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THAT SUMMER, TRUMP DOMINATED the news. He was a ratings machine. The Fox debate drew 24 million viewers, the most of any primary debate ever. Cable networks began to carry his rallies live. Anchors read aloud his sporadic statements and tweets, which he sometimes fired off in the middle of the night. Rather than traveling to a studio for interviews, Trump would call in to news programs, even to many Sunday-morning shows that had rarely allowed such interviews. As he sat in his office or traveled in his car, he would dial up reporters to chat.
Though he routinely disparaged the media as “dishonest lowlifes” during his rallies, Trump gave reporters unprecedented access. By doing so, he set the tone and the agenda for his Republican rivals, who had formed their approach to politics under the old rules, with an emphasis on using careful language with the media and a stylized, respectful attitude toward their competitors. Trump rules made the old-fashioned ways seem quaint. “Whether you were a candidate running who was mentioned by him or a candidate running who was ignored by him, virtually every question you were asked by the national media had the words Donald Trump in them,” said Danny Diaz, Bush’s campaign manager.
Early on, Trump’s campaign strategy called for him to capitalize on his name recognition to slowly improve his favorability ratings, which were negative. His team hoped he could move into the second tier of candidates, then break out later. “Float a little bit under the radar screen, not take all the arrows,” Lewandowski explained. That timetable accelerated quickly. Trump’s outsider status made him explosively attractive to voters who felt betrayed by both parties. The new strategy would be both simple and radically different. Trump went big instead of small, running a primary campaign that looked more like a general election operation. He held massive rallies, reacted to the news of the day, dominated the airwaves, and attacked anyone who challenged him. He got so much airtime—$2 billion worth by one estimate—he had no need to spend millions on television ads.
Trump’s rallies drew five thousand, ten thousand, even twenty thousand people. He packed fairgrounds, gymnasiums, arenas. “Anybody who says that was not completely eye-opening is kidding themselves,” said Mike DuHaime, who was the lead strategist for New Jersey governor Chris Christie’s campaign. One August night, Trump drew at least two thousand people to a rally in Derry, New Hampshire. About twenty miles away in Merrimack, Bush spoke to a crowd numbering fewer than one hundred and fifty.
Trump’s preference for big rallies rather than retail campaigning also fit with his personal habits. As a committed germophobe, he started out avoiding shaking hands with voters. He kept bowls of hand sanitizer in his office and favored fast-food chains, which he believed were cleaner than restaurants. Despite living in a golden palace high above Fifth Avenue and jetting to rallies in a private jet, Trump pitched himself as the voice of the beaten-down working class. He was completely unlike the Republican Party’s recent nominees—a proudly politically incorrect businessman who refused to apologize for anything, even when he seemed to regret his own words. That stubbornness only added to his appeal.
Even Trump’s campaign structure defied the laws of politics. Instead of hiring a massive network of consultants, Trump made do through most of the nomination battle with a core staff of five dedicated employees—Lewandowski, Glassner, spokeswoman Hope Hicks, social media director Dan Scavino Jr., and lead advance person George Gigicos—along with a few dozen low-paid state-level workers. Opponents and campaign consultants scoffed at how ill prepared that lean structure would leave Trump. But the candidate boasted of his tiny staff as an example of smart efficiency. The five advisers usually traveled with him and made decisions on the plane as they watched cable television. Lewandowski loved to brag about interviewing major Republican campaign workers for jobs and then turning them down when he learned how much they wanted to charge.
Where other campaigns quietly handed reporters opposition research about their rivals, Trump publicly traded in gossip and dirt. To prove that he had Senator Lindsey Graham’s personal cell phone number, he read it aloud at a rally. He referred to unsubstantiated tabloid stories that accused Ted Cruz of cheating on his wife with numerous women. He repeatedly accused former president Bill Clinton of sexually abusing women. Late in the race, he falsely tried to tie Cruz’s Cuban-born father to Lee Harvey Oswald, the man who assassinated President John F. Kennedy. Lewandowski compared the innovativeness of Trump’s strategy to Obama’s in 2008: “This campaign can’t be replicated.” On that, there was no disagreement.
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ONE BY ONE, TRUMP disrupted all the other campaigns, beginning with that of the presumed front-runner. Trump mocked Bush as “Low-Energy” Jeb, the first of many derogatory labels the branding expert would attach to his rivals. “Little Marco” Rubio and “Lyin’ Ted” Cruz were yet to come. “I said ‘low energy’ and it was interesting,” Trump later recalled. “I said it in a speech, and the place went crazy as soon as I said it.” The label instantly stuck to Bush, who was proving he lacked his more garrulous brother’s comfort on the campaign trail. The damage was apparent to Bush’s advisers, but they were paralyzed by a lack of consensus about what to do. Some advocated an aggressive response. Others cautioned against getting “into a pigpen with a pig.” So they did nothing, largely ignoring Trump while trying to focus voters on Bush’s record in Florida. This misreading of the Republican electorate’s frustration turned out to be fatal. Glassner said, “Probably their worst decision was never to change or adapt to reality.”
Rick Perry chose to attack. With nothing to lose, the former Texas governor, whose 2012 campaign had ended in humiliation and whose 2016 bid was already struggling even before Trump came along, delivered a slashing takedown of the man who was hijacking the nation’s conservative party. He called Trump “a toxic mix of demagoguery, mean-spiritedness, and nonsense” and “a cancer on conservatism.” The July 22 attack bounced off Trump without leaving a mark. By early September, Perry was out of the race.
Ten days after Perry quit, Scott Walker followed him to the sidelines. Perry’s demise was no surprise; Walker’s was. The governor of Wisconsin had become a conservative hero nationally after staring down the unions in his home state and surviving a recall election. Until Trump’s entry, he had led the polls in Iowa. But Trump’s dominating personality smothered Walker; his poll numbers plummeted and he was a virtual nonfactor in debates. His bland personality could not compete against Trump’s showmanship. “If we can’t change so that we get more attention, then we don’t have a pathway to the nomination,” Walker said later. When he bowed out, he urged his fifteen remaining rivals to follow him to open up space for someone with a positive conservative message to confront Trump head-on—to no avail. The big field kept working to Trump’s advantage.
The 2016 GOP campaign had become the year of the outsiders, playing out against a backdrop of anger toward the political establishment. Nearly every poll showed a pair of nonpoliticians—Trump and Dr. Ben Carson, a renowned retired neurosurgeon—winning more than 50 percent of the Republican vote. Strategists for other candidates took note and adjusted their messages, but privately most believed that, once voters engaged, the two novices would falter. “We were exactly right about Ben Carson,” said Whit Ayres, who was Rubio’s pollster, “and we were exactly wrong about Donald Trump.”
The hunger for a candidate with no political experience underscored just how disaffected many voters were. Trump’s trademarked slogan, Make America Great Again, promised a return to better times—economically and culturally—in America’s past. He was offering not an ideology, but a nostalgic journey to a better place. James W. Ceaser of the University of Virginia described the Trump phenomenon as less an “ism” and more a “mood” that struck with impressive force because “they have a leader who can articulate it.” Rubio’s strategist, Todd Harris, later said, “You had an environment where you had literally hundreds of thousands of people who lost their homes or were upside down, lost thei
r jobs or retirement savings, and saw in their political system that not a damn thing was done about it. . . . At the same time, you had Republicans sweep into power saying they were going to clean up Washington, and nothing changed. . . . The anger was just underneath the surface, and all he needed to do was churn the waters a little bit.”
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ON NOVEMBER 13, A Friday night, a suicide bomb went off in a soccer stadium north of Paris. Within minutes, gunmen with assault rifles opened fire at cafés and restaurants and inside a music hall in the city. In less than three hours, three teams of Islamic State terrorists killed 130 people. A few weeks earlier, Trump had called for Syrian refugees to be tossed out of the country and for a ban on any new refugees. That was a marked change from summer, when he had said the United States should “possibly” accept refugees to ease the crisis. The morning after the Paris attacks, Trump opened his rally in Beaumont, Texas, with a moment of silence, then launched an attack on Obama’s “insane” plan to allow 10,000 Syrian refugees—Trump claimed the figure was 250,000—into the country. Democrats were shocked to see Paris boost Trump’s stature. When a Democratic consultant convened a focus group to hear voters’ thoughts on terrorism, the report from the session reflected the group’s consensus that Trump was the only candidate with a plan: “While many were troubled by what he had said about Muslims . . . they mentioned his strength, his ‘straightforward’ approach to ‘bombing the shit’ out of them, and ‘building a wall’ to make sure that we take control of who comes into the country. These voters are anxious and feel a loss of control. For many, especially the men, Trump’s rhetoric addressed their concerns.”
A few weeks later, terrorism hit US soil when a married couple, Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, opened fire at a county public health training event and holiday party in San Bernardino, California. The attack killed fourteen and seriously injured more than twenty others. Trump and his staff zeroed in on what they considered the root cause of the problem: radical Islam. Their solution: ban Muslims from entering the country. (Farook was a native-born US citizen.) Trump dictated a statement to his spokeswoman, Hope Hicks, who copied it down on a note card.
Trump waited to propose the ban until December 7, Pearl Harbor Day, when he was scheduled to hold a rally aboard a battleship in South Carolina. The campaign released a statement from the candidate calling for a “total and complete” ban, at least temporarily. The backlash was immediate and crushing. Jeb Bush tweeted, “Donald Trump is unhinged.” As Trump and his staff flew to South Carolina, some advisers worried that they had completely misread the country’s mood. That night, standing aboard the USS Yorktown, Trump defiantly read his proposal. The crowd responded with deafening applause. Back in the car, Trump told his advisers, “Well, there’s your poll. That’s how people feel about this.”
Fresh surveys confirmed Trump’s instincts, finding that a majority of Republicans agreed with the ban. But some prominent Republicans called the ban a violation of America’s core value of freedom of religion. Trump gave no ground: “We’re talking about security. We’re not talking about religion. We’re talking about security. Our country is out of control.” At a GOP debate, Bush challenged Trump, saying that “banning all Muslims will make it harder for us to do exactly what we need to do, which is to destroy ISIS.”
But by the end of 2015, Trump’s rivals understood they were now operating in a world defined by the renegade candidate. They also saw that his followers were absolutely and totally loyal. “We came to the realization that he wasn’t just Teflon, that he was titanium, that nothing would stick to him,” Rubio’s adviser, Harris, said later. “The people who were with him were with him no matter what. There was no new piece of information you could give them.” By the time the other candidates realized that, it was too late.
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IN SIX SHORT MONTHS, Trump had completely changed the Republican race. But he had yet to face the voters. To Trump, winning was always paramount. “If I don’t win, what have I done?” he said in the fall of 2015. “I’ve wasted time.” Iowa, whose caucuses were dominated by religious conservatives, was long seen as Trump’s weak spot. The thrice-married Trump had been advised to focus on New Hampshire, with its independent streak and more socially liberal electorate, and South Carolina because of its military ties. “I was told by everybody, ‘Do not go to Iowa. You could never finish even in the top ten,’ ” Trump said later. When Carson pulled ahead of Trump in Iowa polls, Trump responded with angry rants at two rallies in the state: “How stupid are the people of Iowa? How stupid are the people of the country to believe this crap?” But when Carson quickly fell back, Trump faced an even more determined and capable challenger in Iowa, Ted Cruz. The shrewd but polarizing Texan had a message that appealed to religious conservatives; he also claimed to have built a superb ground operation in a state where organization often made the difference.
Barely two weeks before the February 1 caucuses, Trump stood on the set of a western ranch in a museum outside Des Moines, with a mannequin of the late actor John Wayne looming over his shoulder. Reporters pummeled him with questions about his ground game. His operation was a highly guarded secret; his state headquarters was off-limits to prying reporters. “I feel very good about my ground game. We have a great group of people,” he said. “Where’s Chuck?”
Trump scanned the room for his Iowa state director, Chuck Laudner, an Iowan best known for having helped former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum win a surprise victory in the 2012 caucuses. “Chuck!” Trump said. “Get over here, Chuck.” Trump wanted his state director to answer the question “because if he doesn’t do good—Chuck, you’re fired!” Trump laughed.
Cruz took the lead in Iowa in December, but two days before the caucuses, the authoritative Iowa Poll showed Trump up by five points. On caucus night, however, Iowa Republicans delivered a stinging setback to Trump, who finished second to Cruz, barely ahead of Rubio. Embarrassed in his first outing, Trump delivered a subdued concession speech and exited quickly. But he was furious at Cruz and soon went on the offensive, accusing the Texan of dirty tricks, including a last-hour effort to sway votes by telling caucus-goers that Carson was about to quit the race.
The defeat in Iowa left Trump bitter. Even months later, he could not let it go. In interviews after he had clinched the nomination, he repeatedly circled back to Iowa: “I came in a very strong second. I got no credit for it. Marco came in third and they were saying that’s great, and I said, ‘What about me? I came in second and I’ve never done this before.’ ” Lewandowski said Trump’s campaign had underestimated the turnout. Trump blamed his Iowa team for the loss: “My team, you know, the people that I had, were not adept, were not good.” He said he had learned a valuable lesson, however. “It made me realize that management of an election is very important. [Cruz] had a massive group of people . . . giving lots of false stories of my positions and bringing them over. For whatever reason, I didn’t have that.”
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IN NEW HAMPSHIRE, TRUMP eschewed the state’s standard script for retail politics. He thought the conventional strategy of wooing individual voters was silly and inefficient: “You would have to go to these very small meetings with people, sit down and talk to them for two hours, and then maybe go out to dinner in their house.” Trump asked his advisers why he should do that, and they told him that was how it had always been done. He mocked that approach: “People would go and have dinner with the voters . . . like, five people, family—the mother, the father, the son, and the daughter—and they’d sit there and have dinner for two and a half hours. . . . If I did that, people would lose respect for me. . . . They’d say this isn’t what we want for a president.”
But after the Iowa loss, Trump adjusted. He stopped by a shift change at a police station, had breakfast at a diner, and hosted town hall meetings in small venues. Lewandowski, who lived in New Hampshire, and spokeswoman Hicks took over the state headquarters, opening it to reporters to prove t
hey had a real organization. Lewandowski was prepared to resign if Trump lost again. Despite the loss in Iowa, Trump remained the favorite in New Hampshire. But Iowa had changed the dynamics of the race. Rubio was on the move, and a strong finish in the Granite State might let him begin to consolidate establishment Republicans behind his candidacy. Cruz hoped to capitalize on Iowa. Bush was fighting to avoid irrelevancy. Then Rubio hit a wall named Chris Christie in a debate three days before the balloting. Christie, the ex-prosecutor whose candidacy was in deep trouble, hammered Rubio as ill prepared to be president. Rubio stood frozen on the stage, robotically repeating a series of precooked lines about Obama to groans from the audience.
On election night, Trump delivered an overwhelming victory, capturing 35 percent of the vote. Ohio governor John Kasich finished far back in second with just 16 percent, ahead of Cruz, Bush, and Rubio. Trump’s victory speech was much more his style. He pointed to Lewandowski: “Does Corey have a ground game or what?” Looking back months later, Trump called the victory a psychological turning point: “The first time I thought I’d win was after I won in New Hampshire.”
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TRUMP NOW TURNED TO the South with an eye toward demolishing Bush, Rubio, and Cruz. In South Carolina, most of the elected leadership lined up against him. Almost immediately, he veered off course, starting at a debate in Greenville three days after the New Hampshire vote. News of the unexpected death of Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia prompted Cruz to ask whether Trump, a man of no fixed ideology, could be trusted to appoint reliably conservative justices to the Court. That put Trump on the defensive, but it was the least of his problems that night. Partway through the debate, he attacked George W. Bush over the Iraq War. “They lied,” Trump said. “They said there were weapons of mass destruction; there were none. And they knew there were none.”
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