For years, Charles Krauthammer was a weekly guest on the Factor, and we always had lively debates. I was not close to him personally, but we established an honest rapport. Charles felt that Donald Trump was not qualified to run the country and was boorish to boot. Trump’s brash personal presentation and flamboyant lifestyle offended Krauthammer, who believed in the federal system and, most of all, in traditional decorum. Charles did not want the drastic change that a Trump presidency would bring.
Paralyzed from the neck down after a pool accident while attending Harvard Medical School, Krauthammer could cut through the fog and bring wisdom to almost any policy issue. He was brilliant, a word I seldom use.1
But I thought his personal revulsion for Trump clouded his vision. It also didn’t help that the candidate publicly disparaged Charles. I mean, nobody in authority did that.
By the way, Mr. Trump once told me, after I said something he didn’t like, that I needed a psychiatrist. I laughed and told him it wouldn’t do any good. Trump was Trump: insults fell from his mouth like water from the falls of Niagara. I didn’t take it personally.
But Charles Krauthammer did, even though he kind of provoked Trump with the clown remark.
Despite his following among conservatives, Krauthammer’s anti-Trump posture had little effect on Republican voters, who were now solidly behind Trump. Apparently, they didn’t much care what anyone said about their guy; their support was firm.
Donald Trump at a campaign event in Las Vegas, Nevada, February 22, 2016.
The exit polling from eleven states on Super Tuesday was clear about that. Both Krauthammer and I absorbed the following:
90 percent of Republican voters were angry or dissatisfied with the federal government.
Just 57 percent of Democrats felt that way.
50 percent of GOP voters wanted an “outsider” as president.
Only 14 percent of Democrats did.
Donald Trump’s support was across the board among rich and poor, old and young.
So it is that Donald Trump, with no political experience, is poised to become the Republican nominee for president of the United States. That stark reality, which few thought would ever occur, is sinking in across the land.
But within his own party, there is a rebellion brewing against Trump. And tomorrow it will break wide open.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
DETROIT, MICHIGAN
MARCH 3, 2016
EVENING
As dusk descends, the Secret Service is awaiting the arrival of candidate Donald Trump at a private air terminal a few miles outside Motor City. Along with the federal agents are a number of Fox News personnel, including me, your humble correspondent.
I had arranged a short meeting with Mr. Trump before his motorcade made its way to the historic Fox Theatre in downtown Detroit for the eleventh Republican debate. (The theater is not attached to the Fox Corporation.) My intent with that meeting was to lock down the first interview with Trump after this evening’s debate on live TV. Whoever secured the first Q-and-A on the debate stage immediately after the formal debate ended would have a nice scoop, as they say in the journalistic world. I was confident I would get the interview because it was an FNC event, again starring Kelly, Baier, and Wallace.
Donald Trump had finally put aside his grievances with Megyn Kelly, largely because the controversy of last August had subsided and there was nothing to gain by boycotting another Fox News debate.
As usual, Trump’s motorcade waited by the Jetway steps as the candidate and his entourage, which included his wife, Melania, emerged. The group then climbed into the cars for the drive over to the terminal, where Trump and I were set to chat.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the forum. The Trump caravan sped on by, leaving a bunch of Secret Service guys and O’Reilly standing there looking at tarmac.
After a few rather testy phone calls to Trump surrogates, a picture emerged. The candidate was in a foul mood, and Mitt Romney had caused it. Trump was not speaking to anyone before the debate.
Earlier in the day, the man who lost to President Obama in 2012 had given a speech at the University of Utah, his adopted home state. Romney blistered Donald Trump for twenty minutes, an attack that was now burning up social media.
Trump fired back at Romney in Maine, where he was holding a rally. But the media damage was done.
Mitt Romney is not usually a confrontational man; he’s generally genial and cautious with his words. In 2012, Trump endorsed Romney and donated to his campaign, something Trump pointed out to his Maine supporters earlier in the day.
“He was begging for my endorsement. I could have said, ‘Mitt, get on your knees.’ And he would have dropped to his knees!”
That was just the beginning. Trump was simply warming up to what would be a long tirade. The question was: Why would Mitt Romney go after Donald Trump? It seemed to be out of context and character.
Having covered the Romney-Obama race, a few things were clear. The former governor of Massachusetts failed to connect with working Americans on the campaign trail. Even though the economy was sluggish under President Obama, Romney did not seem to be agitated that many Americans were struggling. Also, he declined to challenge Barack Obama aggressively in the debates; nor did he give Americans a compelling reason to vote for him.
Mitt Romney was a wealthy, establishment guy with beautiful homes in San Diego, New Hampshire, and Utah. He was a patrician who worked well within the Republican Party and actually did a good job as governor of Massachusetts, a very liberal state.
Massachusetts voters have a long tradition of electing uber-leftists like Elizabeth Warren and Barney Frank, but they want the head person in the statehouse to keep taxes under control, and that’s why Romney won.
In 2012, millions of conservative and working Americans were blaming Barack Obama for what they believed was an intentional “weakening” of America and their economic circumstances. Mitt Romney failed to harness that disenchantment, to say the least.
Thus, President Obama beat him fairly easily, by 5 million popular votes. The electoral count was 332 to 206. Romney lost Florida and Virginia, two states he had to have.
Of course, Democrats and the press were overjoyed.
Just before his air raid hours ago in Utah, Mitt Romney dined with his 2012 running mate, congressional Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. Therefore, the Republican establishment had to know what Romney was about to do.
Shortly after Romney’s attack on Trump, Senator John McCain, whom Obama defeated in 2008, essentially endorsed the governor’s trashing of the Republican candidate. So, what the deuce was going on?
After Trump’s huge victory on Super Tuesday, it was clear he would have enough delegates to win the nomination. But that’s not what the GOP chieftains wanted. Like Charles Krauthammer, many establishment Republicans saw Donald Trump as a vulgarian who would get crushed by Hillary Clinton in the general election. So, they apparently decided to sanction a bold move in order to tie up the convention and replace Donald Trump as the nominee. That was the hope.
Mitt Romney was designated to deliver the message. And he did, with relish.
“Here’s what I know. Donald Trump is a phony, a fraud. His promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University. He’s playing members of the American public for suckers. He gets a free ride to the White House, and all we get is a lousy hat!”
Romney went on and on, his remarks a blessing to the Democrats and to the media, which had recently decided to cover Trump more as a national menace than a presidential candidate. Many press executives were pleased that he would be the Republican nominee, but now they would begin to disassemble him so that Hillary would not have to break a sweat.
Mitt Romney’s scathing sound bites gave the leftist press cover. Now it wasn’t just the “liberal media” going after Trump; it was his own party! So, the reportage got more vicious, the analysis more dishonest. An anti-Trump groupthink developed in the national media that is st
ill in place to this day.
For the press, it was an Invasion of the Body Snatchers scenario. Everyone was the same.
On the political front, it is hard to fathom what the Republican power brokers were thinking. Yes, Mitt Romney was a private citizen who could say what he wanted, but it is impossible to believe that the Republican National Committee was unaware of Romney’s intent. The poohbahs knew. But what was the reasoning?
Donald Trump had wiped out the field, drawing enormous numbers of voters to the primaries. He was a political phenomenon in much the same way that Senator Barack Obama was in 2008. What did the RNC think? That Ronald Reagan would rise from the grave? Whom did the Republican establishment expect to replace Trump at the convention? Mitt Romney? Daffy Duck?
Politically, the Romney speech was a disaster for the GOP. Again, it gave the press free rein to viciously attack Trump, it began the “Never Trump” movement within the GOP, and it angered Trump supporters, many of whom saw Mitt Romney as a traitorous wimp and the GOP leadership as spineless idiots.
But most important, Romney’s play deeply hurt Donald Trump, who would never again fully trust his own party. In addition, Trump would come to despise his predecessors Romney and McCain, as well as the entire Bush family.
This would hurt him down the line.
* * *
THE LAST MEN standing assemble on the debate stage in Detroit wishing the spectacle were over. Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and John Kasich are all that remain from the original seventeen Republican candidates.
Ten times over the past seven months, these men have confronted one another in debate format, and they have had enough. They are tired. They’ve said what they have to say.
But the Republican Party lined up twelve debates—and so, the show must go on, even though Donald Trump is now a lock for the nomination.
“We all knew early that the blowtorch Trump was using in his campaign would knock out the real issues,” Governor Mike Huckabee, a candidate who dropped out in February, told me in the spring of 2019.
“Donald’s strategy of dominating media coverage worked. Republican voters wanted to blow up the system, and Trump promised that. The rest of us could not get known because the press was not interested in us. It was all about Donald and whatever attacks he was launching.”
Mike Huckabee went on to endorse Trump and retains no hard feelings. To him, Donald Trump’s brilliant strategy worked, and that was that.
The Detroit debate amounted to nothing. At the start, Donald Trump set the low bar by actually saying to Megyn Kelly, “You’re looking well.”
I was hoping Megyn would reply, “No thanks to you,” but she didn’t.
Bored with the lengthy and laborious process, the candidates all knew that the Republican campaign had devolved into personal insults, primarily between Rubio and Trump. Here’s a sample:
Trump: I have never seen a human being sweat like this man sweats … It looks like he just jumped into a swimming pool with his clothes on. [Trump splashes water on the stage] It’s Rubio.
Rubio: [Trump] was having a meltdown. First, he had this little makeup thing, applying makeup around his mustache because he had one of those sweat mustaches.
Trump: Little Marco Rubio is just another Washington, DC, politician—that is, all talk and no action.
Rubio: He’s always calling me Little Marco and I’ll admit he’s taller than me. He’s like six two, which is why I don’t understand why his hands are the size of someone five two. Have you seen his hands? And you know what they say about men with small hands? You can’t trust them!
A few days later, Donald Trump brought up the “hands” thing at a rally, telling the audience that some other parts of his body were not small. Or something.
It is impossible to know what the great debaters Stephen Douglas and Abraham Lincoln might have thought about all this, but history does record that Abe never called the diminutive Douglas “Little Stevie.” At least not in public.
The Detroit debate seemed to go on longer than a Greek Orthodox Mass on Easter Sunday. The only memorable thing was when all three other candidates said they would endorse Donald Trump if he were the nominee.
I think I saw Marco Rubio perspire a little when he said that.
* * *
AS THE SHOW wrapped up, I was looming offstage to snare Trump. He was not going to avoid me again; nor was another reporter going to get between us.
My camera guy and I quickly approached the candidate, and the director switched from the moderators, who had just signed off, to me. I love live TV.
I didn’t even say hello to Donald Trump; I just started the interview. Here are the highlights:
O’REILLY: Romney hit you hard today. Are you surprised?
TRUMP: He is a failed candidate.
O’REILLY: Were you surprised?
TRUMP:… He did a horrible job. He wants to become relevant again. He really let us down. Four years ago, I supported him. I helped him a lot. He really, really let us down. He knows I feel [that way] … but I think my retort was far stronger than his, and if you look on Twitter and at what’s happening, I think he made a fool out of himself, if you want to know the truth.
O’REILLY: Why do you think he did it?
TRUMP: Because I think he’s a jealous guy, and I think he’d like to run but he didn’t have the guts to run this time, and he probably should have. I don’t think he would have done very well, and I told him he was a choker. I mean, he’s a choke artist, and that’s what happened with his last …
O’REILLY: Do you think he’s angling to go into the convention if you don’t have enough delegates?
TRUMP: He might be—and that’s why he didn’t support anybody—but he doesn’t have it. He would be beaten so badly by Hillary, your head will spin, so he doesn’t have it.
O’REILLY:… What about your personality engenders these people to come after you?
TRUMP: I tell it like it is. I tell the truth. Our country needs that.
O’REILLY: But Romney feels that you’re a danger to the country.
TRUMP: I don’t think he feels that at all.
O’REILLY: You think he’s a phony?
TRUMP: I would say he’s a phony, yeah. I mean, he doesn’t feel that way at all.
O’REILLY:… So, just jealousy on his part?
TRUMP: I don’t know what it is … but I think he made a fool out of himself. He shouldn’t have done it.
O’REILLY:… You need to get, on our calculations, about thirty million people who are not supporting you now to support you to defeat Hillary Clinton.
TRUMP: I think I’m going to defeat Hillary. We’re going to win Michigan, we might win New York … I’m going to win Pennsylvania. I’m going to win Ohio. I’m going to win a lot of states. I’m going to win Florida; Florida is my second home.
* * *
AFTER A LITTLE more back-and-forth, I released Donald Trump to the hordes of reporters lined up to get sound bites.
Eight months after that Detroit night, the candidate did not win New York, but he was dead on about the other states he’d mentioned. At this point, the press and the Democrats were still somewhat underestimating Donald Trump, but not me. I believe my eyes. Trump had captured imaginations, and millions of Americans were willing to take a chance on him.
His competition knew it. I spoke to all three of the other candidates that night, and although they would not admit it on the air, they all knew Trump would win the nomination. His appeal to disenchanted Americans was just too strong. It wasn’t about ideology or issues or money.
“Make America Great Again” hats at a Trump rally at the Las Vegas Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada, September 20, 2018.
None of that mattered in March 2019.
No, it was all about attitude. And no one had attitude like candidate Donald Trump.
No one.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
NEW YORK CITY
MAY 4, 2016
LATE AFTERNOON
The dominoes fell quickly. On March 15, the Ides, Senator Marco Rubio dropped out of the race, but not before saying, “Donald Trump will not make America great; he’ll make America orange.”
The senator was apparently miffed that Trump had said Rubio had “the biggest ears I’ve ever seen.”
Then Ted Cruz and John Kasich left the contest, on May 3 and 4, respectively.
The Cruz departure was especially bitter. Angry over the fact that Trump had linked his father, Rafael Cruz, to Lee Harvey Oswald, the man who murdered President Kennedy, Senator Cruz held a press conference where he brutally attacked Donald Trump. Here’s a brief sample: “Whatever lie he’s telling, in that minute he believes it. The man is utterly amoral. Donald is a bully … Bullies don’t come from strength, they come from weakness.”
Nevertheless, shortly after Cruz packed it in, Donald Trump said this: “I want to congratulate Ted. I know how tough it is. I had some moments where it was not looking so good, and it’s not a great feeling, so I know how Ted feels. And Heidi, and their whole beautiful family.”
As the winner, Trump had turned magnanimous. He had created chaos and upended traditional campaigning, but now was the time to be conciliatory. Donald Trump fully realized he needed to win Texas, Florida, and Ohio in order to become president. That meant he’d have to court Cruz, Rubio, and Kasich.
Mr. Trump appeared on my program the evening of May 4 to talk about it:
O’REILLY: So, I’m a bit confused. Once it was “Lyin’ Ted.” Now he’s a smart, tough guy. What happened?
TRUMP: Well, I want to be gracious, and he was a good competitor. He was a very strong competitor, and it worked out … We had a tremendous victory … He competed really hard and tough. I respect that.
O’REILLY: He really gave it to you yesterday.
TRUMP: I know. He said some things and made up some things … but I understand it. It’s not easy.
The United States of Trump Page 15
