by Bob Woodward
Bannon realized he had this one. He just had to keep his mouth shut.
“Donald, you don’t understand,” Christie said.
“Donald, Donald, Donald,” Giuliani said. “You’ve got to do this.” Think about the suburban moms.
The clock was ticking.
Bannon turned to Conway. “What do you do to kill this?”
“You can’t kill it,” she replied. “They’re already here”—ABC and David Muir.
“What do you do to kill it?” Bannon repeated.
“All my credibility is on the line. You can’t kill this thing. It’s in motion. It’s going to happen,” Conway said.
“It’s not going to happen,” Bannon said. “He ain’t going to do it. If he does do an introduction,” Bannon continued, “you can’t have him do a live interview. He’ll fucking get cut to pieces.” The apology road was not Trump, and if he was questioned afterward he would backtrack and contradict himself.
They tried to reword it.
Trump went through two lines.
“I’m not doing this.”
The glass in Trump Tower was thick, but they could hear the roaring crowd of Trump supporters in the street—a riot of “deplorables,” who had adopted Hillary Clinton’s derisive term as their own.
“My people!” Trump declared. “I’m going to go down. Don’t worry about the rally. I’m going to do it right here.”
“You’re not going down there,” a Secret Service agent insisted. “You’re not going outside.”
“I’m going downstairs,” Trump said. He headed out. “This is great.”
Conway tried to intervene. “You just can’t cancel” on ABC.
“I don’t care. I’m never doing this. It was a dumb idea. I never wanted to do it.”
Bannon was about to follow Trump into the elevator when Christie said, “Hang on for a second.”
He stayed back as Trump went downstairs with Conway, Don Jr. and the Secret Service.
“You’re the fucking problem,” Christie said to Bannon. “You’ve been the problem since the beginning.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You’re the enabler. You play to every one of his worst instincts. This thing’s over, and you’re going to be blamed. Every time he’s got terrible instincts for these things, and all you do is get him all worked up. This is going to be humiliating.”
Christie was in Bannon’s face, looming large. Bannon half-wanted to say, You fat fuck, let’s throw down right here.
“Governor,” he replied instead, “the plane leaves tomorrow.” They were heading to St. Louis for the second presidential debate. “If you’re on the plane, you’re on the team.”
Downstairs, the Secret Service relented. Trump could go out on the street, but only briefly. There could be weapons all over the place. It was a baying mob of supporters and protesters.
At 4:30 p.m. Trump stepped out, giving high fives and shaking hands for a few minutes, flanked by the Secret Service and New York police.
Will you stay in the race? a reporter asked.
“One hundred percent,” Trump said.
* * *
Everyone on the Trump campaign refused to appear on the Sunday-morning talk shows except Rudy Giuliani. Priebus, Christie, even the reliable, thick-armored, never-say-no Conway had been scheduled. All canceled.
Giuliani appeared on all five, completing what is called a full Ginsburg—a term in honor of William H. Ginsburg, the attorney for Monica Lewinsky, who appeared on all five network Sunday programs on February 1, 1998.
Giuliani gave, or tried to give, the same spiel on each show: Trump’s words had been “reprehensible and terrible and awful,” and he had apologized. Trump was not the same man now that he had been when captured on tape in 2005. The “transformational” presidential campaign had made him a changed man. And besides, Hillary Clinton’s speeches to Goldman Sachs, which had come out in WikiLeaks’s release of John Podesta’s emails, revealed a private coziness with Wall Street that clashed with her liberal public positions. The country would view that much more harshly.
Bannon, not a regular viewer of Sunday talk shows, tuned in. The morning was a brutal slog. When CNN’s Jake Tapper said Trump’s words had been a depiction of sexual assault that was “really offensive on just a basic human level,” Giuliani had to acknowledge, “Yes, it is.”
Giuliani was exhausted, practically bled out, but he had proved his devotion and friendship. He had pulled out every stop, leaning frequently and heavily on his Catholicism: “You confess your sins and you make a firm resolution not to commit that sin again. And then, the priest gives you absolution and then, hopefully you’re a changed person. I mean, we believe the people in this country can change.”
Giuliani, seeming punch-drunk, made it to the plane for the departure to the St. Louis debate. He took a seat next to Trump, who was at his table in his reading glasses. He peered over at the former mayor.
“Rudy, you’re a baby!” Trump said loudly. “I’ve never seen a worse defense of me in my life. They took your diaper off right there. You’re like a little baby that needed to be changed. When are you going to be a man?”
Trump turned to the others, particularly Bannon.
“Why did you put him on? He can’t defend me. I need somebody to defend me. Where are my people?”
“What are you talking about?” Bannon asked. “This guy’s the only guy that went on.”
“I don’t want to hear it,” Trump replied. “It was a mistake. He shouldn’t have gone on. He’s weak. You’re weak, Rudy. You’ve lost it.”
Giuliani just looked up, his face blank.
Shortly after the planned departure, Chris Christie had not appeared. “Fuck this guy,” Bannon said, and the plane took off.
CHAPTER
5
Giuliani had said twice, on CNN and NBC, that he did not anticipate Trump going after Bill Clinton or Hillary’s private life in the debate that evening. But Bannon had arranged what he thought would be a well-timed kill shot.
Four of the women who claimed Clinton had attacked them or who Hillary had tried to undermine would be at the debate, Bannon explained to Trump. They were Paula Jones, who said Clinton had exposed himself to her, and with whom Clinton had settled a sexual harassment suit, paying her $850,000; Juanita Broaddrick, who claimed Clinton had raped her; Kathleen Willey, who alleged that Clinton sexually assaulted her in the White House; and Kathy Shelton, who, when she was 12, alleged that Hillary had smeared her while defending her client, who allegedly had raped Shelton.
It was an Oscar list from Clinton’s past, triggering memories of his steamy Arkansas and White House years.
Prior to the debate, Bannon said, they would sit the four women at a table with Trump and invite in reporters.
“That fucking media, they think they’re going to come in for the end of debate prep. And we’re going to let them in the room and the women will be there. And we’ll just go live. Boom!”
Scorched-earth, just the way Bannon liked it.
Trump had been tweeting links to Breitbart stories about the Clinton accusers throughout the day.
“I like it,” Trump said, standing and looking imperial. “I like it!”
Just before 7:30 p.m., reporters entered the room at the St. Louis Four Seasons where Trump and the women were waiting. Bannon and Kushner stood in the back of the room, grinning.
At 7:26, Trump tweeted, “Join me on #FacebookLive as I conclude my final #debate preparations”—effectively live broadcasting events as CNN picked up his feed.
The women breathed fire into the microphones.
“Actions speak louder than words,” Juanita Broaddrick said. “Mr. Trump may have said some bad words, but Bill Clinton raped me, and Hillary Clinton threatened me.”
The debate organizers barred the Clinton accusers from sitting in the VIP family box right in front of the stage as Bannon had planned, so they walked in last and sat in the front row of the audience.
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Early on, CNN’s Anderson Cooper, the debate co-host, raised the Access Hollywood tape, saying, “That is sexual assault. You bragged that you have sexually assaulted women. Do you understand that?”
Trump parried. “When we have a world where you have ISIS chopping off heads . . . where you have wars and horrible, horrible sights all over and you have so many bad things happening . . . yes, I am very embarrassed by it and I hate it, but it’s locker-room talk and it’s one of those things. I will knock the hell out of ISIS.”
A short time later, Trump said, “If you look at Bill Clinton, far worse. Mine are words and his was action. . . . There’s never been anybody in the history of politics in this nation who’s been so abusive to women.”
Then Trump announced that Kathy Shelton and Paula Jones were in the audience and said, “When Hillary . . . talks about words that I said 11 years ago, I think it’s disgraceful and I think she should be ashamed of herself.”
ABC’s Martha Raddatz, the co-moderator, had to step in to ask the audience to hold their applause so that Hillary Clinton could speak.
* * *
Bossie, now Bannon’s deputy campaign manager, was involved in the day-to-day management and hundreds of daily decisions and quickly learned who had the real authority. He would be in a meeting with Bannon, Conway and Kushner, where a decision would be made: for example, on the next three TV spots.
Bossie would pass the decision to the person running digital ads, but then see that they didn’t run. “What the hell!” he said. “I came in here. I told you what to do. We had a meeting, we decided.”
“Oh, no, no,” he would be told. “Jared came in after you and said, ‘Don’t do that.’ ”
This was a “very important light bulb moment.” If Kushner didn’t fully buy in, things wouldn’t get done. So after decision meetings, Bossie approached Kushner to make sure he understood what Jared wanted. Kushner, without the title, was running the campaign, especially on money matters. He knew that his father-in-law considered it all his money and Jared had to sign off on everything.
Kushner scoffed at Bannon’s suggestion that Trump put $50 million of his own money into his presidential campaign. “He will never write a $50 million check,” Kushner told Bannon in August.
“Dude,” Bannon said, “we’re going to have this thing in a dead heat.” They would soon be tied with Hillary. “We need to finally go up on TV with something.” They needed to contribute to the ground game. “We’re going to need at least $50 million. He’s going to have to write it.”
Under election rules and law, the candidate can make unlimited personal contributions to his or her own campaign.
“He’ll never do it,” Kushner insisted.
“It’s about being president of the United States!”
“Steve, unless you can show him he’s a dead lock”—a certain winner—“I mean a dead lock, up three to five points, he’ll never write that size check.”
“Well, you’re right,” Bannon agreed.
“Maybe we can get $25 million out of him,” said Kushner, adding a caveat: “He doesn’t have a lot of cash.”
After the final presidential debate in Las Vegas on October 19, Trump returned to New York. It was now the three-week sprint to election day.
Bannon, Kushner and Mnuchin, the former Goldman Sachs executive, presented Trump with a plan for him to give $25 million to the campaign.
“No way,” Trump said. “Fuck that. I’m not doing it.” Where were the famous Republican high-donor guys? “Where the fuck’s the money? Where’s all this money from these guys? Jared, you’re supposed to be raising all this money. Not going to do it.”
The next day they came up with a new proposal for $10 million and presented it to Trump on his plane. This wouldn’t even be a loan, but an advance against the cash donations coming in from supporters. These were the “grundoons” or “hobbits” as Bannon playfully and derisively called them. And he had a deadline: They had to have the $10 million that day.
The supporters’ donations “will keep coming in, win, lose or draw,” Bannon said. “But I say you’re going to win.”
“You don’t know that,” Trump snapped. “We’re three points down.”
It showed how little confidence Trump had in victory, Bannon thought.
After two days of pushing for the $10 million, Trump finally told them, “Okay, fine, get off my back. We’ll do $10 million.”
Steve Mnuchin handed Trump two documents to sign. The first was a terms sheet outlining how he would be paid back as money came into the campaign.
“What’s this?” Trump asked about the second document.
“Wiring instructions.” Mnuchin knew that every Trump decision was tentative and open to relitigation. Nothing was ever over.
“What the fuck,” said Trump. The wire order should be sent to someone in the Trump Organization.
Mnuchin said no, it needed to be done right then.
Trump signed both documents.
* * *
Money questions ignited Trump. When he learned that Christie, who would be the head of his transition team, was raising money for the operation, he summoned him and Bannon to Trump Tower.
“Where the fuck is the money?” Trump asked Christie. “I need money for my campaign. I’m putting money in my campaign, and you’re fucking stealing from me.” He saw it all as his.
Christie defended his efforts. This was for the required transition organization in case Trump won.
Trump said that Mitt Romney had spent too much time on transition meetings as the nominee in 2012, and not enough time on campaign events. “That’s why he lost. You’re jinxing me,” he told Christie. “I don’t want a transition. I’m shutting down the transition. I told you from day one it was just an honorary title. You’re jinxing me. I’m not going to spend a second on it.”
“Whoa,” Bannon interjected. A transition might make sense.
“It’s jinxing me,” Trump said. “I can’t have one.”
“Okay, let’s do this,” Bannon said. “I’ll shut the whole thing down. What do you think Morning Joe’s going to say tomorrow? You’ve got a lot of confidence you’re going to be president, right?”
Trump agreed, finally and reluctantly, to a slimmed-down, skeletal version of the transition. Christie would cease fundraising.
“He can have his transition,” Trump said, “but I don’t want anything to do with it.”
* * *
Two weeks before the election, October 25, 2016, I was in Fort Worth, Texas, giving a speech to about 400 executives from a firm called KEY2ACT that provides construction and field service management software. My topic was “The Age of the American Presidency. What Will 2016 Bring?” The group was mostly white and was from all over the country.
I asked for a show of hands. How many expected to vote for Hillary? As best I could tell there were only about 10. How many expected to vote for Trump? Half the room raised their hands—approximately 200. Wow, I thought, that seemed like a lot of Trump voters.
After the speech, the CEO of the firm approached. “I need to sit down,” he said, taking a chair near where I was standing. He was breathing heavily. “I’m flabbergasted. I have worked with these people every day for more than a year. I know them. I know their families. If you had told me that 200 plan to vote for Trump, I would have told you that is impossible.” He said he would have expected more or less an even split. But 200, he was astonished. He offered no explanation, and I certainly did not have one.
Ten days before the election, Trump flew to North Carolina, a must-win state. He was down several points in most national polls. The NBC/Wall Street Journal poll had him down six points.
Bannon spoke with Congressman Mark Meadows, who represented the 11th District. Meadows was a Tea Party favorite and the chairman of the powerful Freedom Caucus of about 30 conservative and libertarian Republicans. He was a big Trump supporter. Over the summer he had led rally attendees in their favorite anti-Clinton
chant, “Lock her up.”
Of all the battleground states, Bannon told Meadows, “This is the one that worries me the most.” The campaign seemed not to be clicking.
Meadows disagreed. “The evangelicals are out. They’re ringing doorbells. I’m telling you, you do not need to come back to North Carolina. We’ve got this.” Meadows’s wife and other conservative women had chartered a bus after the Access Hollywood tape and traveled across the state urging women to vote for Trump. Everything was holding and getting better, Meadows said.
Meadows had big plans to oust Speaker Paul Ryan. He handed Bannon a folder. “Read this,” he said. “Some 24 hours after Trump wins, we call the question on Ryan and he’s finished. We take over the House of Representatives. And then we have a real revolution.”
Bannon was still worried, though he saw some positives in the Trump-Pence strategy. They were using Pence well, Bannon believed, running him essentially on a circuit of states—at least 23 appearances in Pennsylvania; 25 in Ohio; 22 in North Carolina; 15 in Iowa; 13 in Florida; eight in Michigan; seven in Wisconsin. The theme was for Pence to campaign as if he were running for governor of those states, focusing on local issues and what a President Trump in Washington could do for the state. “And every now and then we’d pull him [Pence] out to Jesus-land,” Bannon said.
Trump, he said, was essentially running as county supervisor in 41 large population centers.
Bannon was amazed that the Clinton campaign did not use President Obama strategically. Obama had won Iowa in 2008 and 2012 by six to 10 points. “He never goes.” Clinton never went to Wisconsin in the general election. She didn’t talk enough about the economy.
“When I saw her go to Arizona, I said, they’ve lost their fucking minds,” Bannon said. “What are they doing?”
Historians will write books in the coming years trying to answer that question and related 2016 campaign matters. I was planning on writing a book on the first year or two of the next president. It seemed likely that would be Hillary Clinton, but Fort Worth gave me pause.