A Year At The Circus

by Jon Sopel

  Melania Trump didn’t agree to be interviewed for this apparently well sourced piece by the Post, written by their best-connected reporters. But the first lady’s spokeswoman did offer a generalised statement, saying, ‘Aside from the president’s solo trips, the family spends most evenings together,’ and that Melania ‘is focused on being a mom. She’s focused on being a wife, and she’s focused on her role as first lady. And that’s it. The rest is just noise.’

  But there has been nothing so noisy as the sagas involving the former porn star Stormy Daniels, and the Playboy model Karen McDougal – both of whom claimed they had affairs with Trump; both of whom were paid off prior to the election to buy their silence. Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, claimed her one-night stand with Donald Trump took place at a golf tournament in California in 2006. Just before election day in November 2016 she was paid $130,000 in return for her silence.

  She signed a non-disclosure agreement that had been facilitated by Trump’s Mr Fixit lawyer, a man called Michael Cohen. Now it should be said that Donald Trump has always insisted there was no sexual encounter – which sort of begs the question why then was she paid $130,000? Surely it can’t be that easy to get money out of Donald Trump? You just make up some fictitious allegation, and hey presto the money comes rolling in?

  Another of Trump’s lawyers, the former New York mayor, Rudy Giuliani, would later claim the President authorised the payment to protect the Trump family, and so that it wouldn’t cause upset to Melania. He would also claim to know Melania’s feelings about the Stormy Daniels claims: ‘She believes in her husband. She knows it’s not true.’ When that was put to the first lady in an ABC interview, it was met with an icy ‘I never talked to Mr Giuliani’. Pressed by the interviewer why he might have said it, Mrs Trump replied: ‘I don’t know. You need to ask him.’

  What was striking about this saga was the way the President kept on changing his story. His accounts of what he knew and when are simply irreconcilable. First of all, he said that he knew nothing about the payment. It had been made by Cohen, without his knowledge and without any discussion. The lawyer had paid the money from his own account and had never asked his client for the money back. (Oh, to have a lawyer like that … one that pre-emptively sorts out your problems, doesn’t charge you, and pays for the privilege out of his own bank account without ever asking for reimbursement … one can but dream.)

  On Air Force One as Donald Trump came to the back of the plane to speak to reporters he was asked about this. Trump claimed he had no knowledge of the payment to Daniels. He also stated he did not know Cohen’s funding source. Here’s the exchange:

  REPORTER: Mr President, did you know about the $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels?

  TRUMP: No. No. What else?

  REPORTER: Then why did Michael Cohen make those if there was no truth to her allegations?

  TRUMP: Well, you’ll have to ask Michael Cohen. Michael is my attorney. And you’ll have to ask Michael Cohen.

  REPORTER: Do you know where he got the money to make that payment?

  TRUMP: No, I don’t know. No.

  That was April 2018. A few days later the FBI raids Cohen’s offices and takes away a mass of papers and files, to the absolute fury of the President. Worse would follow when Cohen started to cooperate with the Feds. In Trump’s mind Cohen went from hero to zero in the blink of an eye. With Giuliani now installed as personal counsel to the President, the former New York mayor appeared on Fox with Sean Hannity – an even closer Trump ally. Giuliani suddenly rewrote the President’s story with this coup de foudre:

  GIULIANI: Having something to do with paying some Stormy Daniels woman $130,000, I mean, which is going to turn out to be perfectly legal. That money was not campaign money, sorry, I’m giving you a fact now that you don’t know. It’s not campaign money. No campaign finance violation. So—

  HANNITY: They funnelled it through a law firm.

  GIULIANI: Funnelled it through a law firm, and the President repaid it.

  HANNITY: I didn’t know he did?

  GIULIANI: Yes.

  This is now a complete and total contradiction of what the President said on Air Force One when he claimed he knew nothing about the payment. Not only did he know, he’d repaid Cohen. Giuliani elaborated that the President had paid Cohen back $35,000 per month from his private account.

  And now the media was left with an important editorial decision – when do we move from saying that what the President has said is an untruth … to calling it a lie. This passed that threshold. What he said on Air Force One was a lie. He knew about the payment when he claimed he didn’t. He knew about the payment because he’d repaid Cohen what he owed him. He knew why Cohen had paid her the money. But now the President had to offer some clarification, and when it came, there was something slightly unusual about it that made me giggle. The President once again chose his preferred means of communication, Twitter. And I have to say one of the things I love about this president is how authentic he is. When he tweets you know it is him; you can hear his voice, and you know it comes from the heart. It is so unfiltered, when what we are normally fed by politicians is a diet of carefully prepared and nuanced messages that have been through filters and sieves and drainage systems to take away any sharp edges. It sometimes feels as though we live in an age where the fear of causing offence means we say nothing very much to anybody. With this tweet, though, you just got the tiniest impression it might have been someone else’s thumbs on the presidential Blackberry:

  Mr Cohen, an attorney, received a monthly retainer, not from the campaign and having nothing to do with the campaign, from which he entered into, through reimbursement, a private contract between two parties, known as a non-disclosure agreement, or NDA. These agreements are very common among celebrities and people of wealth. In this case it is in full force and effect and will be used in Arbitration for damages against Ms Clifford [Stormy Daniels’s proper name]. The agreement was used to stop the false and extortionist accusations made by her about an affair, despite already having signed a detailed letter admitting that there was no affair. Prior to its violation by Ms Clifford and her attorney, this was a private agreement. Money from the campaign, or campaign contributions, played no roll [sic] in this transaction.

  Methinks a lawyer, with imperfect spelling, might have had a roll, sorry role, in that particular missive. But here’s the thing. Blockbuster stories like this one, in a normal political cycle, could be expected to bring down a senior politician. Just consider the ingredients we are dealing with here: a porn star, a president, an alleged sexual encounter, a hush payment just before an election, the President lying on record – and on Air Force One – about the pay-off, allegations from Stormy Daniels that she was threatened by a man in a car park to say nothing ‘or else’, and the President’s (now ex) lawyer in court saying the payment was principally made to influence the election. In December 2018, Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison for this flagrant breach of campaign finance law, and other offences. The submission to the court from federal prosecutors (in other words people employed by the Department of Justice) said that Cohen had acted under the direction of ‘individual-1’. Individual-1 is the President. For the first time government employees had stated the President was complicit in breaking the law.

  His changing accounts, the conviction of Michael Cohen, and the relentlessness of Stormy Daniels and her pugnacious lawyer were exposing him to some legal and a lot of political jeopardy in the West Wing, and more delicate problems in the East Wing. When Stormy Daniels went on TV to give her compelling account of what had happened on the alleged one-night stand – including salacious details like spanking Mr Trump on the bottom with a rolled-up copy of a magazine that had his face on the cover – the President flew back from his Mar-a-Lago retreat by himself. Melania stayed behind. When the story first broke of the $130,000 payment, she had been due to accompany her husband to the meeting of the global élite in Davos, Switzerland. But she went
somewhere else instead. On the night of the State of the Union address – the biggest annual set-piece in the Washington political calendar – she arrived at it separately from her husband. Not only that, what she was wearing (it wouldn’t be the only occasion) also astonished spectators. She arrived wearing a white trouser-suit. Now who else do we know who likes to wear a white pant-suit (as Americans call the outfit)? Why, Hillary Clinton, of course. Cue a tsunami of speculation and comment. Was she sending a message? Was this solidarity with a former first lady who’d had to put up with her husband’s errant behaviour? Was this a way of reproaching her own husband?

  Let’s add into this mix the Playboy model Karen McDougal who was the subject of the ‘catch and kill’ operation discussed earlier. She alleged a longstanding affair with Donald Trump (denied by him), not just a one-night stand as Stormy Daniels had claimed.

  Her silence was bought, as we have seen, by a close friend of Trump and publisher of the scurrilous National Enquirer magazine, David Pecker. Throughout the presidential election campaign it ran a series of salacious stories, deeply damaging to Hillary Clinton – and with only the flimsiest basis in reality. Stories about Trump were entirely positive. Karen McDougal’s story was bought up by the National Enquirer with the explicit aim that it would never see the light of day. It is chequebook journalism in reverse. You use your money to get the exclusive rights to a story you will never publish, as a favour to a friend in need. She is bought out and signs a tight legal contract; her story is caught and killed. When details of this arrangement were eventually made public, McDougal would also appear on primetime TV. She told CNN that she wanted to apologise to Melania for the affair. ‘What can you say except I’m sorry … I wouldn’t want it done to me.’

  When asked about reports of her husband’s alleged infidelities, and the strain it put on her marriage, Mrs Trump told ABC: ‘It is not concern or focus of mine. I’m a mother and a first lady, and I have more important things to think about and to do. I know people like to speculate about our marriage, and circulate the gossip. But I understand the gossip sells newspapers, magazines getting advertisers. And unfortunately, we live in this kind of world today.’ If that sidestepped the question, there was one more exchange that was equally telling. The reporter asks whether she loves her husband. ‘Yes, we are fine,’ she replies – which is not exactly an answer to the question. And she goes on: ‘Yes. It’s what media speculate, and it’s gossip. It’s not always correct stuff.’ Not always correct? That’s a far cry from ‘It’s entirely false’.

  Let me add a personal memory for what it’s worth. At the height of all this, we had met up with a couple of friends who we regularly see for dinner. We had gone a month or two earlier to a rather cool, but down-at-heel Belgian restaurant in trendy H Street, near the Capitol. So, this Saturday in February – just three days before Valentine’s Day, we decided we would go more up-market, and book a table at the Trump hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue. It was early evening and the place was quiet. The building used to be the headquarters of the post office, but it had now been transformed into a five-star hotel. There is a stunning atrium where we were having cocktails before going upstairs to the restaurant. And we joked that there was no chance the President was coming in as there was no security anywhere to be seen. And then after about ten minutes a man arrived with a sniffer dog. And then a few more people, this time apparently with all manner of electronic equipment, which was being set up on the staircase that leads to the BLT Restaurant. After 20 minutes the place was crawling with people wearing earpieces and talking into their hands, and then who should walk directly past where we were having drinks but the President and the First Lady. They went up to their table; and a few minutes later we to ours.

  We were about two tables and maybe 20 feet apart. And to the casual observer they looked like any other married couple out on a Saturday evening date-night. They were not particularly affectionate – but then who is after years of marriage? They sat chatting quietly and in an apparently friendly and animated way to each other. The scene was entirely normal – except for the handful of armed agents standing, looking out from their table across the restaurant. And the dozens posted elsewhere in the hotel. We learned afterwards that in the kitchen a US Navy steward accompanied by a secret service agent checks and oversees the preparation of the President’s food to ensure no one tries to poison him.

  At the end of the meal they got up to leave. The President started engaging with other diners – posing for a photograph at one table where a group of young people were celebrating a birthday. A hello here and a handshake there, him dressed in formal dark suit and striped navy tie, her dressed stylishly, as ever. This may have been Saturday, but there was nothing dressed down about them. What was noticeable was the extent to which Melania Trump stood back from all this. By the time they walked down the stairs to leave, a crowd had gathered in the atrium, cheering and waving, a few chanting ‘USA’. But Melania now withdrew. The backslapping and handshaking could be done by her husband. She seemed to want to have nothing to do with it. This is a private, reserved woman who will only go along with so much.

  The media narrative at the time was that they weren’t talking to each other. They were. We saw this with our own eyes. I should add that the conversation around our table was perfunctory to say the least. We could barely take our eyes off the booth where the first couple were sitting; what they were eating (steak), what he was drinking (Diet Coke), what they were talking about (sadly, no idea). I offer one other observation. I remember coming away from the restaurant thinking that maybe all this stuff about their marriage being in crisis was so much stuff and nonsense. But I have just looked back at the photos I sneaked while they were eating (I know – tacky in the extreme, but I’m a journalist for goodness’ sake, and you wouldn’t want my observations without the ability to back them up …) and it is kind of noticeable that in many of them he sits with his arms very tightly crossed while she is talking. Maybe their evening out together wasn’t quite as enjoyable for him as I had first imagined. But if they really weren’t talking, or they were hurling plates at one and other – would they have chosen to go out for dinner to a public place? From everything that’s been seen in the first two years of this presidency, Melania is not a dutiful ‘keeping up appearances’ wife.

  And I know we journalists can be guilty of over-analysing things. But there are choices that Melania Trump has made as first lady where, if you didn’t arch an eyebrow, you would be falling short in your sceptical duties. The question that I posed earlier in the chapter about what sort of first lady she would be is answered by the campaigns she prioritises to support. Melania Trump has chosen to throw her weight behind a campaign called ‘Be Best’. What is Be Best? Its focus is to wage a war against cyber-bullying. There were guffaws across the land as people posed the question: who is the biggest cyber bully in America today?

  In March 2018, Melania invited senior executives from Twitter, Facebook and other tech companies to the White House to discuss the issue. ‘I am well aware that people are sceptical of me discussing this topic,’ she said in her opening remarks. ‘I have been criticised for my commitment to tackling this issue, and I know that will continue. But it will not stop me from doing what I know is right. We have to find a better way to talk to each other, to disagree with each other, to respect each other.’

  Through a series of subtle and not so subtle messages, Melania Trump would use her platform to stand up for what she thought was right – of course – but while simultaneously seeming to rebuke her husband. No overt criticism of him, no public name calling, just leaving it up to others to draw their own conclusions. She will happily say she doesn’t always agree with what he posts, but it was up to him to take responsibility for what he did.

  Perhaps the most controversial policy (yes, I know that’s a high bar) the President pursued was over the vexed issue of immigrants crossing the southern border from Mexico, when the administration showed a harshness that few
could believe. Mothers were separated from their children at the border, and the children were incarcerated in cages. It seemed an act of extraordinary callousness. That is remarkable enough. What was truly unforgivable was that the state prised these children away from their mothers with no systems in place to reunite child and mother at a later date. Overnight this civilised, liberal democracy had created hundreds, perhaps thousands of orphans. You can argue the merits and demerits of the policy; you can press the case for the need to tackle illegal immigration; you can suggest that such a draconian measure is necessary to warn off other mothers from seeking to enter the country illegally – but having no mechanisms, no bureaucratic record keeping of who belonged to whom and where these tiny children had been taken? Some people suggested that Trump’s America was becoming like Nazi Germany. No, in Nazi Germany, they kept meticulous records. Terrifying, yes. But meticulous.

  With a storm raging, and the President being assailed from all sides, what did Melania do? The one-time immigrant went to the border to see the children and the mothers, in what looked like a calculated act of solidarity with them and against the administration her husband headed. She also wore a coat that generated nearly as much comment as the policy itself.

  Two quick things about Melania Trump that need restating: she is immensely style conscious; she is also very image conscious, not unlike a number of her predecessors – but none quite had her pedigree as a supermodel. Her first solo trip abroad was to Africa. What was the stand-out moment? When she posed beside the Pyramids at Giza in Egypt, it was as though the First Lady had gone back to her modelling days. It was a carefully contrived backdrop, and she looked like she had come off the set of an Indiana Jones movie. She wore white trousers, a white shirt with a black tie, and a cream jacket with a Panama style hat. When people wrote about her outfit, she asked without irony, why don’t people focus on what I say rather than what I wear? Hmm. Where to begin.