American Carnage

by Tim Alberta

  “The country’s morals have changed,” Helen Best, a retired cardiac technician, said outside a Republican campaign event in her native North Carolina a few weeks before Election Day 2016. “People say it’s just a changing of the times. But why do we need to change at all?”

  AS UNEASY AS REINCE PRIEBUS FELT WITNESSING TRUMP’S ASCENT, the party chairman couldn’t help but marvel at the way voters responded to him. It was unlike anything he had seen in a quarter century of Republican politics. Priebus had consulted the best pollsters and strategists about broadening the GOP’s socioeconomic appeal; in his native Wisconsin, he was always vexed at seeing rural, religious, blue-collar voters side with an increasingly urban, coastal Democratic Party. Trump offered a revelation: These voters were far less likely to respond to policy arguments than they were to emotional appeals aimed at their long-simmering sense of grievance, displacement, and marginalization.

  “Everyone told them that they needed to shut up, that their views weren’t culturally proper anymore, that society is moving in a direction that they don’t fit into,” Priebus says. “And then, Donald Trump comes along and starts saying the same things they’ve been thinking, and suddenly it’s okay again. There’s just this feeling among people, among classes, that have felt left behind, not heard, ridiculed, pushed down upon. And he became their vehicle.”

  During a speech in Burlington, Iowa, in late October 2015, just before Ryan assumed the speakership, Trump drew thunderous ovations from a capacity crowd when promising to punish illegal immigrants, confront China, shred existing trade deals, and pummel the elites funding the campaigns of Bush and Hillary Clinton. But the biggest applause line of the event came when Trump pledged, extemporaneously, to end the so-called “war on Christmas” waged by Obama and his cabal of secularists.

  “I’m a good Christian, Okay? Remember that,” Trump said, smirking. “And I told you about Christmas—I guarantee if I become president we’re going to be saying ‘Merry Christmas’ at every store!”3 (The merits of his anti-“Happy Holidays” shtick aside, Trump’s assertion of spiritual aptitude was puzzling. Months earlier, he boasted that he had never asked God for forgiveness, the central tenet of the Christian faith.4)

  Trump would soon accelerate the cultural-political warfare to levels yet unseen. After terrorists in Paris killed more than 130 people and injured another 400 during coordinated attacks in November, Trump called for a government database tracking Muslims in the United States while monitoring activities inside mosques. In the past, Trump had repeatedly spread the false story that “thousands” of New Jersey Muslims were celebrating after the 9/11 attacks. (Mocking a disabled New York Times reporter who corrected his version of events, Trump curled his hand and jerked his arm around, saying, “The poor guy, you’ve gotta see this guy.”5)

  The following month, in the aftermath of an Islamic-inspired terrorist attack that killed fourteen people in San Bernardino, California, the Republican front-runner’s campaign issued a statement that read, “Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.”

  Bush said Trump had become “unhinged.” Rubio described the idea as “outlandish.”6 Mike Pence, the Indiana governor, called the proposed ban “offensive and unconstitutional.”7

  That same month, Trump told Fox and Friends that he would order the American military to kill terrorists’ family members in order to defeat ISIS. Dismissing the implications of violating international law, Trump blamed the United States for “fighting a very politically correct war.”8

  The Pentagon warned that Trump’s rhetoric would boost the recruiting efforts of ISIS and other terrorist groups, fueling the group’s narrative of a zero-sum clash between followers of Islam and their Crusader enemies in America.

  As if intentionally pushing the limits to see what else he could get away with, Trump in December joined the InfoWars program hosted by Alex Jones, the country’s most prominent conspiracy theorist. Jones existed so far outside the mainstream of American political thought that party officials thought it was an elaborate prank when they heard that Trump was going on the program. But it wasn’t. “Your reputation is amazing,” Trump told Jones. “I will not let you down.”9

  The “reputation” to which Trump referred? Jones had built a cultlike following on the fringes of the internet by proclaiming that September 11 was an inside job, as was the Oklahoma City bombing, both of them “false flags” choreographed by the U.S. government to expand its tyrannical powers. Jones had also insisted that nobody was killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012; that the first-graders slaughtered in their classroom and buried by their parents were child actors.

  None of this seemed to bother Trump; he was told by Roger Stone, his longtime henchman and a veteran tinfoil hat wearer, that he had a huge following among the InfoWars audience. (Conspiracy theorizing wasn’t limited to the fringes of the right, as proved by the birther movement, and later, the Fox News–fueled nonsense that a DNC staffer named Seth Rich had been murdered because he’d been the source of a massive email leak.) To most anyone with a brain and a soul, Jones was a demonic influence. To Trump, he was someone who could help him win the presidency, what with his “amazing” reputation.

  Yet none of this—the buddy act with Jones, the proposed Muslim ban, the idea of committing war crimes—damaged Trump’s candidacy. From the middle of November though the end of December, he jumped from 24 percent to 37 percent in the RealClearPolitics average.

  RYAN WAS STRUGGLING TO MAKE SENSE OF HIS NEW JOB. EVERYTHING had been so much easier when he was in the policy business: numbers, legislative text, committee hearings. Now he was in the personnel business. And while he had some appreciation for the challenges his predecessor had faced, the scope of instability inside the conference, and the party, didn’t fully dawn on him until he’d moved into the Speaker’s suite.

  Ryan was miserable almost from the very start. He had given up his dream job chairing the Ways and Means Committee. He was refereeing near-daily disputes among various factions inside the conference. He likened himself to a prisoner some days, and other days to a teacher at a day care center. “Just getting people to agree on how to do things that are in their own interest is hard to do. Getting people to agree, getting to consensus, on things that are basic and axiomatic, is really hard to do,” Ryan said. “You need more of a degree in psychology than you need in economics.”

  One day, Boehner was back in town for a meeting and decided to pop into Ryan’s office unannounced. Ryan was cheered momentarily—only to wag a finger in Boehner’s face, warning him not to dare light up a cigarette, explaining that it had taken months to get the smell out of the office. Then Ryan looked at him wearily. “This job is a lot harder than I thought,” he said, sighing.

  Boehner laughed so hard that he spent the rest of the day coughing.

  Recalling the conversation later, Ryan added, “And I wanted to say, ‘You ass, you stuck me with this sh—’” He swallows the rest of the sentence.

  The new Speaker did find a way to exact revenge. Having inherited his predecessor’s security detail, Ryan let the agents grow unruly, Navy SEAL–style beards and texted photos of them to Boehner. This was a serious affront to the Rat Pack sensibilities of the former Speaker, code name “Tan Man,” who had demanded that his detail be freshly shaven every day. Boehner was not amused.

  As Ryan wrestled with his new role, he struggled also with the trajectory of the GOP race. Trump’s crowds and poll numbers were growing by the day, while the Speaker’s preferred horses were falling hopelessly far behind.

  Walker had abruptly dropped out after the September debate in California. Things weren’t going much better for Bush, whose “joyful” candidacy offered all the pleasure of a root canal. Having once led the field, registering at 18 percent in the RealClearPolitics average as of mid-July, Bush had dropped below 4 percent by December. The “low energy”
tag from Trump had proved debilitating, capturing the caricature portrayed on Saturday Night Live of Bush as docile and disinterested. Strangely, nothing could have been further from the truth; Bush was known to barely sleep, to answer hundreds of emails per day, and to work with a metabolism that exhausted staffers half his age.

  But it wasn’t just the nickname that hurt Bush; nor was it just Trump’s bullying. Coming off two poor debate performances, Bush’s campaign telegraphed a coming attack on Rubio, his old protégé, in the October 28 debate in Colorado. When Bush began by criticizing Rubio’s missed votes in the Senate, Rubio flipped the script. “Jeb, I don’t remember you ever complaining about John McCain’s vote record,” he said, recalling Bush’s support for the 2008 nominee. “The only reason why you’re doing it now is because we’re running for the same position, and someone has convinced you that attacking me is going to help you.”

  The audience cheered, and someone whistled loudly. Bush folded his hands together and smiled timidly. He began to respond, but Rubio wasn’t done, and the senator again overpowered his old friend. “Here’s the bottom line,” Rubio said. “My campaign is going to be about the future of America. It’s not going to be about attacking anyone else on this stage. I will continue to have tremendous admiration and respect for Governor Bush. I’m not running against Governor Bush. I’m not running against anyone on this stage. I am running for president, because there is no way we can elect Hillary Clinton to continue the policies of Barack Obama.”

  The applause grew louder yet. Once more Bush attempted to respond, and once more he was drowned out—this time by a combination of the audience, the moderators, and a smirking Trump proclaiming to the masses, “I told you that they did not like each other!”

  Moments are the currency of a presidential campaign: the acts, the exchanges, the gaffes that break through the clutter of the news cycle and inform voters’ view of candidates. This was Bush’s weakest moment to date, one from which he could never fully recover. He spoke the least of all ten candidates onstage that night, according to a New York Times tally,10 and would continue to see his airtime fade in future debates. Bush had been castrated on national television—and not by Trump, whose harrying had become expected, but by Rubio, whom he had targeted with a premeditated, unsolicited attack.

  The learner had slain the master.

  RUBIO REPRESENTED THE LAST, BEST HOPE FOR RYAN AND THE REFORMICONS. With a platform heavy on vocational training, higher-ed reform, and answers to automation, Rubio urged voters to peer around the corner at the challenges of the twenty-first century.

  He constructed his candidacy around the notion of an inverted economic landscape. Illustrating the scale of change Americans were living through, Rubio noted how the biggest retailer in the country, Amazon, didn’t own a single store; the biggest transportation company, Uber, didn’t own a single vehicle; and the biggest lodging provider, Airbnb, didn’t own a single hotel. This would require, Rubio argued, a foundational reimagining of the relationship between business, the government, and its citizens.

  For all the talk of a historically crowded race, it was down to three horses: Rubio was in third place, at 11 percent in the RCP average; Cruz, who had surged on the strength of a behemoth grassroots operation, sat in second place, at 18 percent; and Trump had double his support, registering at 36 percent.

  The wild card was Rubio’s courtship of evangelical voters. Once widely assumed to be angling for the support of centrist, business-friendly Republicans, the Florida senator had managed to thread the needle, running an everything-to-everyone campaign. However unsound strategically, this approach kept him in play for the support of social conservatives who did not trust, or did not like, Cruz.

  And there were plenty. Some leading activists found Cruz inauthentic to the point of fraudulent; others complained of his social awkwardness, his struggle to make small talk or laugh in a way that wasn’t contrived. (Cruz’s aides, at the outset of his campaign, had to stress to him the importance of making eye contact with strangers in elevators.) One influential woman in the conservative movement told Cruz’s staff that she was simply creeped out by his inhuman disposition.

  But these were minority views. Having spent the better part of three years tirelessly pursuing the support of activist leaders and their grassroots followings, Cruz had established himself as the clear favorite to land their support. Now it was just a matter of Tony Perkins, Cruz’s chief ally, closing the deal.

  Perkins and his group of conservative movement heavyweights had met for the past sixteen months with the narrow purpose of consolidating the right’s support around a single challenger to the establishment’s favored candidate. They were closer than ever on December 7. Huddled in a boardroom inside a Sheraton Hotel just outside Washington, the group seemed to be closing in on a decision. A supermajority of the group, 75 percent, was required to bind its membership in support of a candidate, and Perkins was working like mad to line up the votes.

  After four intense rounds of balloting, with lengthy prayer sessions in between, the participants were physically and emotionally drained. It looked like an impasse was at hand. Cruz continued to hold a lead but was short of the 75 percent supermajority threshold. As several groups split off into side meetings, Perkins dropped in on each of them, pleading his case. Conservatives have worked toward unity for two years, he told them. We are this close.

  And then, on the fifth ballot, Cruz hit 75 percent.

  The impact was felt immediately. Three prominent participants, direct-mail pioneer Richard Viguerie; the National Organization for Marriage’s Brian Brown; and the Family Leader’s Bob Vander Plaats, a social conservative kingmaker in Iowa, announced their support of Cruz within seventy-two hours of the Sheraton meeting.11

  This barely scratched the surface. An avalanche of endorsements was forthcoming from conservative leaders, including James Dobson, founder and chairman emeritus of Focus on the Family; Ken Cuccinelli of the Senate Conservatives Fund; and from Perkins himself, among a chorus of other right-wing rainmakers.

  The conservative movement, in its official capacity, had unified. Now, if only there were an “establishment” champion for them to face off against.

  FOR ALL THE LAWLESSNESS THAT GOVERNED THE 2016 REPUBLICAN campaign, two rules were constant: Trump was the front-runner, and nothing could be done about it.

  A telling example came during the December 15 debate in Las Vegas, between Trump and Hugh Hewitt, the conservative radio host who was co-moderating. The pair had a complicated history: Trump had appeared often on Hewitt’s show, going back to the spring of 2015, but Hewitt always seemed to stump him with policy questions.

  A few months earlier, when Hewitt had asked Trump about the Quds Force, Iran’s guerrilla military unit, Trump responded by talking about the mistreatment of the Kurds.12 He later claimed he’d misheard Hewitt’s question. But this made no sense: Hewitt had begun by mentioning the Quds’s leader, General Qasem Soleimani, a name frequently in the news at that time. There had been no mix-up. Trump was simply unschooled.

  The candidate had blamed Hewitt for the blunder, brushing him off as a “third-rate radio host” on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. (The treadmill-viewing choice of official Washington, Morning Joe offered comforting quarter to the GOP front-runner for a long time before serving as a group therapy session during his presidency.)

  Privately, Trump was seething. He could deal with garden-variety indignities; the man owed much of his fame to assessing the business acumen of Gary Busey and Meat Loaf on The Apprentice. But being made to look stupid was intolerable. Trump had dialed Hewitt the next day in a rage. “Don’t be fucking around with me like that!” he screamed.

  Meanwhile, Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, petitioned the RNC to have Hewitt removed as a co-moderator of future debates. No such luck.

  When the Vegas debate rolled around three months later, Hewitt decided to test Trump in a different way. He would ask the candidate about a subject they had c
overed previously on his radio show: the nuclear triad, America’s ability to launch atomic attacks from the air, land, and sea. Trump hadn’t been familiar with the terminology the first time Hewitt asked; the radio host wondered whether he would be now.

  In response to Hewitt’s question, Trump produced ninety seconds’ worth of word salad about the importance of nuclear weapons. When Hewitt pressed him, asking which leg of the triad he considered the most crucial, Trump flailed. “To me, nuclear is just, the power, the devastation, is very important to me,” he replied.

  Since the conclusion of World War II, global order has been administered via the threat of nuclear warfare. But Trump, in applying for the job of controlling the largest stockpile on the planet, was blatantly illiterate as to its usage. Making this all the more unforgivable to Hewitt was the fact that he’d asked Trump about the subject months earlier. “He wasn’t motivated by what he didn’t know,” the radio host recalls.

  He threw the follow-up to Rubio, expecting him to savage the GOP front-runner for his witlessness. Instead, Rubio offered viewers a gentle tutorial on America’s nuclear capabilities.

  “Marco treated it like a Sunday school class instead of looking at [Trump] and saying, ‘You’re running for president. How do you not know what the nuclear triad is?’” Hewitt says. “He could have embarrassed him, but Trump bluffed his way through it. He bluffed his way through the entire campaign.”

  On the sidelines of the debate, during an intermission, Priebus walked over to a friend. “Now if only someone would ask him the difference between Sunni and Shia,” the chairman whispered.