by Rick Wilson
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CONTENTS
Introduction: Everything Trump Touches Dies
PART ONE: THE ROAD TO THIS SHITSHOW
What to Expect When You’re Working for Trump I
1. Vichy Republicans
What to Expect When You’re Working for Trump II
2. Furrowed Brows and Deep Concern
What to Expect When You’re Working for Trump III
3. Running with the Devil
What to Expect When You’re Working for Trump IV
4. That’s Why You Got Trump
What to Expect When You’re Working for Trump V
PART TWO: VICTIMS OF THE CURSE
Inside the Oval Office I
5. What We Lost with Trump
Inside the Oval Office II
6. The Media
Inside the Oval Office III
7. The Trump Base
Inside the Oval Office IV
8. Limited Government
Inside the Oval Office V
9. The Grown-ups All Die Too
PART THREE: SURROUNDED BY VILLAINS
Top Secret Intercept I
10. Welcome to Hell
Top Secret Intercept II
11. The Trump Family Syndicate
Top Secret Intercept III
12. Team Crony
Top Secret Intercept IV
13. Clown Princes of the Trump Media
Top Secret Intercept V
14. Trump’s Island of Misfit Toys
Top Secret Intercept VI
15. The Alt-Reich
PART FOUR: AFTER TRUMP
16. But Gorsuch
17. Trump Is Electoral Poison
18. My Party After Trump
Epilogue: Post-Trump America
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Notes
To Molly, Nora, and Andrew, who took even the toughest of the last three years with grace, humor, encouragement, great editing, and love. Team Wilson, ride or die.
INTRODUCTION
Everything Trump Touches Dies
IF YOU’RE LIKE ME, THE Trump presidency has turned you into a light sleeper.
Admit it. Some nights, when the world is quiet but your mind is racing, you check Twitter to see if he’s started a nuclear war. Each morning, strung out from the fever dreams of Donald Trump and Steve Bannon performing a nude interpretive dance of Stephen Miller’s “Triumph of the Wall,” you wake up wondering if today’s the day he’s seen wandering naked on the White House lawn, screaming at clouds.
Come on. You know you’ve done it.
It’s because you’re struggling, like the vast majority of Americans, with the fact that our terrible, sloppy, shambolic president may just be insane. Not “Haha, he’s so crazy” or “He’s pretending to be crazy, but it’s actually 87-dimensional quantum chess” crazy, but legitimately, clinically insane. I’d have to look up the DSM-V category to be more precise, but the term of psychiatric art I’m looking for is “shithouse-rat crazy.”
Is crazy too strong a term? Perhaps instead you’d like to argue that a man with Donald Trump’s dignity, stature, resolute self-control, deep erudition, and modesty presents as a perfectly rational national leader in every way. In that case, you’d be correct if the nation in question is some third-world hellhole—pardon me, I meant to use the new term of art, “shithole”—ruled by a President for Life with a penchant for elaborate military uniforms, missile parades, a high comfort level with endemic corruption, relatives installed in positions of power, and a rumored taste for human flesh.
Donald Trump, the avatar of our worst instincts and darkest desires as a nation, sits in the Oval Office. I did what I could to stop it. I’ve watched the stalwarts of the Republican Party and the conservative movement slip into the sewage tank of nationalist populism with barely a ripple.
We failed to stop Trump in 2016, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to sit by as the Nickelback of presidents wrecks my country. I’m not going to buy into “But Gorsuch” and “But executive orders” as a pale substitute for character, conservative governance, legislative accomplishments, and principle. Donald Trump is an objectively terrible president, in every sense of the word.
So how the hell did I get here?
As a rock-solid Republican Party guy stretching all the way back to the 1988 presidential campaign of George H. W. Bush, I’ve worked to elect Republicans and conservatives all over the country. I helped put a lot of them in office in red, purple, and blue states and districts, in races from the presidency on down.
I’m one of a handful of people your candidate or SuperPAC calls when it’s time to drop the big, nasty negative ads, and I have a thick enough skin to take the criticism on behalf of the candidate once those ads are hitting the target. I’m the creator of some pretty famous—infamous if you’re a Democrat or Roy Moore—attack ads. You’ve read and heard my work in speeches under the bylines of members of Congress, governors, and CEOs. I’ve run ads across the proverbial fruited plain.
After 2016, though, I’ve had a kind of political midlife change. No, I didn’t get a 25-year-old girlfriend, a sports car, or a hair transplant.
When Trump slithered down the golden escalator in his eponymous tower in 2015, I felt bile rising in my throat. This guy? This jackass? I was quite sure nothing had changed about his blustering ego, fever-swamp birtherism, and con-artist modus operandi. Given the ideological underpinnings of Trumpism—slurry of barely coherent nationalism, third-world generalissimo swagger, and the worst economic ideas of the 19th century—I recognized he was an existential risk to the country, win or lose.
I had met Trump a handful of times. The first time was during Rudy Giuliani’s 1997 reelection campaign for mayor of New York when my then-business partner and I were producing Giuliani’s television ads. Trump later agreed to appear in a tourism film for the City of New York we shot. The general view inside Rudy World seemed to be that Trump was a loudmouth and a jackass, but enough of a City player to throw him the occasional favor. The next time was at a wedding at Mar-a-Lago for a mutual friend. Ironically the best man at that wedding was the governor of Florida at the time, one John Ellis Bush.
The last time I’d seen Trump in person was 15 years before while filming a gag bit for New York City’s Inner Circle, where Trump motorboated Giuliani’s fake breasts while the mayor was in his drag persona, Rudia. If you haven’t seen it, don’t Google it. If you have, I am deeply sorry. It’s scarring. If you’re looking for nightmare fuel, a pompous, bloated, and bewigged Trump kissing Drag Giuliani is the high-octane version.
Contrary to what Breitbart or Fox or Rush Limbaugh will tell you, I don’t oppose Trump because I’m a Republican-in-Name-Only. I oppose Trump from the right, not the left, and as a constitutionalist, not as a globalist Soros neocon shill out to impose political correctness, sharia law, and full communism. Yes, I know that accusation is a roaring non sequitur, but welcome to rhetoric in the era of Trump. Their arguments are so consistently dumb, contradictory, and nonsensical that I have to believe there’s a secret Word Finder App for Conservatives Who Love Donald but Aren’t Smart and Want to Seem Smart to Other People Who Aren’t Smart.
I supported Marco Rubio in the
primary and worked for a pro-Rubio SuperPAC, but I would have taken any Republican in the field over Trump. Even Ted Cruz, and that says a lot. Like most sensible people, I dismissed Trump as a Roger Stone con game. Hell, I would have picked a random guy walking out of a bus station over Trump.
Everything about Trump’s opening speech was moral poison to anyone who believed in any part of the American dream. Everything about his nationalist hucksterism smelled like the destruction of conservatism and a knock on the door of authoritarian statism.
So instead of toeing the party line, lining up behind a morally bankrupt and ideologically suspect Republican nominee, and being a good soldier, I decided that my principles and my country came before my party and politics. As a Republican, a conservative, and an American, I simply couldn’t do it. I couldn’t be a part of Trump’s dismantling the party, the movement, and the nation I loved. I’m an O.G. anti-Trump Republican.
That Donald Trump isn’t a conservative and is a Republican only as a flag of convenience was just part of my objection. Quite ironically for a cold-hearted, expedient political operative, I felt Trump lacked the moral and personal character to be the leader of the free world, to make the most consequential decisions, and to hold the lives and security of millions of Americans in his hands.
His tiny, tiny lemur-paw hands.
All this led, through a series of misadventures worthy of a Georges Feydeau farce, to my becoming one of the founders of the Never Trump movement. I’m an apostate in the era of Trump and Trumpism, and I have absolutely no regrets. I didn’t make this choice lightly or trivially. Before you ask, I didn’t do it because George Soros offered me a stack of gold bars and membership in the Illuminati. It cost me professionally, personally, and financially.
I could easily have pivoted, done the well-he’s-the-nominee-and-party-über-alles act so many consultants and elected officials did, despite their loathing Trump just as heartily as I do. Some days, I hear Cypher’s voice from the Matrix saying, “Why, oh why didn’t I take the blue pill?”
If I’d been truly amoral, I could have easily spun up a ScamPAC called Americans Making America Great Again American Eagle Patriot Trump Brigade for Freedom Build the Wall Anti-Sharia PAC. AMAGAAEPTBFFBTWAS PAC would have dropped a few million fundraising emails to the obviously enormous ocean of credulous boobs who click “Donate” at the sign of a red hat and a sparkly eagle gif, and watched the donations roll in. I could have my volcano lair by now.
How far did I go off the Republican reservation? Well, although I’m still a registered Republican, every day is a moral and political stress test. I helped run Evan McMullin’s independent bid for president. In an election in which neither of the major party options was at all palatable for a conservative like me, we wanted to offer voters something better. We wanted to give them a candidate and a message that honored the values for which this country ostensibly still stands: liberty, equality, the rule of law, and a reverence for the Constitution.
Old fashioned, I know. Conservative, remember?
I wasn’t alone in understanding that there were two elections in 2016. The first election—the one everyone noticed—was in the usual partisan frame. It was Republican Trump against Democrat Clinton, and both sides ran to their corners and fought a political battle we’ve all seen before. Set aside for a moment why he won and why she lost. Those are interesting questions, but the frenzy of the visible election wasn’t the most consequential issue.
The real election of 2016 was for the heart and soul of the Republican Party and the conservative movement and for the baseline values and norms a country needs to survive as a going concern in the democracy game. We’ve since learned that the consensus of the American intelligence community was correct. The election was shaped and manipulated by Russian intelligence operations altering the American political landscape, an endgame in the long twilight struggle.
Hypnotized by a celebrity con man vomiting out Steve Bannon’s spittle-flecked, nationalist message to the furious and the febrile, Trump received virtually unlimited media coverage. GOP primary voters killed off a field of good men and accomplished leaders one by one in favor of Trump. Conservative leaders compromised their long-held principles again and again to favor Trump.
Republican voters had a choice between Trump’s Troll Party and the Grand Old Party I knew. They chose the Troll Party.
It’s a common, facile argument that the old GOP deserved death. After all, we weren’t perfect. Just ask any talk radio host. We didn’t produce enough Ted Cruz types to have a majority large enough to make the Purity Posse happy. We didn’t throw Granny off the cliff, starve the orphans, return to the gold standard, and then put the womenfolk back in the kitchen. I get it.
As a party, we are flawed. All parties are. We frequently overpromised and underdelivered on free-market and conservative policy outcomes. We fell into the arms of DC’s army of lobbyists and interest groups, most of whom are anything but conservative. For our base, the imagined best became the enemy of the good.
In my career, I have been a gleeful hatchet man for the GOP. I was willing to fight the ideological battles, large and small, in campaigns, on TV, in writing, and lately on social media. We had good years and terrible years. We elected presidents, took back Congress after decades, lost it, and took it back again. Our leaders ranged from bad to extraordinary. We pushed and pressed and worked to expand our reach because there wasn’t an alternative.
Through it all, the GOP was the one party even vaguely amenable to limited-government conservatism, to at least some adherence to the Constitution over the social preferences of the moment, and to the constraints on government power that our Founding Fathers so cherished. The choice was an imperfect, leaky ship with tattered sails and a bickering crew sailing in the right direction or drowning in a sea of bigger and bigger government and surrendering to every liberal social whim of the day.
It was nice while it lasted.
Now the disease of Trumpism has consumed the Republican Party and put the entire conservative movement at risk. It has been hijacked by a bellowing, statist billionaire with poor impulse control and a profoundly superficial understanding of the world. The blazing, white-hot embrace of actual, honest-to-God stupidity has been as contagious as smallpox and as fatal as Ebola. This new creature, shambling toward its eventual political destruction, has reached a point where it supported an accused child molester for U.S. Senate.
Trump’s Troll Party puts wild-eyed nationalist, anti-establishment ranting before the tenets of our constitutional Republic. Trump’s party insists on ideological uniformity, obedience to the Dear Leader Kim Jong Don, even though Trump’s policies are as mutable as his moods are mercurial. Whether you’re a Republican from Florida or Vermont or Alabama or Montana, the Trump Party demands every candidate and elected official rigidly adhere to Trump’s line, regardless of the regional differences that still mark the country.
All you have to do to stay in the good graces of this new political force is to swear Trump is always right. All you have to do is loathe with the fire of a million suns anyone who levies the slightest criticism of Trump. You must compromise everything you believe to praise and placate him. He is President for Life. Bow before Zod.
No, thanks. Hard pass.
In 2015 I stood up and spoke out and found myself with a lot of new friends and a lot of new enemies, including a certain frequent tweeter with an exotic dead-animal hairstyle and a notoriously short temper. While no one—including his campaign staff—thought he could win, all the smart guys in the room (myself most certainly included) looked at the numbers and called it wrong.
Mea freaking culpa. We didn’t factor in Jim Comey’s last-minute surprise and a whole lot of help from the Russians. If you thought my biggest worry was that Trump would lose the election, you aren’t paying attention.
Everything we Never Trump folks warned you of, including massive, decades-long downstream election losses, is coming. Alienating African Americans and Hispa
nics beyond redemption? Check. Raising a generation of young voters who are fleeing the GOP in droves? Check. Age-old beefs, juvenile complaints, and ego bruises taking center stage while the world burns? Check. Playing public footsie with white supremacists and neo-Nazis? Check. Blistering pig-ignorance about the economy and the world? Check. Pushing a tax bill that jacks economic inequality into the stratosphere? Check. Shredding the last iota of the GOP’s credibility as a party that cares about debt, deficits, and fiscal probity? Check.
Immanuel Kant talks about the “unreal seen” (the phenomenon) and the “unseen real” (the noumenon). Well, the phenomenon of the 2016 election was about Donald and Hillary. It was a hell of a show, a political and moral spectacle, as is the current administration. The noumenon—the deeper, more real answers—come down to where this country, the GOP, and the conservative movement go, and whether we let Donald Trump take us there.
A brief word before we get the party started. In 30 years of politics, I had more scraps and scrapes with Democrats furious with my candidates taking their lunch money and ending their careers than I can tell you. Only rarely did I get a death threat I took seriously. Now, the threats are coming from the Trump base, and they never stop.
The harshest criticism I and many others in the Never Trump movement have experienced comes from the Trump right and its enablers. There is no hatred more pure, no anger more vicious, and no spleen more commonly vented than from the clumsily named anti-anti-Trump segment of the conservative commentariat.
We’ve been called traitors, RINOs, establishment shills, and betrayers of the conservative cause. Nothing angers them more than being reminded how they dismissed, diminished, and sacrificed the values they once fought for on the altar of Trump and Trumpism. Nothing is guaranteed to trigger a tidal wave of their fury more surely than a critique of their sudden moral and political flexibility after a lifetime of ideological purity and rigor. They’re addicted to “But Obama” whataboutism, constant historical revisionism, cherry-picked chest-beating over ephemeral policy wins, and the grunting triumphalism of Trump’s accidental victory.
