of Manafort to the team was not going to turn out well. Especially for him. It is now clearer than ever that Paul was trouble. It is reported that the FBI had wiretapped Paul before and after he was at the campaign.

  Barrack told Trump to bring Paul on as a “delegate hunter.” At the time, a narrative had appeared, one that was blown completely out of proportion, that the boss was in jeopardy of losing the Republican nomination. The narrative revolved around the number of delegates he had.

  To explain the delegate-selection process, which varies from state to state, would take up its own chapter in Louisiana, for example, half the delegates are awarded to the winner of the primary, and half are set by an election in the state House. But simply put, to win the nomination a candidate had to reach 1,237 delegates. Despite the primary victory routs, the campaign hadn’t secured the delegates needed to prevent a contested convention. But what hurt Corey was the perception in the press—and within the family—that the Cruz campaign knew how to game the delegate system and Corey didn’t. At that time, all in, the Trump campaign numbered about forty people. To put that in context, Hillary’s campaign had eight hundred in the Brooklyn office alone. The Cruz campaign was also much bigger and more sophisticated, with people like Ken Cuccinelli, who is smart and was dedicated to do one thing: seat delegates. Trump was watching MSNBC, CNN, and Fox News all day, and two of the three were telling everyone in America that he still could lose and not be the Republican nominee. That narrative became very troubling because he’d never been in a political campaign before, and quickly it became the dominant thought in his brain. They kept telling him he could still lose. So Paul, who had last hunted delegates for Gerald Ford in 1976, was brought in.

  Almost immediately, Corey began to feel marginalized. Dave had been telling him to start looking for people to help take some of the work off his plate. Figure out one problem and solve it, Dave said. Corey didn’t have the time to take the advice.

  Maybe it’s best for Corey himself to tell you what happened next:

  Working eighteen to twenty hours a day for months on end takes a toll on a person’s health. We’d been pushing so hard there was no time for me to work out, eat well, or even sleep. It was just planning the events and then going to the events. The first thing that happened during this time is that I caught pneumonia, or at least something close to pneumonia.

  So, in the first week of April, I’m sick as a dog. I mean, deathly ill. And you can’t get sick around the boss; heck, he gets freaked out when people sneeze around him. And I’m way past the sneezing stage. So I’m basically relegated away from him. On the second of April, we fly to Wisconsin to do several events leading up to the state’s primary on the fifth. On Sunday the third, I wake up in Green Bay and can barely get out of bed. Somehow, I do the Green Bay event, pounding Monsters and Red Bulls, and then go to Milwaukee for a town hall with Greta Van Susteren. The next day we fly to La Crosse and do a town hall there, and then one in Superior, and then fly back to Milwaukee for a town hall with Sean Hannity. It’s a killer schedule under any circumstances, but it’s unbearable when you’re sick. But I know we’re in trouble in Wisconsin. The Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, is killing us, and Governor Scott Walker is far from being on the Trump train. Mr. Trump, however, thinks he can win. So we spend all day traveling and doing events.

  Meanwhile, Manafort is back at Trump Tower, in his apartment, 43G, making charts—he was big on charts—or sitting in the conference room with the Trump kids, and going out to the Hamptons on the weekends. And I’m on the road. I’m not sitting in my house in New Hampshire, which I hadn’t been to in two months. I’m in cars. I’m in planes. I’m in cities, because that’s where the campaign is. That’s where decisions are being made, on the plane, in the cars, because that’s how the boss is. He makes decisions on the move.

  I think it was on the flight from La Crosse, Wisconsin, to Superior, Wisconsin, that Monday morning when I went to the back of the plane and put my head down. It’s a twenty, thirty-minute flight. I fell asleep. And the boss looked back at me and said, “Corey, if you can’t take it, we’ll get somebody else.”

  “I just don’t feel well, Mr. Trump.”

  I’d been running hard, insanely hard. From January 2015 to April 2016 nonstop. Almost no days off. And it’s real work. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining. Managing the boss’s campaign was the best eighteen months of my professional life. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t hard. It was. And there was an enormous amount of stress.

  By this time in the campaign, and really by just before the election victory in New Hampshire, the Trump family is involved, big-league. Dave told me to get somebody to help. Lots of people were calling me telling me they wanted to help, but none of them were willing to move to New York. Others offered to be “professional consultants,” people who wanted to get paid a lot but weren’t willing to show up every day. I relied on my deputy, Michael Glassner, to staff our state offices and find talent. But he wasn’t able to do that and travel, where we needed him more. I literally didn’t have the time to interview anyone. I was stressed about everything.

  We lose the primary in Wisconsin, which I knew we were going to do. The boss does Fox & Friends the morning after and we get on the plane and head back to New York. On the twenty-fifth floor of the Trump Tower the family’s offices and conference room, there’s rumbling that Corey can’t run this campaign anymore. It’s beyond him. He should have never lost Wisconsin.

  “Look,” I told them, “we should have never won Wisconsin.” Doesn’t matter what I say. Minds are already made up.

  We head into the Acela primaries: New York, Connecticut, Pennsylvania. And Paul asks for and receives operational control for all campaign issues. They tell me I can fly around in the plane with the candidate, do all the events, and work twenty hours a day, but you don’t have any say anymore.

  We do a massive event out in Bethpage on Long Island, ten, twelve thousand people. I’m in the motorcade, and I can feel something’s not right. The boss is not happy that we lost Wisconsin. The family’s not happy with me. They haven’t been happy with me since Judge Gonzalo Curiel and the Trump University case. They think I should have kept their father from making the comments he did. Right. Like that could ever happen.

  Meanwhile, the delegate fight is going on. The boss was asking me questions like, “How come I win Louisiana but don’t win all the delegates?” Paul is telling Trump that he came on board too late to have made a difference in Louisiana. It’s all Corey’s fault, he said. During that first dinner at Mar-a-Lago, I thought Manafort was the cavalry coming to help. I didn’t think he was coming to stick a shiv in my back—but that’s what dishonest people do.

  We’re in Rochester, Albany, and then Utica. Then we shoot over to Pittsburgh because Pennsylvania’s coming up. From Pittsburgh, we go to Hartford. Then we’re back campaigning hard in New York with Carl Paladino. We’re doing event after event all over the state: Rochester, Albany, Buffalo. Radio interviews. Small conference rooms. Television interviews. We take a side trip to Indiana to meet with Mike Pence and then on to Maryland. Back to New York, the Bill O’Reilly interview. The Today Show with the family. And back to Penns
ylvania. Then onto Delaware.

  For the trip to Delaware, we take the Trump helicopter. On board are Mr. Trump, Hope, Keith, one Secret Service agent, and myself.

  By now, Paul Manafort is firmly ingrained and has made strategic alliances with family members. He flies to Florida in April and attends a meeting with members of the RNC. There he tells them that everything Trump has said up to now is a ruse, that he is going to show them the real Donald Trump from now on. Paul is going to change Donald Trump. While we’re in the air, somebody, I think it was Ann Coulter, tweets out a quote from Paul saying that Trump shouldn’t be on television anymore, that he shouldn’t do the Sunday shows. And from now on I—meaning Paul—will do all shows. Because he’s the fucking expert, right? Not Trump, who had already turned the whole primary race on its head. So, we’re in the helicopter and Hope says to him: “I turned down all the Sunday show requests.”

  “What?!” the boss screams. “Without asking me?”

  “Yes, sir,” Hope says, “Paul said he doesn’t want you on TV.”

  Mr. Trump goes fucking ballistic. We’re over the metropolitan area, so you can get cell service if you fly at a low altitude.

  “Lower it!” he yells to the pilot. “I have to make a call.”

  So he gets Paul on the phone, “Did you say I shouldn’t be on TV on Sunday??” And Paul’s like… he could barely hear him because of the helicopter motor. But Mr. Trump is like, “I’ll go on TV anytime I goddamn fucking want and you won’t say another fucking word about me! Tone it down? I wanna turn it up! I don’t wanna tone anything down! I played along with your delegate charts, but I have had enough.”

  We land the whirlybird at the West Side heliport and get into the car. I’m in the back of the car, Trump’s in the back passenger seat. He gets Paul on the phone and completely decimates him again verbally. Rips his fucking head off. I wish I’d recorded it, because it was one of the greatest takedowns in the history of the world. The greatest.