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

by Joshua Green

  The political fault line Trump stumbled across was one that had lurked beneath the surface of Republican politics for a long time. Illegal immigration divided law-and-order conservatives, who wanted to see lawbreaking immigrants deported, from business-minded conservatives, who preferred to maintain a cheap source of labor, held more ecumenical views, and worried about the risks of alienating Latino voters. Periodically, these tensions flared up, as they had in 2007 when President George W. Bush, hailing the United States as “a nation of immigrants,” tried to pass an immigration reform bill that would have allowed 12 million undocumented immigrants to become U.S. citizens. His effort was soundly defeated by conservatives in his own party who attacked the “amnesty” Bush was offering to people who had broken the law.

  As the Republican Party turned once again to immigration reform following Romney’s poor showing with Hispanic voters, these same tensions rose to a boil, even as leaders in both parties, including President Obama, agreed it was time to get something done. Trump positioned himself squarely against this effort, encouraged by his growing fixation with what was then still an unorthodox political technology: Twitter.

  “That was our focus group,” said Nunberg. “Every time Trump tweeted against amnesty in 2013, 2014, he would get hundreds and hundreds of retweets.”

  —

  For a brief time after Barack Obama’s reelection, it appeared as if a moment of reconciliation might finally be at hand. From its earliest days, Obama’s first term had been marked by uninterrupted partisan fighting over everything from the $800 billion stimulus package to the new health-care law. Bitterly frustrated by that rocky experience, Obama had now won a second term and, he imagined, a chance to finally pursue bipartisan legislation. Always prone to applying Spock-like logical rigor to his analysis of a Republican Party that rarely hewed to this standard, Obama expected to encounter a new, more productive attitude from his opponents across the aisle.

  “I believe that if we’re successful in this election,” Obama declared in a 2012 speech in Minneapolis, “that the fever may break, because there’s a tradition in the Republican Party of more common sense than that. My hope, my expectation, is that after the election, now that it turns out that the goal of beating Obama doesn’t make much sense because I’m not running again, that we can start getting some cooperation again.”

  The early signs were propitious, and they all centered on immigration. Stunned by a loss few of them had anticipated, most prominent Republicans concluded that passing comprehensive immigration reform was an existential imperative for the party. In early 2013, the vehicle to do so took shape in what became known as the “Gang of Eight” bill, a bipartisan reform measure led by eight senators that would provide a path to citizenship for the now 11 million immigrants living illegally in the United States, while enlarging guest-worker programs for low-skilled jobs in industries such as agriculture. In what seemed a positive omen, the Gang of Eight bill had the added designation of being a vehicle for the presidential ambitions of Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, the telegenic young Cuban American then considered to be the GOP’s brightest rising star. With Rubio, the darling of Fox News, leading the charge, the bill appeared to have unstoppable momentum.

  With the marquee conservative outlet Fox News foursquare behind immigration reform and the Democratic Party united in support, the locus of opposition to the Gang of Eight bill emerged in the conservative underworld: Breitbart News, the Drudge Report, and a far-flung network of allied radio talk shows. To Bannon, who was now running Breitbart News following Andrew Breitbart’s death, killing the reform effort became a defining crusade, and to that end the website published a daily fusillade of alarmist fare about hordes of murderous illegal immigrants pouring across the southern border and the treasonous Republicans in Congress turning a blind eye to their menace. Having produced the film Border Wars on the subject, Bannon knew how to maximize his viewpoint for dramatic effect. At his urging, Breitbart opened a Texas bureau and developed a network of sources that included Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents stationed on the U.S.–Mexico border, who provided on-the-ground details that made these stories more vivid.

  “Among those informed about immigration [the Gang of Eight bill] was shocking—a kick in the teeth to decent Americans,” said Jeff Sessions, then a staunchly anti-immigrant Republican senator from Alabama, who would later become Trump’s attorney general. An abiding frustration of right-wing populists such as Sessions and Bannon was that their views had little representation in the mainstream media, or even in conservative alternatives like Fox News. Rupert Murdoch, the CEO of News Corp., which owned Fox, and Roger Ailes, the network’s president, were both strong advocates of immigration reform, and made sure the network reflected their preferences. “God bless Fox,” gushed South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican Gang of Eight member, soon after the bill was introduced. “Eighty percent of people [voting] in my primary get their news from Fox.”

  Instead, Breitbart News stories fed the opposition, suffusing right-wing radio. “They have an incredible eye for an important story, particular ones that are important to conservatives and Republicans,” said Sessions. “They’ve become extraordinarily influential. Radio talk-show hosts are reading Breitbart every day. You can feel it when they interview you.”

  Trump felt it, too, and he responded almost immediately. “When I started putting him on conservative talk radio in 2013,” said Nunberg, “Mark Levin’s show and guys like that, they kept asking him about immigration. That opened his eyes.” The issue also dovetailed with Trump’s long-held view that the United States was being taken advantage of by hostile foreigners.

  By the time Trump spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference on March 15, 2013, less than four months after decrying Romney’s “mean-spirited” attacks on immigrants, he was a fully recognizable incarnation of the candidate who would storm the White House three years later. “We have to make America strong again and make America great again,” Trump told the CPAC crowd. “Because when it comes to immigration, you know that the 11 million illegals, if given the right to vote . . . every one of those 11 million people will be voting Democratic.” Republicans who supported immigration reform, Trump warned, were “on a suicide mission.”

  Although it passed the Senate, the following summer the Gang of Eight bill died in the House of Representatives, done in by the conservative backlash. It was Breitbart News that put the final nail in the coffin. Tipped off by border agents, the website first drew attention to the child migrant crisis at the U.S.–Mexico border. The vivid scenes of helpless U.S. officials and detention facilities overrun by waves of Mexican and Central American children were widely picked up by the national media, killing any chance of Congress passing immigration reform. In the process, the backlash also took down Republican House majority leader Eric Cantor of Virginia. In June, after Cantor was blindsided in the GOP primary by an unheralded economics professor named David Brat, Trump gave an interview to Breitbart News that delighted conservative populists by blaming unchecked immigration for the party leadership’s stunning loss.

  Cantor’s defeat was “a great signal because it tells them people want to get our house in order,” Trump said in the 2014 interview. “If you look at what’s happening in Texas right now, or other places, people are just flowing into this country just like it’s an open-door policy. We’re supposed to provide health care and we’re supposed to provide education—we’re supposed to provide everything. . . . We take care of everybody else before we take care of our own people.”

  Trump had transformed himself into a full-blown hard-right populist, a political persona he now projected like a cologne. He had made up his mind to run for president. “Donald told me on New Year’s Day 2013, when I called to wish him Happy New Year, that he’d just trademarked the phrase ‘Make America Great Again’ and was definitely going to run,” said Roger Stone. Yet few people noticed or cared. He
was still a punch line. In fact, Republicans were soon celebrating. The midterm elections brought sweeping gains at every level of government, handing the party control of the U.S. Senate. As they looked ahead to the presidential election, Republican leaders were giddy at the presumed strength of the emerging GOP field, a distinguished roster of senators and governors—and perhaps even the more talented sibling in a Bush dynasty that had already produced two presidents.

  Trump was no longer “talking to everyone.” Now he was talking solely to the conservative grass roots and saying wildly polarizing things. It would not become clear until much later that Trump, the stridently anti-immigrant populist, was better able to address (and stoke) the fear and anger of Republican voters than anyone else in the vaunted GOP field.

  Or rather, it wasn’t yet clear to the wider world. Inside Trump’s circle, the power of illegal immigration to manipulate popular sentiment was readily apparent, and his advisers brainstormed methods for keeping their attention-addled boss on message. They needed a trick, a mnemonic device. In the summer of 2014, they found one that clicked. “Roger Stone and I came up with the idea of ‘the Wall,’ and we talked to Steve [Bannon] about it,” said Nunberg. “It was to make sure he talked about immigration.”

  Initially, Trump seemed indifferent to the idea. But in January 2015, he tried it out at the Iowa Freedom Summit, a presidential cattle call put on by David Bossie’s group, Citizens United. “One of his pledges was, ‘I will build a Wall,’ and the place just went nuts,” said Nunberg. Warming to the concept, Trump waited a beat and then added a flourish that brought down the house. “Nobody,” he said, “builds like Trump.”

  —

  In late 2013, Trump’s march toward the presidency was nearly derailed by an idea that arrived out of left field: a handful of New York state politicians and a couple of advisers in his orbit wanted him to run for New York governor. Trump was intrigued.

  To his advisers, Trump had long mused about his desire to run for political office. “I want to do it,” he’d tell them. “I want to get this out of my system.” Stone, Nunberg, and Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, had hoped he would seek the Republican presidential nomination in 2012. When he passed, the itch to run didn’t subside.

  In 2013, two Republican state assemblymen from New York, Bill Nojay and David DiPietro, approached Trump to see if he would be interested in challenging New York governor Andrew Cuomo in 2014. Michael Caputo, a Trump adviser who was a former employee of Stone’s and managed Carl Paladino’s 2010 gubernatorial race against Cuomo, also wanted Trump to run and pushed to organize meetings.

  Although Trump had his eye on the presidency, running for governor offered a host of attractive benefits: it would be easier, it was local, it would entail less travel, and some of that could be done by helicopter. He also loved New York, knew the media, could sleep in Trump Tower, and—an adviser pointed out—would not have to worry about potential conflicts between the FCC and his role on The Apprentice.

  Sensing that Trump’s ultimate ambition was the White House, Nojay couched the New York governor’s race as something that could vault him to the presidency. In a strategy memo he prepared for Trump, titled “Pathways to the Presidency,” Nojay laid out a brief history of businessmen who’d sought political office, noting the risk of loss:

  Capable, successful businessmen almost always conclude they can do better for themselves and their families by staying in the private business sector. Politicians, on the other hand, often have no alternative source of income or perceive their chances in politics are better than their chances in business (e.g., Harry Truman went bust as a men’s clothing salesman and turned to politics to feed his family). . . . Businessmen are accustomed to taking risk, however business risk is often partially assigned, buffered, or diluted with partners, alliances, or vendors, insurance or legal shields such as the corporate veil, which reduce personal exposure. Political risk, on the other hand, is purely personal and almost impossible to allocate—the risk of loss is 100 percent on the candidate (blaming campaign managers or other outside factors is usually regarded as lame; the candidate is regarded by the public as solely responsible for his campaign).

  But then Nojay made the (specious) argument that Trump would need New York State’s electoral votes to win the presidency, and the even more farfetched claim that winning the governorship would make him the Republican presidential front-runner in 2016.

  Trump thought enough of the idea to encourage his aides to explore his chances. “I want to do this,” he told them. And he met with state party officials to discuss the possibility further. “He made it clear he wanted to run for president,” said Daniel W. Isaacs, who was the Republican chairman in Manhattan at the time and attended a meeting with Trump. “Our pitch was if he runs for governor and makes it, he would be the presumptive front-runner.”

  As the prospect of Trump running for governor began to seem more real, a tug-of-war broke out among his advisers. Stone and Nunberg thought it was a terrible idea, given the state’s heavy Democratic skew. A loss would tarnish Trump’s image and kill any future presidential run. Cohen, however, spoke in favor of the idea. If the Republican Party would clear the primary field for Trump, he would have a straight shot to take out Cuomo. “One thing that’s always dangerous is telling Donald he can’t do something,” said Stone, “because then he wants to do it.”

  Hoping to illustrate the futility of a run, Nunberg asked Bossie to commission a survey. In December, Bossie hired Kellyanne Conway to poll likely New York voters to get a clear picture of Trump’s chances.

  The results were as bad as Stone and Nunberg anticipated—but instead of highlighting the fact that her poll showed Trump losing to Cuomo by 35 points, Conway left out that information and produced an analysis suggesting that Trump could win. “She wrote a sycophantic memo telling Trump he was like the Kennedys,” Nunberg complained.

  Conway’s memo read:

  Heading into his re-election year, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo enjoys robust favorability and job approval ratings, but those belie some electoral vulnerability. Likely voters across New York who are upset with high taxes, poor business and economic climate, and the price tag associated with Medicaid expansion/Obamacare are open to real solutions and a job-creating governor with business leadership experience.

  Conway noted that while Cuomo’s favorability ratings were high, the percentage of New Yorkers who wanted to see him reelected was “at a dangerous low.” She highlighted his vulnerability on Obamacare and taxes, adding, in bold, underlined text:

  Cuomo’s re-elect score is positive in New York City (47%) and in the areas surrounding the city (45%), but a hypothetical “new person” wins the rest of the state by twenty points or more.

  Most voters agree (70%) and a near-majority “strongly agrees” (49%) that New York needs “a Governor who has created jobs, balanced budgets, and run successful businesses in the private sector.” Likewise, in a half-sample of voters (based off 298 interviews), almost 60% of voters thought it was “very important” that New York elect a Governor who has business leadership experience. Andrew Cuomo is not that Governor, but Donald Trump could be.

  Having established Cuomo’s supposed vulnerability to Trump, Conway cranked up the flattery:

  NY loves its celebrity politicians and families: the Kennedys, Moynihans, Buckleys, Clintons, and even the Cuomos. Donald Trump fits that (loose) bill, and he has the money and moxie to compete if he chooses to enter the race. He may need to convince a skeptical electorate of his candidacy, given his very public consideration of running for POTUS before. When offered a choice between offices, New Yorkers are more than twice as likely to urge Trump to run for Governor of New York (27%) than President of the United States (12%). A plurality a third option: run for neither. Cuomo is not invincible. He can be toppled through a frontal assault that pierces his bravado and exposes the shortcomings of his tenure, as well as his lack of
leadership. He presides over the corruption and lack of progress that is Albany. While there is plenty of good news here for Cuomo, there is little guarantee that he will escape the misfortunes of 2014 that may be visited on Democrats (thanks to Obamacare), and his own man-made problems plaguing New York (including high taxes and a poor business climate, and a “lack of frack”).

  Rather than kill off the idea of Trump running for governor, Conway’s memo had the opposite effect. “She thought that it was possible for him to win New York,” said Caputo. Stone called Conway’s analysis “an enormous crock of shit,” and Bossie a “major douchebag devoid of any political talent—and that’s on the record.” But that didn’t stop Trump from moving ahead. He traveled to fund-raising events for local Republicans in Erie and Onondaga counties, and invited Westchester county executive Rob Astorino, a Republican who was also eyeing a run for governor, to meet with him.

  At the meeting, Trump told Astorino that he would make him his lieutenant governor if he agreed to drop out of the primary. “He was serious,” Nunberg said. “He would have run then.” Astorino declined the offer. But for weeks, Trump’s advisers feared that their boss might decide Astorino was bluffing and get in the race. Nunberg quietly called party officials and told them to encourage Astorino to speak frequently and publicly about his intention to run, in the hope that this would dissuade Trump.