American Carnage

by Tim Alberta

  He had been thrilled when, the day before, Gingrich and Laura Ingraham spent part of her Fox News show discussing the issue. (“The largest caravan in a decade approaches our southern border,” Ingraham warned of the people on foot roughly one thousand miles away.) Now the president was giddy at hearing Gingrich—the only man in politics, he felt, whose marketing talents rivaled his own—define the election in such crisp terms.

  “I love it!” Trump told Gingrich by phone that night. “Caravans and Kavanaugh! That’s my closing message!”

  It seemed improbable that the president would stick to any single “closing message.”

  The previous week, on October 11, Trump had hosted Kanye West in the Oval Office for a meeting on criminal justice reform that turned into a surreal impromptu press conference. With a throng of reporters crowded around the Resolute desk (hewn from the timbers of a British Royal Navy barque and gifted to Rutherford B. Hayes by the famously austere Queen Victoria), the hip-hop artist who had once said that George W. Bush “doesn’t care about black people” riffed for more than fifteen minutes on everything from the “welfare mentality” of African Americans to the jolt of masculine energy he felt when wearing the Make America Great Again hat, calling himself “a crazy motherfucker,” to the delight of Trump.

  A few days later—hours before Trump sounded the alarm about the caravan—the president tweeted the news that a judge had thrown out a lawsuit against him by Stormy Daniels. In so doing, Trump described his former sexual partner as “Horseface.”

  DESPITE THE DAILY CHURN OF SELF-IMPOSED DISTRACTIONS, TRUMP endeavored to echo Gingrich as often as possible. In the final weeks before the midterms, he regularly touted his appointment of not one but two Supreme Court justices, taking every opportunity to remind Republicans of the abuse Kavanaugh had been subjected to in his confirmation hearings, which had devolved into one of the nastiest partisan food fights Capitol Hill had ever seen.

  Still, he was far more adamant about the caravan. Calling it “an invasion of our country” by “gang members,” “very bad thugs,” and “unknown Middle Easterners,” Trump hammered the issue on a daily basis, even deploying five thousand troops to the southern border in what Pentagon officials later acknowledged to be a naked political stunt.

  There were boasts of a booming economy and talk of tax reform’s benefits in the kitchen-sink strategy used by the White House down the stretch. Trump also touted the recently renegotiated trilateral trade deal with Canada and Mexico that carried benefits for U.S. dairy farmers and automakers. But the thrust of his “closing message” was the same as it had been two years earlier in his pursuit of the presidency: fear.

  Trump aimed to brand the election as a stark choice between two parties. Democrats were weak; Republicans were strong. Democrats were beholden to global interests; Republicans were prioritizing America’s well-being. Democrats were motivated by malice and spite and an obsession with toppling the president; Republicans were motivated by patriotism and security and a desire to protect Americans from the wolves at the gate.

  Interestingly, while most of the prized Democratic recruits around the country ran disciplined campaigns steering clear of these stereotypes, certain elements of the progressive base—and some of the party’s most prominent figures—walked right into Trump’s trap.1

  In late June, Homeland Security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was loudly confronted by protesters while dining inside a Mexican restaurant in Washington; members of the local Democratic Socialists of America chapter chanted “Shame!” in response to the family-separation policy at the southern border. The next week, Sarah Sanders was asked to leave a Virginia restaurant because of her work as White House press secretary. In response to these incidents, California congresswoman Maxine Waters told a crowd of her constituents, “If you see anybody from that cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them.”

  Eric Holder, the attorney general under Obama, told a Georgia crowd while campaigning in the fall that he disagreed with the former First Lady’s insistence on elevating the national discourse. “Michelle [Obama] always says, you know, ‘When they go low, we go high,’” Holder said. “No. When they go low, we kick them. That’s what this new Democratic Party is about.”

  The same week as Holder’s remark, Hillary Clinton put a cherry on top of the civility debate. “You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about,” she said in an interview with CNN.2 “That’s why I believe, if we are fortunate enough to win back the House and/or the Senate, that’s when civility can start again. But until then, the only thing that the Republicans seem to recognize and respect is strength.”

  All this played directly into Trump’s argument that Democrats were the party of protests, of lawlessness, of hatred and hostility—all while he continued to embody those very things.

  In October, Trump tweeted a campaign ad that was blatant in its deception and brazen in its racist innuendo: Rolling footage of brown-faced crowds funneling through fences, the ad highlighted a Mexican man, Luis Bracamontes, who had killed two police officers. “Democrats let him into our country,” the caption read. “Democrats let him stay.” But Bracamontes had been released “for reasons unknown” by none other than Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the right-wing guardian of law and order, before being deported under the Clinton administration and reentering the United States during Bush’s presidency. This nuance was absent from the ad, which asked viewers, “Who else would Democrats let in?”

  It was difficult to gauge the aggregate effect of the increasingly vitriolic national climate. In the battle for the Senate, with Republicans playing offense in a batch of predominantly conservative and more rural states, Trump’s rhetorical firefight with the Democrats was a net benefit; in the contest for control of the House, with Republicans defending dozens of moderate, suburban-based congressional districts, it was proving less helpful.

  By the middle of October, it seemed almost certain that Democrats would win back the House. They had too much verve in their base, too many pickup opportunities, and too much cash not to flip the lower chamber. (Republicans began complaining to donors that fall about a “green wave,” citing the record fund-raising sums for congressional challengers across the map.) Trump and his team were highly in tune with this reality. The closer Election Day drew, the clearer the president made it that he did not want to be campaigning with any Republicans who would lose, as it would reflect poorly on him. Strategically, his political team avoided House races almost entirely and stuck to the easier, safer Senate races.

  Even in those instances, nothing was guaranteed. Trump could not understand how Democratic senator Jon Tester stood a prayer in Montana, a state the president had carried by 20 points. He was equally miffed by Democratic senator Joe Manchin’s staying power in West Virginia, which Trump had won by 42 points. The president insisted on pounding both states all the way to the finish line, certain that his appeal was stronger than that of the incumbent Democrats.

  And then there was the curious case of Texas.

  For much of the previous year, Ted Cruz was perceived to be sailing to reelection in the Lone Star State. He was a political celebrity with a fat bank account and a proven campaign machine; his Democratic opponent, Robert “Beto” O’Rourke, was a little-known congressman from El Paso, the sixth-biggest media market in the state (behind even the Brownsville/Rio Grande Valley region). Plus, as the conventional wisdom dictated, this was Texas, after all—no place for a Democrat to flourish in the age of Trump.

  All this was proving backward. For starters, this was no longer the Texas of George W. Bush. The state’s accelerating demographic transformation, paired with the GOP’s rightward lurch, was making for an increasingly competitive atmosphere. After four consecutive presidential cycles of landslide double-digit victories for the GOP, Trump carried Texas by 9 points in 2016—a smaller margin than in battleground Iow
a. There were warning bells galore, none shriller than the result in Harris County. Anchored by Houston and home to swelling populations of both Hispanics and college-educated whites, Harris County was fought to a virtual tie in 2012, with Obama topping Mitt Romney by fewer than 600 votes. Four years later, Clinton carried the county by 162,000 votes.

  For the popular perception of Texas as backcountry, it boasted four of the nation’s eleven largest metropolitan areas and was spilling over with the suburbanites who were most hostile to Trump. In a sense, the former Texas governor, Rick Perry, had been too successful in luring jobs to the state: By cutting taxes to the bone, he had caused millions of new residents to flood into Texas over the past decade, many of them liberal, college-educated exports from California. This influx, on top of the ever-rising share of Hispanic voters, was dry demographic tinder. The contrast O’Rourke struck with Cruz—and with Trump’s GOP—provided the spark.

  Young, telegenic, and social media savvy, O’Rourke presented himself as the antidote to the sorry state of American politics. He was fun and authentic, skateboarding on the campaign trail and refusing to hire pollsters or consultants. He also rejected corporate money and super PAC donations, wanting only the aid of small donors. In running this romantic campaign (with a perfect foil in Cruz, viewed as a sort of political Hannibal Lecter by the left), O’Rourke became the darling of the Resistance. It didn’t matter that his platform wasn’t fully fleshed out, or that those policies he did embrace (Medicare for All, an assault weapons ban, calling for Trump’s impeachment) were tailored more toward national liberals than Texas voters. O’Rourke was a cause more than he was a candidate. And the perks were breathtaking. Drawing mammoth crowds and dotting the state with his signature black-and-white “BETO” signs, O’Rourke raised preposterous sums of money, $38 million in the third quarter alone, a presidential-level haul and the most ever in a U.S. Senate race.3 (The previous record was $22 million.)

  The Cruz campaign was concerned but not flustered. They had expected a comfortable victory in the 10- to 12-point range; as summer turned to fall, and Betomania blew up, they scaled back their projections to the high single digits. Cruz expected his opponent to turn out masses of new Democratic voters; the incumbent would win by mobilizing his own party’s base. None of this was terribly worrisome—until the White House started calling.

  Trump was delighted upon hearing that summer of Cruz’s peril in Texas. Though they both claimed to have moved past their rivalry, with the senator becoming a reliable advocate of the president’s agenda, their relationship was no less awkward. Whenever they were together, Trump would recall Cruz’s victories in the primary—as well as their attacks on one another. The president had never been defeated by anyone else in politics; because of this, Cruz occupied a space in Trump’s psyche that was apparent to their mutual allies. When word came that Cruz was in trouble, then, the president was delighted to play the role of rescuer, joking with aides that he would swoop down to Texas and save Lyin’ Ted.

  Cruz tried to politely dismiss the president’s offers of help, but the phone calls kept coming, at least a half dozen in the month of August alone, with Trump insisting on coming to Texas for what he promised would be the biggest campaign rally of 2018. Cruz was annoyed. He knew what Trump was up to. And the senator didn’t want or need his help. Yet he was trapped: If he said yes, then the president’s visit could do even more damage with the suburbanites his campaign was bleeding away; if he said no, then Trump might just be liable to do something crazy, such as send a tweet attacking Cruz and hurting his turnout efforts with the GOP base.

  The ensuing back-and-forth was a negotiation between competitors masquerading as allies. Cruz, wanting to push the event far away from the major media markets and out into Trump country, recommended they hold the event in Lubbock; the president was adamant that they visit a major city, predicting a capacity crowd. With the discussions at an impasse, Trump took matters into his own hands. “I will be doing a major rally for Senator Ted Cruz in October,” he tweeted on August 31. “I’m picking the biggest stadium in Texas we can find.”

  Cruz was irritated if unsurprised. It took three hours for him to muster a tweet: “Terrific!”

  Trump relented on the size of the stadium—Texas has venues holding more than one hundred thousand people, his staff warned, and it would be impossible to hide the empty seats—but he wouldn’t budge on the location. This would be the highest-profile event of the election cycle, a demonstration of his mercy and his beneficence. Trump wanted maximum exposure. They settled on the Toyota Center in Houston, filling almost every last seat and drawing vast crowds of protesters outside.

  On October 22, two and a half years removed from Trump’s accusing Cruz’s father of aiding the assassination of JFK and Cruz calling Trump “a pathological liar,” the former foes shared the stage in Houston. The president couldn’t help but remind everyone of their “nasty” feud in 2016. But that was all behind them now. (“He’s not Lyin’ Ted anymore,” Trump said earlier in the day. “He’s Beautiful Ted.”) The president credited the Texas senator with leading the charge to pass the GOP agenda, devoting much of the rest of his speech to apocalyptic immigration talk. Democrats, he said, wanted to “give aliens free welfare and the right to vote,” and also let in MS-13 gang members, who “like cutting people up, slicing them” instead of using guns. Trump also embraced the term “nationalist,” calling himself by that controversial label for the first time.

  The Cruz team breathed a sigh of liberation when the event concluded, believing disaster had been avoided. They were right. But the damage was undeniable nonetheless: Cruz’s support dropped 5 points overnight in the Houston market, and the local Republican congressman, John Culberson, saw an even steeper decline.

  Then, at the end of October, Trump told Axios in an interview published one week before Election Day that he planned to end birthright citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants and noncitizens born on American soil.4 “It’s ridiculous. It’s ridiculous. And it has to end,” Trump said, suggesting he could use an executive order to overturn the promises of the Fourteenth Amendment, enacted at the Civil War’s end to protect the rights of newly freed slaves.

  Republicans were floored by the president’s latest voluntary distraction. “Well, you obviously cannot do that,” Ryan responded during an interview with WVLK radio in Kentucky. “You cannot end birthright citizenship with an executive order.”

  Of course, the Speaker knew better than just about anyone that facts presented no obstacle to Trump. The president made more false claims (1,176) during the two months leading up to Election Day 2018 than he had in all of the previous calendar year (1,011), according to Daniel Dale, a Toronto Star reporter who had meticulously chronicled Trump’s relationship with the truth. Dale also concluded, “The three most dishonest days of Trump’s presidency were the three days prior to the midterms,” with a single-day record of 74 false claims being made on Monday, November 5, a little more than three per hour.5

  Questions of truthfulness and legality and constitutionality notwithstanding, Trump’s latest proclamation spelled further political trouble for Republicans with Hispanic constituencies. “It’s like he wants us to lose!” Cruz bellowed upon hearing of the Axios interview. Launching into his impersonation of Trump, the senator said, “What could I do to really antagonize Hispanics? I know! I’ll threaten to take away their kids’ citizenship!”

  If the president was aware of the anger he was incurring within the Republican political class, he didn’t show it. Trump was having the time of his life. Earlier in the summer, while he was traveling to South Carolina for a rally, storms delayed his arrival by over an hour. The pilots of Air Force One suggested they return to Washington, knowing how far behind schedule they were and seeing no immediate improvement in the weather. Trump wouldn’t hear of it. Vowing never to disappoint his thousands of fans waiting on the ground, he grew impatient as Air Force One continued its holding pattern. “Land this
fucking plane already!” he bellowed toward the cabin. “Trust me, it’s safe! I’ve been flying longer than you guys have!”

  Standing backstage at a boisterous rally in Columbia, Missouri, five days before the election, with Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA” pulsing throughout a packed airport hangar, Trump threw his head back and marinated in the moment. Soon enough he would be dazzling a pack of six thousand with his usual riff: Democrats letting the illegals in, Republicans fighting the drugs and criminals, plus the new wrinkle of nixing birthright citizenship. But before any of that, he took a long, introspective pause. Preparing to take the stage, the president seemed to feel it all—the crowd, the music, the energy, the media glare—coursing through his veins.

  “I fucking love this job!” he howled into the November night.

  ONCE USED BY PRESIDENTS AS A BILLIARDS ROOM IN THE FILTHY, FORSAKEN basement, the Map Room had changed status when Theodore Roosevelt renovated the entire ground floor of the White House. He turned it into multipurpose space, only for later presidents to bring back the pool table and restore the leisurely room’s reputation. Franklin D. Roosevelt had another idea: With the onset of World War II, he needed a situation room stocked with records, charts, and maps to track the progress of military engagements across Europe and the Pacific. Hence the Map Room was born, and it has remained ever since, suffering only slight remodels by subsequent administrations careful to keep its integrity and historical value intact.