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Trump didn't want to be president.
That's pretty clear if you watched the campaign. Trump said all kinds of crazy things that nobody would say unless they were trying to sabotage their own efforts. The GOP edged away from him, not wanting to get any of his stink on 'em. But, the GOP underestimated the stupidity, nastiness, and lack of seriousness among their voters. Their worst nightmare came true... the dog chasing the car caught it. And now what?
They're stuck with this idiot headcase and they know it's killing their party. They were hoping for a repeat of Obama -- let Hillary do a good job running the country while they bitched about it every minute and convinced their dullard voters that something "bad" was happening, and turn that into down-ticket success. The GOP can't govern worth a damn -- that's clear to see pretty much anyplace that elects 'em -- but they're great at brainwashing stupid people based on their nastiest instincts: racism, misogyny, homophobia, "secularism," any kind of social justice. (Yeah, maybe I'm mean to conservative voters... but, I'm not wrong about 'em!) Trump wanted to lose so he could claim he was "cheated" and make a ton of money being a thorn in Hillary's side. Hell, he's trying to do that still, even though she's defeated and out of the game.
Trump was so unprepared for the job that apparently he didn't even know who John Boehner was.
The GOP figured out they had a real mess on their hands now that a complete idiot was going to have to govern.
...and the horror goes on from there, with Ivanka planning to become the first female president, Trump wanting to marry Morning Joe and his fiance (and then telling him he should have invited Hannity when they didn't flatter him enough), Trump sulking because "big stars" didn't come to his inauguration, Trump being too scatterbrained and distracted by himself to even have conversations, Ivanka making fun of her dad's hair behind his back, Trump's weird phobias, his essentially being semi-literate, his childishness...
...and that's just from an excerpt. Trump's not gonna be happy when this book comes out.
That's pretty clear if you watched the campaign. Trump said all kinds of crazy things that nobody would say unless they were trying to sabotage their own efforts. The GOP edged away from him, not wanting to get any of his stink on 'em. But, the GOP underestimated the stupidity, nastiness, and lack of seriousness among their voters. Their worst nightmare came true... the dog chasing the car caught it. And now what?
They're stuck with this idiot headcase and they know it's killing their party. They were hoping for a repeat of Obama -- let Hillary do a good job running the country while they bitched about it every minute and convinced their dullard voters that something "bad" was happening, and turn that into down-ticket success. The GOP can't govern worth a damn -- that's clear to see pretty much anyplace that elects 'em -- but they're great at brainwashing stupid people based on their nastiest instincts: racism, misogyny, homophobia, "secularism," any kind of social justice. (Yeah, maybe I'm mean to conservative voters... but, I'm not wrong about 'em!) Trump wanted to lose so he could claim he was "cheated" and make a ton of money being a thorn in Hillary's side. Hell, he's trying to do that still, even though she's defeated and out of the game.
Even though the numbers in a few key states had appeared to be changing to Trump’s advantage, neither Conway nor Trump himself nor his son-in-law, Jared Kushner — the effective head of the campaign — wavered in their certainty: Their unexpected adventure would soon be over. Not only would Trump not be president, almost everyone in the campaign agreed, he should probably not be. Conveniently, the former conviction meant nobody had to deal with the latter issue.
As the campaign came to an end, Trump himself was sanguine. His ultimate goal, after all, had never been to win. “I can be the most famous man in the world,” he had told his aide Sam Nunberg at the outset of the race. His longtime friend Roger Ailes, the former head of Fox News, liked to say that if you want a career in television, first run for president. Now Trump, encouraged by Ailes, was floating rumors about a Trump network. It was a great future. He would come out of this campaign, Trump assured Ailes, with a far more powerful brand and untold opportunities.
“This is bigger than I ever dreamed of,” he told Ailes a week before the election. “I don’t think about losing, because it isn’t losing. We’ve totally won.”
Most presidential candidates spend their entire careers, if not their lives from adolescence, preparing for the role. They rise up the ladder of elected offices, perfect a public face, and prepare themselves to win and to govern. The Trump calculation, quite a conscious one, was different. The candidate and his top lieutenants believed they could get all the benefits of almost becoming president without having to change their behavior or their worldview one whit. Almost everybody on the Trump team, in fact, came with the kind of messy conflicts bound to bite a president once he was in office. Michael Flynn, the retired general who served as Trump’s opening act at campaign rallies, had been told by his friends that it had not been a good idea to take $45,000 from the Russians for a speech. “Well, it would only be a problem if we won,” Flynn assured them.
Not only did Trump disregard the potential conflicts of his own business deals and real-estate holdings, he audaciously refused to release his tax returns. Why should he? Once he lost, Trump would be both insanely famous and a martyr to Crooked Hillary. His daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared would be international celebrities. Steve Bannon would become the de facto head of the tea-party movement. Kellyanne Conway would be a cable-news star. Melania Trump, who had been assured by her husband that he wouldn’t become president, could return to inconspicuously lunching. Losing would work out for everybody. Losing was winning.
Shortly after 8 p.m. on Election Night, when the unexpected trend — Trump might actually win — seemed confirmed, Don Jr. told a friend that his father, or DJT, as he calls him, looked as if he had seen a ghost. Melania was in tears—and not of joy.
There was, in the space of little more than an hour, in Steve Bannon’s not unamused observation, a befuddled Trump morphing into a disbelieving Trump and then into a horrified Trump. But still to come was the final transformation: Suddenly, Donald Trump became a man who believed that he deserved to be, and was wholly capable of being, the president of the United States.
Few people who knew Trump had illusions about him. That was his appeal: He was what he was. Twinkle in his eye, larceny in his soul. Everybody in his rich-guy social circle knew about his wide-ranging ignorance. Early in the campaign, Sam Nunberg was sent to explain the Constitution to the candidate. “I got as far as the Fourth Amendment,” Nunberg recalled, “before his finger is pulling down on his lip and his eyes are rolling back in his head.”
Trump was so unprepared for the job that apparently he didn't even know who John Boehner was.
Ailes, a veteran of the Nixon, Reagan, and Bush 41 administrations, tried to impress on Trump the need to create a White House structure that could serve and protect him. “You need a son of a bitch as your chief of staff,” he told Trump. “And you need a son of a bitch who knows Washington. You’ll want to be your own son of a bitch, but you don’t know Washington.” Ailes had a suggestion: John Boehner, who had stepped down as Speaker of the House only a year earlier.
“Who’s that?” asked Trump.
The GOP figured out they had a real mess on their hands now that a complete idiot was going to have to govern.
Jim Baker, chief of staff for both Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush and almost everybody’s model for managing the West Wing, advised Priebus not to take the job. Priebus had his own reservations: He had come out of his first long meeting with Trump thinking it had been a disconcertingly weird experience. Trump talked nonstop and constantly repeated himself.
“Here’s the deal,” a close Trump associate told Priebus. “In an hour meeting with him, you’re going to hear 54 minutes of stories, and they’re going to be the same stories over and over again. So you have to have one point to make, and you pepper it in whenever you can.”
Priebus demonstrated no ability to keep Trump from talking to anyone who wanted his ear. The president-elect enjoyed being courted. On December 14, a high-level delegation from Silicon Valley came to Trump Tower to meet him. Later that afternoon, according to a source privy to details of the conversation, Trump called Rupert Murdoch, who asked him how the meeting had gone.
“Oh, great, just great,” said Trump. “These guys really need my help. Obama was not very favorable to them, too much regulation. This is really an opportunity for me to help them.”
“Donald,” said Murdoch, “for eight years these guys had Obama in their pocket. They practically ran the administration. They don’t need your help.”
“Take this H-1B visa issue. They really need these H-1B visas.”
Murdoch suggested that taking a liberal approach to H-1B visas, which open America’s doors to select immigrants, might be hard to square with his promises to build a wall and close the borders. But Trump seemed unconcerned, assuring Murdoch, “We’ll figure it out.”
“What a fucking idiot,” said Murdoch, shrugging, as he got off the phone.
Bannon said he’d tried to push John Bolton, the famously hawkish diplomat, for the job as national-security adviser. Bolton was an Ailes favorite, too.
“He’s a bomb thrower,” said Ailes. “And a strange little fucker. But you need him. Who else is good on Israel? Flynn is a little nutty on Iran. Tillerson just knows oil.”
“Bolton’s mustache is a problem,” snorted Bannon. “Trump doesn’t think he looks the part. You know Bolton is an acquired taste.”
“Well, he got in trouble because he got in a fight in a hotel one night and chased some woman.”
“If I told Trump that,” Bannon said slyly, “he might have the job.”
“What has he gotten himself into with the Russians?” pressed Ailes.
“Mostly,” said Bannon, “he went to Russia and he thought he was going to meet Putin. But Putin couldn’t give a shit about him. So he’s kept trying.”
He then spent several minutes trying to recruit Ailes to help kneecap Murdoch. Since his ouster from Fox over allegations of sexual harassment, Ailes had become only more bitter toward Murdoch. Now Murdoch was frequently jawboning the president-elect and encouraging him toward Establishment moderation. Bannon wanted Ailes to suggest to Trump, a man whose many neuroses included a horror of senility, that Murdoch might be losing it.
“I’ll call him,” said Ailes. “But Trump would jump through hoops for Rupert. Like for Putin. Sucks up and shits down. I just worry about who’s jerking whose chain.”
...and the horror goes on from there, with Ivanka planning to become the first female president, Trump wanting to marry Morning Joe and his fiance (and then telling him he should have invited Hannity when they didn't flatter him enough), Trump sulking because "big stars" didn't come to his inauguration, Trump being too scatterbrained and distracted by himself to even have conversations, Ivanka making fun of her dad's hair behind his back, Trump's weird phobias, his essentially being semi-literate, his childishness...
...and that's just from an excerpt. Trump's not gonna be happy when this book comes out.
