Devil's Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency

by Joshua Green

  Rather than simply issue a press release, Waxman devised something far more attention-grabbing and dramatic. The following Sunday, Burton was booked for an encore appearance on Meet the Press. The show’s host, Tim Russert, was quietly made aware of the discrepancy between the two sets of Hubbell transcripts.* On Sunday, when the cameras began rolling, Burton became an unwitting captive as Russert, the dean of Washington journalism and a maestro of the prosecutorial interview, confronted the chairman on air with evidence of the doctored transcripts.

  The uproar was immediate and intense. Gingrich, humiliated, condemned Burton’s committee as “the circus.” Republicans fumed at the embarrassment Burton had brought on them and demanded he atone for it. The Washington Post splashed the story across its front page: “Burton Apologizes to GOP.” The whole edifice of probity and professionalism that Republicans had painstakingly constructed to give themselves license to go after the Clintons seemed to come crashing down at once. “The Burton investigation is going to be remembered as a case study in how not to do a congressional investigation and as a prime example of investigation as farce,” declared Norman Ornstein, a respected congressional scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

  The fallout landed heaviest on Bossie, who was very publicly fired from his job. Once a feared and respected figure who operated in the innermost sanctum of Republican power, he was now cast far, far outside it, to the fringes of the conservative world. The subsequent collapse of the Republican power structure (including Gingrich’s resignation as House Speaker) brought about by the backlash to Bill Clinton’s impeachment only ratified Bossie’s status as persona non grata among respectable mainstream Republicans.

  Bossie, however, did not disappear or even leave Washington, D.C. Nor did he abandon his obsession with taking down the Clintons. Instead, he became president of the conservative group Citizens United, a position that gave him rein to become what he was probably best suited to being all along: an uninhibited, full-time, generously compensated anti-Clinton warrior, whose plots and intrigues could now be funded by wealthy conservative ideologues.

  The job made Bossie a big deal in a small but intense universe of rabid Clinton haters. He arrived at a pivotal moment. By and large, the public rejected what this group’s members regarded as their great triumph—Clinton’s impeachment—and punished Republicans such as Gingrich, whom they deemed responsible for it. For those who had fought so long and hard to damage Clinton, this unexpected turn of events only deepened their animosity and drove them further from the mainstream of the GOP. Their influence waned. A new Republican president, George W. Bush, got elected by championing a different, more “compassionate” conservatism, while holding the right-wing fire-breathers at bay.

  Bossie’s ilk continued nursing their obsession, blasting out fund-raising appeals, making overheated political films, propagating dark conspiracy theories that revolved around the Clintons, and gathering at the sorts of conferences where intense adherents to far-right-wing causes set up tables to lure new recruits, and vendors hawk merchandise pitched to the politics of the crowd, such as Hillary Clinton nutcrackers, and bumper stickers that read “Life’s a Bitch. Don’t Vote for One.” Yet for all its fevered efforts, this group rarely made a ripple outside its own insular bubble—its members were mostly cranks who wound up speaking mainly to one another. Republican politicians were happy to receive their votes. Many, in fact, depended upon them, even as they privately held the cranks in low esteem. As one campaign manager for a Republican presidential candidate described them, “They’re the stuff you scrape off your shoes. Bad people.”

  Yet in one instance the Clinton-haters did manage to break through in a big way—and Bossie was the man responsible. In 2007, in anticipation of Hillary Clinton’s run for the White House, Citizens United produced a scalding documentary film that purported to detail a thicket of nefarious Clinton scandals, although it consisted mainly of interviews with off-kilter conservative commentators such as Dick Morris and Ann Coulter maligning the former first lady. Bossie’s plan was to release Hillary: The Movie as a cable television video on demand in January 2008, just as the Democratic presidential primary was getting underway. In truth, it was more of a fund-raising ploy than a serious effort to sway Democratic voters, who would be unlikely to seek out a film attacking their leading presidential candidate, much less be turned against her by the opinions of the right-wing talk-radio hosts who were its central characters.

  But Bossie didn’t get very far. The Federal Election Commission prohibited Citizens United from advertising the film on the grounds that Hillary: The Movie constituted a campaign ad. The new McCain-Feingold campaign finance law restricted so-called issue advertisements that mentioned federal candidates from airing within thirty days of a primary and sixty days of a general election. Bossie sued, claiming his film was protected commercial speech and therefore exempt from campaign laws. A three-judge panel of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia denied his request for an injunction, stating that his film was effectively a ninety-minute campaign ad “susceptible of no other interpretation than to inform the electorate that Senator Clinton is unfit for office, that the United States would be a dangerous place in a President Hillary Clinton world, and that viewers should vote against her.”

  Yet in 2010, the Supreme Court disagreed and sided with Bossie in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, a landmark decision that said political spending is protected speech under the First Amendment, and corporations and other organizations can therefore spend unlimited amounts of money to support or denounce candidates in an election. Republicans were ecstatic.

  The Supreme Court case briefly turned Bossie into a conservative cause célèbre, not because Republicans thought his film would have any effect on Clinton, who had already been dispatched by Obama, but because it was the vehicle that eliminated campaign spending restrictions, opening the floodgates for more corporate money to pour into electoral politics. It bestowed upon Bossie a temporary glow that made him seem like a big deal and a consequential player in Republican circles at the very moment when Donald Trump was getting serious about running for president and casting about for advice. Trump had few connections to the political world, where no one took him seriously, even though (and in part because) he was kicking up a shit storm by claiming that Obama had faked his birth certificate and wasn’t really born in the United States.

  And yet Trump was hardly dissuaded. His habit always was to quiz anyone and everyone about what they thought, whether or not that person could claim any expertise on the topic at hand. In Trump’s mind, then, Steve Wynn’s opinions about politics and how to shape it were every bit as valid and worth listening to as those of a seasoned political consultant—and maybe more so because Wynn had traveled a path so similar to Trump’s own, not just in business but also in politics. Wynn, too, had once been a Democrat and even claimed to have voted for Obama in 2008. But he turned sharply against the president and the Democratic Party after the election, and would later get into a tabloid-friendly fight over the subject with the actor George Clooney, who once stormed out of Wynn’s dinner party after the casino magnate called Obama an “asshole.” For Trump, who was trying to figure out how to navigate national politics, Wynn’s imprimatur of Bossie, and Bossie’s own post–Citizens United celebrity, both counted for a lot. Trump brought Bossie into the fold, later describing him this way: “Solid. Smart. Loves politics. Knows how to win.”

  By March 2011, employing a style that would soon become familiar, Trump had orchestrated the “birther” crisis over Obama’s citizenship, roiling the political world and making himself a central figure in the national conversation. Now he faced a dilemma: Wynn had invited him to be a guest at his three-day, celebrity-studded Las Vegas wedding on April 30, where Clint Eastwood was going to be the best man. But The Washington Post, eager to capitalize on Trump’s sudden political notoriety, had invited him to be a guest at th
e White House Correspondents’ Association dinner that was being held the same night. Trump had accepted both invitations.

  In the end, he decided to attend a Friday night party in Las Vegas honoring Wynn and his fiancée, Andrea Hissom. Trump mingled poolside with Sylvester Stallone and Hugh Jackman. Then, early the next morning, he jetted off to Washington, D.C., where the comedian Seth Meyers was going to emcee the Correspondents’ Dinner. Trump had no idea that Meyers and Obama were anticipating his arrival and preparing to make him a national laughingstock. And none of them knew that this elaborate humiliation would be the catalyst that put Trump on a path to the White House.

  —

  It was a setup from the beginning. Trump had been invited to the Correspondents’ Dinner by Lally Weymouth, the daughter of The Washington Post’s legendary publisher Katharine Graham and someone who routinely courted stars and celebrities as guests to the annual event held at the Washington Hilton. Trump’s invitation had caused grumbling in the Post newsroom. Was it really appropriate, reporters wondered, for the paper to embrace the purveyor of a racist conspiracy theory directed at the nation’s first black president—who would, not incidentally, be the dinner’s featured speaker?

  But ever since 1987, when, in the wake of the Iran-Contra scandal, the journalist Michael Kelly brought one of its central figures, Fawn Hall, the document-shredding secretary to Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, to the event, there had been an unspoken competition among prestige media outlets to land the most notorious and newsworthy guests. In the social context of elite Washington, the Post’s nabbing Trump as a guest was a coup. And Trump was, by all accounts, delighted to be among the actors, starlets, and television personalities who flock to the A-list dinner each year. Knowing that the dinner speakers typically single out members of the audience for roasting, and that Trump was a ripe target, a couple of Post reporters asked him if he was prepared for some ribbing. Trump waved them off. “I’m fine with this stuff,” he replied.

  Trump was seated in the very center of the Hilton ballroom, his confection of blond hair aglow in the bright lights, his star wattage eclipsing the graying eminences of journalism and politics who craned their necks to get a look at him. No one confronted him about his outrageous slander or questioned why he was so intent on humiliating Obama, because doing so would have run counter to the spirit of the evening. Instead, Trump schmoozed and flattered his fellow guests, and they in turn schmoozed and flattered him.

  Nobody knew it yet, but the president and his staff would not be so solicitous. They had, in fact, been eagerly awaiting Trump’s arrival in Washington from the moment the news became public, recognizing the occasion as the perfect opportunity to exact a humiliating revenge. Obama’s writing staff even brought in a ringer, the comedian and director Judd Apatow, to help its most comedically gifted speechwriter, Jon Lovett, compose a devastating takedown of Trump. The White House Office of Digital Strategy had agreed to produce a video complement.

  Toward the end of the evening, when the lights dimmed for Obama’s remarks, giant screens throughout the ballroom broadcast a blaring music video of Rick Derringer’s cheesy rock anthem “Real American” that the digital-strategy team had crammed full of over-the-top patriotic imagery—rippling American flags, screaming eagles, Uncle Sam—and then Obama’s long-form birth certificate came dancing across the screen. The White House had just released it three days earlier, after months of Trump’s haranguing suggestion that Obama couldn’t produce it because he hadn’t really been born in Hawaii.

  As the lights came up, Obama stood at the lectern grinning broadly and looking right at Trump. “My fellow Americans, Mahalo!” he said. “As some of you heard, the State of Hawaii released my official long-form birth certificate. Hopefully this puts all doubts to rest. But just in case there are any lingering questions, tonight I’m prepared to go a step further. Tonight, I am releasing my official birth video.”

  Now the screens showed a clip of Disney’s The Lion King bearing a time stamp that read August 4, 1961—Obama’s birthday. The crowd hooted and laughed.

  “Donald Trump is here tonight,” the president announced. “Now, I know he’s taken some flack lately. But no one is happier, no one is prouder to put this birth certificate matter to rest than the Donald. And that’s because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter, like . . . Did we fake the moon landing? What really happened in Roswell? And where are Biggie and Tupac?”

  The crowd laughed louder. Trump sat frozen in a rictus grin.

  Obama kept after him: “All kidding aside, obviously we all know about your credentials and breadth of experience, um . . .” Here Obama paused to let the laughter die down. “No, seriously, just recently, in an episode of Celebrity Apprentice, at the steakhouse, the men’s cooking team did not impress the judges from Omaha Steaks. There was a lot of blame to go around. But you, Mr. Trump, recognized that the real problem was a lack of leadership, and so ultimately you didn’t blame Lil Jon or Meat Loaf—you fired Gary Busey.”

  Obama started cracking up, but kept on going: “These are the kinds of decisions that would keep me up at night.” The crowd roared. “Well handled, sir! Well handled.”

  Meyers was up next. After methodically working through the field of 2012 Republican presidential hopefuls, he arrived at his real target. “And then, of course, there’s Donald Trump,” Meyers said, with a devilish grin. “Donald Trump has been saying that he will run for president as a Republican—which is surprising, because I just assumed that he was running as a joke.”

  Trump reddened.

  “Donald Trump often appears on Fox,” Meyers continued, “which is ironic, because a fox often appears on Donald Trump’s head. If you’re at the Washington Post table with Trump and can’t finish your entrée, don’t worry: the fox will eat it.”

  More laughter.

  “Gary Busey said recently that Donald Trump would make a great president. Of course, he said the same thing about an old, rusty birdcage he found.”

  Gone from Trump’s visage was any pretense that he was enjoying this. He did not seem to possess the ability to laugh at himself, nor even the politician’s ability to smile broadly and pretend to. Trump was plainly humiliated—and it showed.

  When Meyers was finished with him, Trump, looking shaken, beat a hasty retreat. He had been “incredibly gracious and engaged on the way in,” Marcus Brauchli, the Post’s executive editor, would later say, but after his drubbing Trump had departed the dinner “with maximum efficiency.”

  —

  To all outward appearances, Trump had just been brutally dispatched—his dignity snatched away from him, his foray into politics swiftly cut short, the preening, grasping interloper who had barged into a world where he didn’t belong sent crawling back to his rightful station: a tawdry world of bimbos, pink marble, reality TV, and “Page Six.” This is what all of Washington understood to have happened, for years afterward: Trump had made another of his absurd periodic displays of pretending to contemplate a run for president, ventured too far in his quest for publicity, and suffered a terminal humiliation. Now the universe had snapped back into balance and ejected him.

  Only that wasn’t what had happened at all.

  Trump had indeed toyed many times before with running. The first time, in 1987, he was about to publish his book The Art of the Deal when a Republican activist in New Hampshire launched a presidential draft campaign. One day that fall, Trump, then forty-one, disembarked from a black helicopter onto an airfield in Hampton, New Hampshire, and gave a speech to five hundred people at the local Rotary Club, many of them waving “Trump in ’88” and “Trump for President” signs. Striking notes that could have been sounded in his 2016 campaign, Trump claimed that the United States faced “disaster” because it was “being kicked around” by the likes of Japan, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, countries that were “laughing at us.” He added, “It makes me sick.” Trump never ent
ered the race. But people responded. He drew headlines. His book became a bestseller.

  In 1999, he went a step further, quitting the Republican Party and actively campaigning for the Reform Party nomination. Ross Perot had founded the Reform Party to fight the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and push a balanced budget, mounting a pair of White House bids in 1992 and 1996. While the Reform Party has faded from memory, in 1999 it represented a serious political vehicle because it assured its nominee access to all fifty-one ballots and money from the Federal Election Commission. Those said to consider pursuing its nomination included everyone from Oprah Winfrey and Cybill Shepherd to Warren Beatty and Pat Buchanan. Trump, sizing up Winfrey as the biggest star, declared her his dream running mate. While he reveled in the attention that came with his presidential flirtation, Trump also seemed to absorb some of the ideas and tactics that had animated Perot’s success. He rushed into print another book, The America We Deserve, that railed against NAFTA and aped Perot’s famous warning about “a giant sucking sound” of American jobs heading south to Mexico. Perot was a kind of ur-Trump. In an era before Twitter, he used unconventional methods to organize his followers and draw attention to his campaigns, including an 800 number and frequent appearances on Larry King’s CNN show. Although Trump, with characteristic braggadocio, vowed to spend $100 million, he took a page from Perot and relied mostly on a blitz of free media to win Reform Party primaries in Michigan and California, before eventually dropping out (during a Today show appearance).

  Trump briefly toyed with challenging George W. Bush in 2004, this time sensing that his opportunity lay on the left. “You’d be shocked,” he told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, “if I said that in many cases I probably identify more as a Democrat.” As public sentiment soured on Bush after his reelection, Trump stepped up his criticism, hinting to the New York Post that he might run in 2008, although he never took steps beyond orchestrating suggestive leaks to newspapers.