Let Trump Be Trump

by Corey R. Lewandowski

  Yet in the hours before the debate, and two days after the biggest controversy in political memory, Mr. Trump was as cool as someone getting ready for dinner.

  Like we said, Donald J. Trump is the greatest big-game player in American political history. Period. There is no second. None. Not in modern times. No one is even close. If you disagree, show us someone who has never run for office before, and watch him become the leader of the free world in spite of the media, some of the Republican establishment, and the Democratic Party all being against him. We’ll argue with you any day of the week.

  Of course, before he took the stage in St. Louis to square off against Hillary there was the little matter of settling a score.

  We arrived in St. Louis early the afternoon of the debate. The first order of business was to check out the venue. The boss was still smarting from the microphone malfunction at Hofstra. He had already ripped George Gigicos’s face off and was no less aggravated when we arrived at the auditorium. The boss’s first target there was a young tech guy who happened to be onstage taping wires as we did the walkthrough.

  “Was it you in charge of the mic last time?” the boss growled.

  The young man didn’t know what he was talking about.

  “The mic better be working right tonight,” he said.

  The next targets were Mike McCurry, the former press secretary for Bill Clinton and the current cochair of the Commission on Presidential Debates, and Frank Fahrenkopf, the former chairman of the RNC and McCurry’s cochair. They sat in the empty front row of the venue and, when Mr. Trump walked in, they didn’t even get up to say hello to him.

  “You guys fucked it up last time,” the boss said to no one in particular, but McCurry and Fahrenkopf could hear him.

  The commission had already issued a weak apology, and neither of them said anything in response to the boss.

  After the walk-through, we went back to the hotel to have one final session of debate preparation and to give the boss a little downtime. And that’s when the fun began.

  Though the boss had brought up the idea in his tweets and press interviews when he said he was going to invite Gennifer Flowers to sit next to Mark Cuban at the debate, pulling the trigger on the scheme in St. Louis was all Steve Bannon’s doing.

  As executive chairman of Breitbart News, Steve had taken the mantle of his good friend and colleague, the courageous, charismatic, and eponymous founder of the website, Andrew Breitbart, who had died suddenly from a heart attack at age forty-three. Breitbart got his start as a conservative media marksman with Matt Drudge and the Drudge Report right around the time of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. He was well versed in the history of Bill Clinton’s lurid sexual affairs. And, by association, so was Steve Bannon. So it was of no real surprise that Bannon came up with the idea of bringing the Clinton accusers to St. Louis.

  Dave knew the Clinton scandals better than anyone. When he joined the Trump campaign in August, the press wrote about him as little more than a “Clinton antagonist”—someone who would fill his time with opposition research, looking for dirt on the Clintons. Reading the news that month, you’d think he was the Hillary Killer. It wasn’t true, of course; he had been hired because he understood the boss, had developed a good sense of how he operated, and he knew how to help run a campaign. But it wasn’t an unfair assumption to make.

  After serving as the chief congressional investigator in the ’90s, looking into campaign-finance abuses by Bill Clinton, he had become an expert on the voluminous lies and misdeeds of the Clinton family. At Citizens United, he chronicled them in books and movies, thinking it important to inform American voters about the danger that Bill and Hillary posed to American politics. The material was easy to come by. His documentary Hillary: The Movie, produced in 2008, the film from which his famed Citizens United Supreme Court case had arisen, was the latest volume on her. By the time he met Donald Trump, his head was practically an encyclopedia of Clinton scandals, though he felt that his days of tapping into it were behind him. It’s an odd feeling to have expended so much film and ink on one person, only to see her keep smashing her way back into the limelight.

  Still, no one was more certain than Dave that Hillary’s Achilles’ heel was her husband’s past. For every woman who ever came forward to accuse Bill Clinton of rape or sexual harassment, there was a check to a private detective with a Hillary connection. It wasn’t enough that she made these women pipe down, she dragged them through the mud and shattered their reputations while she was at it.

  She was vulnerable, though, when she tried to defend her husband. It was a no-win situation. She would either look like a victim or an accomplice. Neither option was presidential. She had surrogates, good ones like Michelle Obama, to go on the attack, but Michelle Obama wouldn’t be on the stage in St. Louis. So the race to the bottom, as Dave called it, began.

  For weeks, the press had been hungering for a peek into our debate prep. When Hope and Jason told them that the debate team and candidate would be available for a five-minute photo spray two hours before the prime-time debate, we were assured of a media crush. We also announced it on Facebook. Two hours before the debate, we were in the boss’s suite: Jared, Reince, Kellyanne, Rudy, Steve Bannon, Hope, Steve Miller, and Dave. We had let Mr. Trump know what we had planned earlier in the day. At about six o’clock central time, two hours before the debate was to begin, Dave, Hope, and Jason left the suite to go down to the conference room in the hotel to make sure the room was set up right and to see if all the parties invited were accounted for.

  The ballroom was set with one long table covered with a green tablecloth, behind which sat four middle-aged women: Juanita Broaddrick, who claimed Bill Clinton raped her in 1978; Kathleen Willey, who accused then-President Clinton of sexually assaulting her in the White House; and Paula Jones, the plaintiff in the 1994 sexual harassment case against Clinton during which Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky was uncovered. Clinton settled the case with Jones for $850,000. The fourth woman was Kathy Shelton. When Shelton was twelve, she told police that a forty-one-year-old man named Tom Taylor had raped her. Hillary Clinton, then Hillary Rodham, was appointed the man’s attorney and defended him in court. Ms. Shelton believed that Hillary went out of her way to besmirch her character, calling her “emotionally unstable” and characterizing her as having a tendency to fantasize about older men.

  All it took to get these women there were a few phone calls and plane tickets. Paula Jones wore a baseball hat and a sweatshirt. She had just arrived and hadn’t had a chance to change. She’d switched flights when she saw Chris Matthews from MSNBC board the plane on which she was originally booked. She didn’t want to ruin his surprise.

  Dave came back up to the suite and told Steve and Mr. Trump that it was time. We specifically hadn’t told Reince about the press conference. We wanted Reince to have plausible deniability. Inside forces applied tremendous pressure on him, and we didn’t want to give him more to worry about. On Friday, he’d released a statement that read, referring to the language Trump used in the Access Hollywood tape: “No woman should ever be described in these terms or talked about in this manner. Ever.” And we’d heard that there was an effort under way to shift the RNC’s funds away from the presidential campaign—although that never came to fruition.

  As we interrupted debate prep and walked out of the suite, he asked where we were going.

  “To see some donors,” Dave told him. “We’ll be right back.”

  When we opened the door to the conference room, the press rushed in like water from a broken dam. Though they were asked not to, they began shouting questions about the Access Hollywood tape; that is, until they saw the scene in front of them. The room went from bedlam to almost complete quiet. It stayed like that for a beat or two until one reporter, John Santucci from ABC News, recognized Paul Jones. And at that moment, a collective “Holy shit” hit the proverbial fan. Sopan Deb of CBS News was literally crying when he saw the women seated at the table—he knew t
his was trouble for Hillary Clinton. Jonathan Lemire from the Associated Press and Michael Bender from the Wall Street Journal looked as if they were just punched in the face by Mike Tyson.

  When the initial shock wore off, a reporter yelled to Mr. Trump if he thought what he said on the Access Hollywood tape was appropriate behavior toward women.

  “Why don’t y’all ask Bill Clinton that,” Jones responded. “Why don’t y’all go ask Bill Clinton that? Go ahead. Ask Hillary, as well.”

  As you might remember, the reaction in the press and cyberspace was spectacular. Much of the ink and posts were negative at first.

  Politico had this to say: “Ever defiant amidst calls that he surrender the nomination and step aside, Trump is instead engaging in a scorched-earth assault that is only likely to erode further his diminished standing with women voters with potentially devastating consequences for the Republican Party, which is now bracing itself for more sweeping losses down the ballot.”

  Much was written and said about the nature of our campaign. How low will they go, the pundits asked rhetorically over and over. “When they go low, you go high,” Hillary said during the debate. But the truth was, she went as low and we responded to her. And what made her campaign’s vicious attacks on the boss even worse was the hypocrisy of them.

  We had set up the press conference with two objectives in mind. One was to juxtapose Bill’s actions as a sexual predator vs. Trump’s locker room talk. On that count, we got almost all we wanted. Although the Access Hollywood tape would never fully go away, it was no longer the primary topic of discussion.

  The other reason was to get into Hillary’s head during the debate.

  We put the women in one of the SUVs in the motorcade and drove to the event. Steve told Dave to call George Gigicos to tell the debate commission that they were going to seat Kathy, Paula, Juanita, and Kathleen in the VIP (family) box, which would have been right near Bill Clinton and directly in Hillary’s line of sight.

  Frank Fahrenkopf and Mike McCurry protested.

  “I will get security and yank them out of there,” Fahrenkopf said.

  “How about if Mr. Trump just walks them to the seats on national TV?” Dave said to George.

  In the end, Fahrenkopf and McCurry got their way, and the women sat in the front row of the audience seating. The tone was set. One photograph from that night captured Bill Clinton facing forward but looking sideways at the women.

  In the hold room just before the debate started, Corey was waiting to see the boss when the motorcade arrived. Earlier in the day on CNN, Corey had called Reince a weak and feckless leader and demanded the RNC support Mr. Trump. When Reince came into the hold room, he came over to Corey and said, “I don’t appreciate you attacking me,” to which Corey responded, “support Trump, and we won’t have a problem.” To which Reince returned a halfhearted “Shut up.” Corey elevated it to “Go fuck yourself, Reince.” Reince turned around and started walking back toward Corey when Corey stepped forward and said it again to Reince only closer to his face. At that point, Keith Schiller stepped in to cool things down. Tensions were running super high in the hold room. It was a big night, and everyone could feel the pressure. Everyone except Donald J. Trump.

  Staff from both camps agreed that the candidates would not shake hands at the start. The mood was ugly on both Hillary’s and the boss’s part. Mrs. Clinton did bring up the Access Hollywood tape, she had to, but her assessment of it was timid:

  “What we all saw and heard on Friday was Donald talking about women, what he thinks about women, what he does to women. And he has said that the video doesn’t represent who he is, but I believe that it’s clear to anyone who heard it that it represents exactly who he is.”

  This opened the door for the boss to go on a full frontal attack on Bill Clinton. “What he did to women, there’s never been anybody in the history of politics in this nation who’s been so abusive to women,” Trump began. What followed was a greatest hits reel of Clinton’s transgressions and the cost of them, including losing his license to practice law, an $850,000 fine, and being impeached.

  “I will tell you that when Hillary brings up a point like that,” the boss said, “she talks about words that I said eleven years ago, I think it’s disgraceful.”

  Game, set, match.

  You could see the fire in the boss’s eyes during the St. Louis debate. Donald Trump does not like to lose. Despite what the press had to say about the Trump campaign disbanding and imploding, the look in the boss’s eye was enough to keep the team focused and working hard. As you’ve noticed, throughout this book we’ve called Mr. Trump “the boss.” We did this not only because that’s what we truly called him, but also out of respect. As bosses go, Donald Trump is the best. You can’t help but feed off the man’s energy and his drive to succeed. We knew that if he succeeded, so would we. We knew that because he kept reminding us of it. He brings out the best in his employees: loyalty, willingness to work, belief in his leadership. We weren’t alone in thinking of him this way. Look at the people who worked for him for decades in business: Keith Schiller, Rhona Graff, and Matt Calamari, all who interact or interacted with Mr. Trump on a daily basis. Allen Weisselberg started with Mr. Trump’s father as an accountant. You have to be a good boss to have that many longtime employees. And to be a boss for that long, you can’t let people down.

  That’s why we knew he wouldn’t quit, no matter what the newspapers said. Even after the St. Louis debate, the mainstream media had us packing it in. They said we deserved to lose. Twelve days before the election, a columnist in the Washington Post had us running “the worst campaign in history.” Dana Milbank from the same newspaper wrote that not only was Donald Trump going to lose the election but also was at risk of losing his business. Talking Points Memo wrote that our strategy was “all over the map,” and that we were desperate and haphazard. The press said our fund-raising “was out of energy” and that we were doing events in states like Wisconsin that we had no hope of winning. Even a well-known conservative pollster called the Trump campaign “a joke” less than two weeks before Election Day. And perhaps the best source giving us the bad news came from Las Vegas, where bookmakers had Hillary better than a five-to-one favorite to win the election.

  And it was to Vegas where we traveled for the last debate, held at the Thomas & Mack Center on the campus of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, the home of the college’s basketball team, the Runnin’ Rebels. We flew in early in the day and checked into the Trump International Hotel Las Vegas.

  The press severely outnumbered us in Sin City. According to reports, over five thousand credentialed members of the fourth estate invaded Vegas to cover the debate. Las Vegas, however, has a way of sidetracking even the most dedicated journalist. Fox had a studio on the rooftop of the MGM Grand. At a birthday party for a Fox News anchor, one reporter reportedly ended up in the pool dressed in a suit and tie and with a team of synchronized swimmers.

  We also had one of our own get sidetracked.

  Jason worked as Ted Cruz’s national spokesman up until the time Cruz suspended his campaign. The campaign hired him on June 27, 2016, to help run our communications department. Until his arrival, Hope had handled all the media responsibilities. Jason is one of the best rapid-response professionals in the business. A great guy with a quick smile surrounded by a goatee, he fit right in with the team.

  The night before the debate, Miller, who might have had an adult beverage or two, visited the Sapphire Las Vegas strip club, billed as the “largest gentlemen’s club in the world.” We don’t know whose idea it was, but going to a topless bar in Vegas, for even a family man like Jason, is a relatively harmless endeavor. But taking two female junior staffers with him, along with two members of the press, a producer from CNN, and a cameraman from ABC News who, according to Jason, promised that the night would be off the record, was pushing his luck. Still, the story might not have been more than a footnote had it ended there. Not too long ago, the tourist boa
rd of Las Vegas ran a series of ads for the city with the tagline “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” Don’t believe it.

  A few days after his night in Sin City, Jason found his name, along with those of his staffers, Jessica Ditto, the deputy communications director, who had come from the staff of Kentucky governor Matt Bevin, and A. J. Delgado, emboldened in a Page Six article in the New York Post, surrounded by a detailed description of the Sapphire rendezvous.

  Jason, being a professional communications executive, knew the story was going to run and had called Bannon the day before it did to tender his resignation. What bothered Bannon most about the whole story was that Jason was out fraternizing with the enemy, the dreaded press.

  Now, what happens next jumps ahead in the chronology, so bear with us. We figured there was no sense in leaving you in suspense.

  Everybody thinks that Anthony Scaramucci, a.k.a. the Mooch, had the shortest tenure as the White House communications director under President Trump. Not even close. He had the post five times longer than Jason.

  Jason’s tenure lasted exactly two days. He was offered and accepted the position on December 22, 2016, an event that was met with this tweet from Ms. Delgado: “Congratulations to the baby-daddy on being named WH Comms Director!”

  According to Page Six, which took a screenshot of a quickly deleted tweet, she also called Jason, “the 2016 version of John Edwards.” You might remember the affair the failed Democratic presidential candidate had with a campaign videographer.

  Now, Ms. Delgado is a smart woman, a Harvard-educated lawyer, and a savvy media person. And she did good work for us as an outreach coordinator for the Spanish-language media.