The United States of Trump

by Bill O'Reilly

  Donald Trump’s belief system on illegal immigration and Islamic terrorism is in sync with that of at least half the country. And because most politicians stay silent on ethnic issues for fear of being branded racist, Donald Trump quickly built support with his blunt talk on these issues.

  On the other side, many Americans who oppose Trump aren’t really interested in the “why” of his presentation. They detest him and believe he’s dangerous.

  The liberal media (where virtue signaling rules) is part of that crew and is pouncing on Trump every time he puts a negative comment out against any minority or women. Suggesting racist and misogynistic motives is a cheap tactic but one that is now firmly embedded in the American media culture. If you criticize minorities or women, even with validation, you are demonized, boycotted, not worthy of a fair hearing.

  The truth about Donald Trump is this: his bias is almost always transactional, not personal. If he opposes something, ethnicity does not matter. Likewise on the positive front. His acceptance of a situation is based on whether it is a positive for him, not based on any ethnic profile.

  Still don’t believe that? Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are of different skin colors. Who got it worse from Trump?

  By the way, FDR and Dwight Eisenhower were both transactional human beings and governed the country that way. So, Donald Trump is not unique. Only his tactics are.

  * * *

  BACK TO THE dishonest press. Rather than examine issues that affect Americans directly, the media’s campaign coverage of Donald Trump has devolved into smearing him and/or widely publicizing all allegations against him.

  In most presidential contests, that kind of constant pressure on a candidate would destroy a campaign. Not this year. I labeled that tactic the “scandal du jour,” and it exists to this day.

  * * *

  COMING OFF THE Republican National Convention, the Trump campaign is disorganized and trying to figure out how to counteract the hostile press coverage. As for the candidate, he believes that big rallies generate enthusiasm and positive local press for him. Thus, during the campaign, Donald Trump will do an astounding 323 campaign appearances—186 in the primaries and 137 in the run-up to the election. It is estimated that 1.4 million people attended a Trump campaign rally.

  By contrast, Hillary Clinton will hold an impressive 278 events and also spend an incredible $253 million on TV ads, as opposed to Trump’s $93 million.

  But candidate Trump will do far more free television appearances than Mrs. Clinton, who avoids forums where she might be challenged. Trump does not do that, talking even to media outlets that are openly hostile to him.

  On this day, he appears on The O’Reilly Factor, a fair venue:

  O’REILLY: So, your campaign has new leadership. Both Corey Lewandowski and Paul Manafort have left.… What’s going on?

  TRUMP: Well, I wanted to keep Paul as a chairman … but I ultimately decided I want to run the campaign the way I want to run the campaign …

  O’REILLY: The debate is going to be everything. You know that, right?…

  TRUMP: Well, I think it’s going to be very important. I don’t know if it’s make-or-break …

  O’REILLY: Are you going to keep calling her “Crooked Hillary” during the debate…?

  TRUMP: Well, I’m not going to say what I’m going to be doing … We’ll see what happens.

  O’REILLY:… The tone right now is you’re going to be the guy you were in the Republican [debates]—boom! Take no prisoners. Or are you going to be a little bit more measured?

  TRUMP:… I may be the way I was and I may be a much different person. I can’t tell you.… But it will be an interesting hour and a half.

  O’REILLY: It will. I can’t wait.

  TRUMP: It’ll probably get a pretty big audience. Almost as big as The O’Reilly Factor.

  The first debate, just shy of a month from now, will be seen by more than eighty-two million people in the United States alone. That’s about twenty episodes of The Factor.

  * * *

  SO IT IS that Donald Trump is running his campaign with no one person carrying out his orders. He gets advice from people like Steve Bannon, Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani, Jeff Sessions, and Chris Christie. Still, even though he has no experience putting together a political organization, it is Trump’s show.

  Hillary Clinton will have twice as many field offices as Trump, will raise twice as much money ($502 million), and will surround herself with political people of vast experience.

  It will not matter.

  From left, Tiffany Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Kai Madison Trump, Melania Trump, Donald Trump, Donald Trump III, Ivanka Trump, and Eric Trump at a live town hall event on NBC’s Today Show, April 21, 2016.

  For the next few weeks, both candidates will set up strategies for the end run. However, both will be challenged in ways they could never have foreseen. Events will unfold quickly and with an intensity rarely seen in American politics.

  Shocking October surprises are on the way.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  NEW YORK CITY

  SEPTEMBER 10, 2016

  LATE AFTERNOON

  It is my sixty-seventh birthday, but instead of cutting into a calorie-laden cake, I am reading a transcript of Hillary Clinton’s remarks from last night at a Manhattan fund-raiser. The “gala” was sponsored by an LGBT group, and Mrs. Clinton went to town on Donald Trump and his supporters.

  Candidate Trump would never have been invited to address that crowd, and therein lies the divide between the two campaigns. Hillary is driving a theme that she will champion various groups. That’s called “identity politics.”

  Mr. Trump, on the other hand, is focused on one very large group: traditional working Americans who are fed up with “politics as usual.”

  Speaking before folks who adore her, Hillary Clinton uncharacteristically got caught up in the emotion of the room, something that happens to candidate Trump quite often. Emotion is risky in politics, as Hillary Clinton will find out after her speech, which began confrontational and built.

  Thank you all [for the opening ovation]. You know I’ve been saying at events like this lately, I am all that stands between you and the Apocalypse … I think we know what we’re up against. We do, don’t we?

  Donald Trump has pledged to appoint Supreme Court justices who will overturn marriage equality … and there’s so much more that I find deplorable in his campaign: the way he cozies up to white supremacists, makes racist attacks, calls women pigs, mocks people with disabilities—you can’t make this up. He wants to round up and deport sixteen million people, calls our military a disaster. And every day he says something else which I find so personally offensive, but also dangerous.

  Strong but, so far, standard political attack speech. The American people have heard it all before. Candidate Trump gives that kind of talk all the time.

  But then everything changes as the speech veers into a dark place:

  I know there are only sixty days left to make our case. Don’t get complacent and don’t see the latest outrageous, offensive, inappropriate comment and think, “Well, he’s done this time.”

  We are living in a volatile political environment. You know, just to be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right?

  The crowd goes wild, in sports parlance. This emboldens candidate Clinton who is now unleashed.

  The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic—you name it. And unfortunately, there are people like that. And he has lifted them up.

  * * *

  HILLARY CLINTON’S PRIMARY campaign theme up to this point has been “America is stronger if we all work together.” In an instant, that has been changed to “millions of Americans are disgusting human beings.”

  Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton speaks during the LGBT for Hillary Gala at the Cipriani Club on September 9, 2016, in New York City.

  It is one thing to demonize a po
litical opponent; it is quite another to attack individual voters who may see things differently from you.

  Hillary Clinton’s words were even more stunning because she is not a well-loved candidate. Her primary task is to persuade unaligned voters that she will represent the entire country if elected president.

  That concept is now in ashes.

  It would be hard to envision Bill Clinton delivering the speech his wife has just given. A genius at political communication, the former president would instinctively know that calling voters you don’t know “deplorable” and implying that they are haters is, well, deplorable.

  And what good does the name-calling do candidate Clinton? Did she win one vote with that pejorative? President Clinton obviously did not go over Hillary’s speech before she gave it.

  For candidate Trump, the Hillary speech is a gift that keeps on giving. Not only does it ensure that his base will never defect to the Clinton camp no matter what he does, but it also inoculates him against smears, because no matter what she says about Donald Trump, in the minds of Trump supporters, Hillary is worse.

  “She attacked me.”

  So it is that the presidential campaign of 2016 has gotten real personal, real fast. It is now the Deplorables vs. the Clintonistas.

  In a few days, the candidates will enter the debate ring, with both camps wanting blood. It will be the impulsive Donald Trump against the “mean girl” Hillary Clinton.

  The nation is ready to rumble.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  UNIONDALE, NEW YORK

  SEPTEMBER 26, 2016

  EVENING

  Debate day at Hofstra University on Long Island did not start out well for Hillary Clinton. The Washington Post, quickly moving toward a Hate Trump posture, posted this headline: “Voters Strongly Reject Hillary Clinton’s Basket of Deplorables Approach.”

  The newsprint banner was based on a new Post poll showing that 65 percent of respondents thought it was unfair to describe “a large portion of Trump’s supporters as prejudiced against women and minorities.”

  Not to be outdone, Donald Trump had tweeted: “My team of deplorables will be managing my Twitter account for the evening’s debate. Tune in!”

  In reply, Hillary’s people had tweeted the aforementioned Apprentice joke that President Obama had aimed at Trump: “You didn’t blame Lil Jon or Meat Loaf. You fired Gary Busey. These are the kinds of decisions that would keep me up at night.”

  And so, indignity running unabated, the stage was set for the first presidential debate of 2016.

  NBC News had the forum. Nightly News anchor Lester Holt was the inquisitor. I was outside the Hofstra auditorium doing a live lead-to-debate show that was a huge pain. A crowd of people stood behind the platform from where we were broadcasting, and in their exuberance, some were yelling things. I felt like I was at a Mets game.

  While preparing for the Factor that night, I had called folks in both campaigns. I am not using anonymous sources in this book, because that would be a disservice to you, the reader. Anonymous sources always have an unstated agenda, which is often not known by the reporter. So, if a source is not identified, there is a good chance you are getting propaganda, not facts.

  Many reporters don’t care.

  Never let the facts stand in the way of a good story.

  From what I could ascertain from my reporting on debate day, candidate Clinton had studied and memorized stuff for days, a situation she later confirmed.

  Candidate Trump put in a few hours the day before and did memorize an answer to the “women” question that he knew was coming, and also the Obama birth certificate deal.

  Onstage, the candidates shook hands but clearly loathed each other. Mrs. Clinton was wearing a red pantsuit; Mr. Trump was in a traditional dark suit with a blue tie.

  The moderator, Lester Holt, was inclined to let the candidates hammer each other, which was good. Debate questions, with a few exceptions like Megyn Kelly’s, are rather dull—the excitement, if any, comes from hostile interactions.

  Even with the debate taking place in front of a record TV audience, the highlights are scant.

  Mrs. Clinton did run down the “women as pigs, dogs, and slobs” checklist.

  Mr. Trump answered by saying, “I was going to say something extremely rough to Hillary, to her family, and I said to myself, ‘I can’t do it.’”

  That would change down the road.

  Clinton opined that Trump was buddies with Putin and invited him to “hack into Americans.”

  Trump said he would have a “great relationship” with just about everybody. He also said it might not be Russia doing the hacking; it might be “somebody sitting on their bed that weighs four hundred pounds.”

  My favorite Trump retort was on the Obama birther thing: “I was the one that got him to produce the birth certificate … and we think we did a good job.”

  Whereupon Hillary Clinton said that Trump’s entire campaign was founded on “a racist lie.”

  And so it went.

  The only concrete thing that debate viewers might have taken away from the spectacle was about governance. It was clear from his answers that Donald Trump would make presidential decisions based on his gut; Hillary Clinton, on party consensus. She would lead almost exactly the same way Barack Obama was leading.

  The press, of course, instantly declared Hillary Clinton the debate winner; the polls a few days later would show Americans felt that way, too.

  Why? Because they heard the press declare Hillary the winner. Thus, the circle of life continues, as the Lion King well knows.

  But Donald Trump, who has a great relationship with lions, saw the debate differently.

  And he would soon state that on The O’Reilly Factor.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  NEW YORK CITY

  SEPTEMBER 28, 2016

  LATE AFTERNOON

  In six weeks, the United States of America will elect a new president, and most polls have Hillary Clinton leading Donald Trump. The Clinton campaign is confident, but the candidate is weary from more than a year of being on the road.

  Running for president is a brutal undertaking, one that could destroy a normal, sensitive human being. In addition to the travel and event performances, the attacks on the candidates are relentless and often dishonest. Decorum and civility are not part of any party platform. You’ve heard the expression “dog eat dog?” Forget that. Now the dog dismembers you, tries to destroy every fiber of your being, and then eats you.

  In the past, presidential candidates had to deal with only a few national media people, many of whom could be co-opted with favors and flattery.

  As chronicled in my book Killing Kennedy, JFK’s political machine enjoyed very favorable press coverage. In fact, the Newsweek writer who would become editor of the powerful Washington Post, Ben Bradlee, was a sailing buddy of the young president. In Kennedy’s case, the press actually covered up his indiscretions.

  President Franklin Roosevelt also derived benefit from a favorable media, as did Dwight Eisenhower.

  Beginning with the Vietnam protest years, then extending into the Watergate debacle, the American media became more negative toward the presidency. TV reporters such as Dan Rather and Sam Donaldson specialized in aggressive coverage and were rewarded in the marketplace.

  Then came social media and “black-op” political action groups, which used cyberspace as a war machine. To this day, these smear operations are backed by millions of dollars donated by ideological zealots.

  The result is that most presidential candidates are torn to pieces online, and that viciousness is regularly enabled by the establishment media. President Bush the Younger was battered on a daily basis during the Iraq War, so much so that he rarely even looked at news coverage. His advisers tracked things.

  For the past fourteen months, both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have been savagely attacked in print and in the electronic media. But Trump got it worse than any political candidate. Ever.


  In a number of private conversations with me, candidate Trump would rail against what he saw as bias against him. I basically put forth what he already knew: that his populist message threatened the politically correct social landscape. Also, that his failure to absorb press punishment silently, as many politicians do, guaranteed that the negative coverage would continue. Once you hit back against the press, they come after you harder. Media chieftains often take delight in breaking human beings. It’s a power thing.

  Sometimes Mr. Trump would actually complain to me about me. One time, I even raised my voice to him in my own defense. Basically, he believed some of my coverage of him was “negative.”

  Fine. That was true. It was. But I provide honest analysis always. For example, if candidate Trump says Mexico is going to pay for the border wall and I don’t believe that will happen, I’m going to say it.

  If I believe that denigrating John McCain’s captivity in Vietnam is wrong, that will be opined.

  But here’s the thing about Donald Trump: once a candid discussion happens, he doesn’t harbor grievances. He moves ahead. He generally respects people who are straightforward.

  And here’s the other thing about Mr. Trump: he can absorb more punishment than any person I have ever known, with the exception of Senator McCain.

  Ironic, isn’t it?

  Two days after the first debate, which the left-wing press had awarded to Hillary Clinton, candidate Trump entered the No Spin Zone.

  * * *

  O’REILLY: Is there something that Hillary Clinton said during the ninety minutes [of the debate] that has stuck in your mind?

  TRUMP: I think there is … I saw when she’s talking and talking about what she’s going to do and how she’s going to do it—I realized she’s been doing this for twenty-six to thirty years, and nothing ever gets done. Even when she went to the United States Senate from New York, she said she was gonna bring back jobs to New York, and it was a disaster. Upstate New York is a total disaster. And I started to say, “Wait a minute, Hillary, you’ve been there twenty-six years, and you haven’t done it. Why all of a sudden are you gonna do it? You’re not going to do it.”