O’REILLY: Why doesn’t the Muslim community throughout the world speak out more forcefully against the jihadists?
TRUMP: Well, there’s something that brings a level of hostility that I’ve never seen in any religion. You can say what you want about the Koran, there’s something there. There’s a tremendous hatred of us.
Donald Trump has never wavered from that belief, one that his core supporters have applauded time and time again.
Likewise with regard to the millions of foreign nationals who have entered the United States illegally over the years. Candidate Trump is calling for a tough policy to be imposed on that front.
So that’s where we began on a mid-August night in 2015.
O’REILLY: The [Wall Street] Journal says you’re killing the Republican Party over immigration. And you say?
TRUMP: We have to bring our country back, Bill. We’re in big trouble. We’re losing so much. We have at least eleven million illegals in the country. Not only the jobs are taken, but everything else. And you know about the crime wave because I think no one has covered the crime wave better than you … We’ve spent 113 billion dollars on illegal immigrants. We have to do something about it, and we have to start by building a wall. A big beautiful wall. A big beautiful, powerful wall. It can have a gate; it can have a door; we’ll let people in legally. But we have to stop what’s happening to our country because we’re losing our country!
* * *
THERE IT IS—“WE’RE losing our country.”
Although I did not know it when Trump used that phrase on my program, there, clearly stated, was his key to the White House kingdom. “They are taking away our country!”
Of course, “they” are the cowardly politicians, disapproving journalists, and the politically correct, bleeding heart Hillary backers.
Us. Them. Who are you with?
No other Republican candidate had a theme that came close.
Let’s see. Would the crowd respond to a new Medicaid proposal or a strong threat against jihad?
Would voters rally to Jeb Bush’s educational theories, or to Trump denying “bad” people entry to the United States?
While the supercilious media looked down on Trump’s populist words, the folks heard them loud and clear. Here was a candidate who spoke straight and was sick of politics as usual—just as they were. What did President Obama do for them in eight years other than force a confusing new health care system down their collective throats? Where was the opportunity for working people? Why was it always politically correct groups that received support?
Wages were stagnant, new jobs scant, foreign nationals all over the place, and ISIS was beheading people on video.
And Megyn Kelly was worried about Donald Trump calling far-left radical Rosie O’Donnell a pig? Come on.
A tidal wave was beginning that August night. I felt it while looking into the camera asking candidate Trump questions. The folks were responding to blunt talk and specific ideas that sounded good: a wall on the border, payback to radical Muslims, getting tough with China.
Most important, tens of millions of Americans sincerely believed they were, indeed, losing their country, and at last there had appeared a presidential candidate who agreed with them. This wasn’t John McCain or Mitt Romney, establishment politicians who allowed an articulate Barack Obama to roll over them. Donald Trump would never stand for that, his supporters thought. After all, he went after Obama hard with the birth certificate!
From my vantage point, Dr. Jekyll–Trump had found a magic formula and was just beginning to figure out how to turn himself into a political Mr. Hyde.
And if you and Robert Louis Stevenson were paying attention, it was clear that transformation was developing quickly.
* * *
PERHAPS THE FIRST appearance of Mr. Hyde–Trump on the campaign trail came the day after the Kelly-Trump confrontation, on Friday, August 7. Speaking on CNN, a still teed-off candidate Trump related how he observed Megyn Kelly as she was asking the “woman” question during the debate.
“You could see she had blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of … wherever,” Donald Trump told an interviewer.
The outcry was immediate. Trump’s rivals scorched him, and other Republicans said he was now an unacceptable candidate. Liberal democrats, of course, were beyond crazed.
Although Trump quickly issued a statement saying that the word wherever had meant her “nose,” not anything to do with the menstrual cycle, women’s groups went wild with condemnation.
If Donald Trump had been a corporate employee, he likely would have been fired immediately. The hue and cry was deafening.
But Mr. Trump was not an employee. He answered to no one—not even to fund-raisers, as he was financing much of his campaign with his own money. The last person Donald Trump had ever deferred to was his father, Fred. And that was a long time ago.
However, candidate Trump did have to consider the court of public opinion, and he did not know how the debate and the bitter comment about Megyn Kelly afterward was going to play out.
The polls clearly answered that question: Trump remained well ahead in the Republican field.
That was a turning point for candidate Trump. He began to understand that his in-your-face presentation was actually inoculating him against bad press and pressure groups. The more outrageous his rhetoric, the firmer his supporters stood by him. Modern politics had never seen anything like this. It was almost as if Don Rickles were running for president.
Assessing his unique situation, Donald Trump decided that he would never apologize for anything. That would show weakness. In fact, going forward in the campaign, Trump would step up the insults. They received massive attention and, apparently, buoyed his strongman image.
So, he let them fly.
* * *
IT IS NO accident that Andrew Jackson is one of Donald Trump’s favorite presidents. If someone insulted the southerner, Jackson might actually shoot them. Our seventh president actually participated in a number of duels, killing at least one man and getting shot in the chest himself. Jackson carried that piece of lead in his body until he died.
Andrew Jackson believed that if someone insulted him, that person should pay a price. Donald Trump adheres to that point of view as well.
So, candidate Trump injected invective into the race for president. Here are a few examples:
After falling behind Ben Carson in a poll taken in Iowa, Trump insulted the state when he tweeted: “Too much Monsanto in the Corn Creates Issues in the Brain?”
He branded Senator Rubio “Sweaty Marco.”
He branded Senator Cruz “Lyin’ Ted.”
He branded Senator Elizabeth Warren “Pocahontas.”
Trump tweeted this about Jeb Bush: “[He] has to like the Mexican illegals because of his wife” (who is Latina).
He tweeted that Charles Krauthammer was “one of the worst and most boring pundits on television.”
He said MSNBC personality Mika Brzezinski was “bleeding badly from a face-lift.”
Well, I guess all the invective is better than shooting people—like Jackson did.
The historically interesting thing here is that the insults are part of a strategy: Never be boring. Always go on offensive. It really doesn’t matter what you say as long as it gets attention.
During World War II, the adage was “Loose lips sink ships.”
In Trump’s war of attrition to win the presidency, that adage was changed to a quote from The Untouchables: “He pulls a knife, you pull a gun…”
That’s the Trump way.
Trump supporters, at least many of them, were amused by his campaign antics. What would he say next? In a country where social media assaults the senses every second of every day, Donald Trump’s verbal aggression became part of the attraction for some voters.
In addition to the mocking came verbal exaggeration, which the Trump critics uniformly said were “lies.”
As stated, candidate Trump mostly do
es not use precise language. In order to make points, he often exaggerates. A vivid example of this is when he said he saw thousands of Muslims celebrating after the 9/11 attack.
There were reports in New Jersey that some anti-American activity took place in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, but nothing large-scale. Didn’t matter to candidate Trump: bad Muslims were on display, and what difference does it make if it’s twelve or twelve thousand?
Trump yells, “You’re fired,” after speaking to several GOP women’s groups at the Treasure Island Hotel & Casino, April 28, 2011, in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Bad is bad.
What the anti-Trump media never understood is the insults, hyperbole, and bombastic presentation isn’t chump change; it’s Trump-change—meaning, it’s insignificant. Millions of Americans believe they are lied to every day by the media—and don’t even get them started on career politicians.
Donald Trump’s “lies” are overlooked because the greater good is served by the man slapping down folks who deserve to be slapped: terrorists, criminals, fake news people, violent foreigners who sneak into America.
Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush, and most other politicians were never going to call out the bad people. Trump would, so who cares if he embellishes or insults?
He’ll “Make America Great Again” by taking a licking while he keeps on ticking. He’s not afraid, and he never backs down.
Andrew Jackson had nothing on Trump. Old Hickory would have been wearing a MAGA hat as he drew his pistol in those nineteenth-century duels. America in 2015 had become soft and polarized. It needed a verbal gunslinger to clean up Dodge.
Donald Trump understood this, viscerally. And he had the stomach for the attacks that he knew awaited him.
By August 2015, Trump also understood the nomination was his to lose. He saw that his supporters did not give a rip what the New York Times thought or what was said by snooty commentators on CNN.
Trump had outfoxed the TV media and survived the first onslaught of attacks. The political apprentice was beating the career guys while barely breaking a sweat.
For those of us covering the presidential campaign honestly, the old rules had been obliterated. We were now all on Trump time.
Even Hillary Clinton.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
LAS VEGAS, NEVADA
OCTOBER 13, 2015
LATE AFTERNOON
Hillary Clinton is not worried. As she stands on the Democratic presidential debate stage at the Wynn hotel ballroom, she knows she will not be denied again. This time there is no young, charismatic guy up against her. In fact, President Obama, who defeated Hillary Clinton for the nomination in 2008, actually wants his former secretary of state to be the next president. Mr. Obama believes Mrs. Clinton would carry on his policies and add to his legacy.
So, very quietly, President Obama has suggested to his vice president, Joe Biden, that he stay out of the race. Eight days from now, Mr. Biden will accede to the president’s wishes and announce that he is not running. It is a decision he will regret.
Barack Obama likes Joe Biden but knows he is not nearly as disciplined as Hillary Clinton. As vice president, Biden actually opposed the Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. Biden has other decision-making deficits and is prone to verbal gaffes. The much-derided Sarah Palin held her own with Biden in a 2008 debate, not a good sign.
Both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton see a very weak field on the Republican presidential side and are delighted that a one-man wrecking ball named Donald Trump is creating chaos in the GOP ranks. The president does not really know Trump, but Hillary does, having taken his substantial campaign donations and socialized with him as a senator from New York.
As Hillary Clinton looks at her Democratic competition immediately before the CNN-sponsored debate begins, she sees no threat, as the field is thin.
Bernie Sanders is a cranky old socialist who has accomplished little as a senator from Vermont.
Martin O’Malley is a far-left former governor from Maryland; Jim Webb is a senator from Virginia; and Lincoln Chafee is a politician from Rhode Island.
Webb and Chafee will drop out of the race this month. O’Malley will hang in until February, but in reality, this is mostly the JV, as President Obama might say.
Only Bernie Sanders will eventually cause Mrs. Clinton some grief.
Hillary Clinton has studied hard for this debate, as she always does. She is a driven woman who feels she has been treated unfairly for most of her adult life. It has been one controversy after another, very similar to what Donald Trump has experienced. But while Mr. Trump lashes out publicly against his tormentors, Mrs. Clinton internalizes, and seethes.
However, Trump and Clinton have one very important trait in common: they do not trust many people. In fact, Hillary has just two close confidantes: Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin, who is married to the problematic former congressman Anthony Weiner.
According to her pollster and adviser Joel Benenson, Hillary’s latest controversy, using her private email server for State Department business, is not a major concern of most Democratic voters. While the conservative media is pounding Hillary into pizza dough, her potential voters don’t much care that she may have violated national security laws for unexplained reasons.
On that subject, just a few minutes from now, her rival Bernie Sanders will say: “The American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails. Enough of the emails! Let’s talk about the real issues facing America!”
That statement got applause and a smile from Hillary Clinton, who basically had just one jazzy line the entire evening.
“I’m a progressive who likes to get things done. And I know how to find common ground and I know how to stand my ground.”
That description separates Mrs. Clinton from her husband, Bill Clinton, who, as a two-term president, governed center-right. Hillary has become more liberal than Bill and now believes his campaign presence only helps her in the South and Far West. If he stumps for her in the big media markets, some jaded press person will remind folks of the bad old Lewinsky days.
Hillary has put together a campaign staff that mirrors the one Barack Obama used with success. She still has hatchet man John Podesta around but relies more on younger people like Robby Mook and Jen Palmieri for day-to-day tactics.
Mrs. Clinton is a gifted fund-raiser, but she is not good at relating to everyday people. So, hers will be largely a media campaign—not the retail politics that Bernie Sanders will embrace. However, even though the American press has drifted far into left-leaning waters, Hillary does not trust the media. It has brutalized her and Bill Clinton in the past. So, no spontaneous press interactions for her. She will be tightly scripted throughout the campaign.
This evening, though, Hillary Clinton is confident that CNN will not surprise her as Megyn Kelly did Donald Trump. Anderson Cooper will not relitigate Whitewater, or Travelgate, or Lewinsky. CNN makes money broadcasting primarily to liberal Americans, so a safety net for Democrats is firmly in place.
Anyway, Anderson likes her.
What’s not to like?
* * *
MY INTERACTIONS WITH Hillary Clinton have been few but respectful. In the fall of 2008, I interviewed her in South Bend, Indiana, during the primary season. Candidate Clinton was forty-five minutes late for the chat, and I used the time to talk with her Secret Service advance detail. They didn’t much like her, the consensus being she was imperious.
Those conversations were off the record, so I did not use them in my reportage. I asked the same questions when I interviewed then-senator Barack Obama in York, Pennsylvania. There, the Secret Service guys generally considered the candidate a good guy.
My TV conversation with Hillary Clinton was standard issue except for one moment. While discussing the war in Afghanistan, I asked her how she would defeat the Taliban. She did not have a strategy. So, I followed up, asking her where the Taliban command and control was.
She
fired back: “Tell me.”
“Quetta, Pakistan,” I said.
That exchange stayed with me because you don’t often see Hillary Clinton miss a quiz question. She knows her stuff, but what she doesn’t know, while standing in the Wynn hotel in front of an adoring CNN crowd, is that the political world is changing.
In 2016, it will no longer be about policy; it will be about emotion.
And Hillary Clinton does not show emotion.
Donald Trump never believed Senator Sanders would defeat Hillary Clinton. Based upon my private conversations with him, I think it’s likely he didn’t even watch the debate in Vegas or substantial portions of the other five Democratic debates to come.
Why would he waste time on that? Sanders was a “Communist,” and Hillary was “Obama Lite.” Neither could possibly make America great again. In fact, both would ruin America, he often told those around him. Obama was bad; Clinton and Sanders were worse!
Trump believed he could beat Hillary if everything broke his way. She had a controversial past, was deeply disliked by traditional conservatives, and now had the FBI looking at her private correspondence.
For Donald Trump, it was all good. Obama beat her, and Trump saw himself as much smarter than the president. After two Republican debates, Trump was dominating his party. Things were working out even better than he planned. The TV networks were all over him, and his big issues (border security, a better economy, and getting tough on Muslim terror) had taken root. He knew the Democrats were soft on those things and were so politically correct that they could never stir up emotion like he could.
As for candidate Hillary, she dreaded plowing through the fields of Iowa and the diners of New Hampshire. But she and her female confidantes fervently believe the time has come for the first woman president. She has paid her dues and has also paid a huge price in personal pain.
The United States of Trump Page 13
