Monthly Archives: September 2022

Can you believe these are my customers? Donald Trump once asked while surveying the crowd in the Taj Mahal casinos poker room. Look at those losers, he said to his consultant Tom ONeil, of people spending money on the floor of the Trump Plaza casino. Visiting the Iowa State Fair as a presidential candidate in 2015, he was astounded that locals fell in line to support him because of a few free rides in his branded helicopter. In the White House, he was sometimes stunned at his own backers fervor, telling aides, Theyre fucking crazy. Yet they loved him and wanted to own a piece of him, and that was what mattered most.

Almost immediately after his defeat in 2020, Trump began fundraising off his claims of fraud, turning to his ardent fans for support. Plenty of people donated small amounts of money to continue a fight he swore was valid and building toward action. It was difficult to discern, though, whether Trump actually believed what he was saying about the election.

I learned in the spring that Trump was repeating a claim from one of his most vocal allies, the self-made pillow-company CEO Mike Lindell, that Trump would be reinstated as president by August 2021. Trump liked the idea, telling aides he did not want to have to sit through another three and a half years of a Biden presidency. He quietly encouraged some conservative writers to publicize the idea in their own voices, telling the National Review editor Rich Lowry as well that he anticipated being reinstated by August 2021. Trump encouraged Lowry to write about it, saying it could help the magazine. When Jenna Ellis, his former adviser, protested on Twitter the notion that Trump could be reinstated to office, Trump told Ellis that her reputation would be damaged. She took that as pressure to reverse her statement. Trump conceded to her that the scenario was almost impossible, but that he wanted to keep the idea alive.

Other moneymaking opportunities arrived, ostensibly tied to the reverent memory of the Trump presidency. The most audacious plan was for a social-media company of Trumps own. In the days immediately following the riot at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, Trump was suspended from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube; he spent most of the next year insisting that he did not care about being banned while also suing the companies to get his accounts restored. In October, he announced that he would launch his own social network as part of a merger with a so-called blank-check company, whose stock price shot up when the merger was announced. The funding mechanism, which sparked an SEC investigation prior to the platforms launch, was completely opaque.

None of this came as any surprise to me. For much of the past decade, reporting on Trump has been my full-time job as a correspondent for The New York Times. To fully reckon with Donald Trump, his presidency, and his political future, people need to know where he comes from. The New York from which Trump emerged was its own morass of corruption and dysfunction, stretching from seats of executive power to portions of the media to the real-estate industry in which his family found its wealth. The world of New York developers was filled with shady figures and rife with backbiting and financial knife fighting; engaging with them was often the cost of doing business. But Trump nevertheless stood out to the journalists covering him as particularly brazen.

I have found myself on the receiving end of the two types of behavior Donald Trump exhibits toward reporters: his relentless desire to hold the medias gaze, and his poison-pen notes and angry statements in response to coverage. His impulse to try to sell his preferred version of himself was undeterred by the stain that January 6 left on his legacy and on the democratic foundations of the countryif anything, it grew stronger. He had an almost reflexive desire to meet with nearly every author writing a book about him. Trumps aides offered me an interview, and I asked for two additional ones.

Trump typically welcomed visiting authors for interviews in an indoor area at Mar-a-Lago that gets converted to a dining room at night, where a model of the redesigned Air Force One sits proudly on a low table. But after the headiness of being at the center of the worlds gaze, his time after the White House made him seem shrunken. He often played golf and then went to his newly built office at the club for meetings with whoever traveled down to seek his approval. He would watch television before going to dinner, where club members would sometimes applaud him, and then it would start all over again the next day, so removed from the daily rhythms of the broader world that he was oblivious to holidays on the calendar and staff had to remind him.

When I arrived for the first interview, in March 2021, I was ushered away from the usual room to a smaller area where Trump sometimes dined with guests. I learned as we wrapped up that the club was empty because it had been closed off after a COVID-19 scare, but Trump decided to have us sit there regardless, without checking to see if I was vaccinated. COVID, Trump said as he described the clubs closure, turns out, not good.

Trump greeted me cordially before taking a seat across the table from me; he was in sales mode, not combat mode. His history in New York was the focus of our interview. He thought back to the first major political figure he had observed up close, the Democratic Party boss Meade Esposito, who dominated Brooklyn politics when Trump joined his fathers real-estate business. Meade ruled with an iron fist, Trump said. And he was a very strong leader, to put it mildly. And when I came to Washington, I said, Oh, well, this is now the big league. So as tough as they were, this must be even tougher. But I said, How could anybody be tougher than Meade? Meade had a cane at the end. He used to start swinging the cane at people. I mean, he was wild.

Trump had seemed to try to emulate Espositos style in his post-presidency, receiving visitors who came to kiss his ring, and picking favorites in primaries to try to determine the outcomes of those races. Trumps view of strength never changes, regardless of the context, flattening all situations so they appear the same. He used identical languagewith an iron fistwhen describing how Esposito presided over his boroughwide fiefdom and when he praised Chinas President Xi Jinping after his own term ended.

I asked him if he had expected the presidency to function the same way. Rather, Trump said, that is how he thought congressional leaders would act on his behalf: Well, I figured that the Mitch McConnells would be like him, in the sense of strength. There were plenty of factual problems with the criticism. In fact, McConnell had kept Republican senators in line over and over to advance Trumps policy and personnel concerns and generally protect his political standing as the leader of the Republican Party. Nevertheless, Trump said to me in another session, using his favorite new nickname for McConnell, The Old Crows a piece of shit.

Trump also complained to me about senators successfully practicing this type of power politics against him, as Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz had when they persuaded Trump not to back a challenge to a colleague, Nebraskas Ben Sasse; Trump gave a surprise endorsement to Sasse, who then, after winning reelection, voted to convict Trump during his second impeachment. Like a schmuck, I went along with it, Trump said.

Trump was clear that he did not believe he would have faced any of the same legal problems that had dogged him if Manhattans longtime district attorney, Robert Morgenthau, had still been in office. No. He was a friend of mine. He was a great gentleman. He was a great man. He was highly respected. No. And I run a clean organization. This is a continuation of the witch hunt. He added, Bob Morgenthau would not have stood for this. The investigation by Morgenthaus successor, he insisted, was part of an attack on the Republic. He was perhaps even more dire when describing the threat he had faced from the special counsel investigation into his campaigns ties to Russia. It forced him, he said, to perform two jobs when I was president, running the country and survival.

At one point, Trump made a candid admission that was as jarring as it was ultimately unsurprising. The question I get asked more than any other question: If you had it to do again, would you have done it? Trump said of running for president. The answer is, yeah, I think so. Because heres the way I look at it. I have so many rich friends and nobody knows who they are. He then went on to talk about how much easier his life would have been had he not run. Yet there it was: Reflecting on the meaning of having been president of the United States, his first impulse was not to mention public service, or what he felt hed accomplished, only that it appeared to be a vehicle for fame, and that many experiences were only worth having if someone else envied them. (When I asked him in a later interview about what hed liked about the job, he replied, Getting things done, and listed a few accomplishments.)

We met for a follow-up interview five weeks later, again at Mar-a-Lago, again in the late afternoon. He was not in a good mood. By way of greeting, he told me, Im watching the Arizona situation very carefully. A private company called the Cyber Ninjas was conducting a so-called audit of Maricopa County ballots and tabulation equipment that had been handed over by the Republican-led state senate. He had talked about his claims of widespread fraud in our first interview, but not about trying to undo the results. He seemed to be going backward. I learned later that hed tried getting the Republican National Committee to fund the audit in Arizona, to no avail (the audit ultimately affirmed the results of the states election).

He was at his most animated when I asked about why he had trusted Sidney Powell, given the concerns his other advisers had had about her. Since then, Powell had faced libel suits from voting-machine manufacturers she had accused of corruption; her defense had been, essentially, that no one should have taken what she had to say seriously. I was very disappointed in her statement, Trump said. That is so demeaning for her to say about herself. Then he essentially read stage directions on how to use public claims in lawsuits. All she had to say, he said, was Upon information and belief, I think such and such. Now all she says there, was take a thousand stories that were written over the last 10 years long before all of this, that are bad stories, he said, and that is information and belief, she read them. And thats the end of that case. Thats true for everybody: Its upon information and belief and lets go to court to find out if its true.

I pressed him on what, at that point, was one of the persistent mysteries of January 6, which would become central to the congressional select committees investigation: what he had been doing in the hours when the Capitol was under assault from his supporters. He insisted that he was not watching television, despite volumes of witness testimony and other evidence to the contrary. I didnt usually have the television on. Id have it on if there was something. I then later turned it on and I saw what was happening, he said. He lied throughout that bit of our interview: I had heard that afterward and actually on the late side. I was having meetings. I was also with Mark Meadows and others. I was not watching television.

Our third meeting was at the end of the summer, which he had largely spent at the quarters that he kept on the grounds of his New Jersey golf course.

When I arrived at the Trump National Golf Club Bedminster, I waited in a small room off the front entrance. I spotted Lindsey Graham outside, in golf pants; it was the second time I had encountered him in Trumps vicinity that year. Trump eventually entered the room, having lost a noticeable amount of weight since I had seen him last. Graham followed a minute later and gestured toward Trump. The greatest comeback in American history! Graham declared. Trump looked at me. You know why Lindsey kisses my ass? he asked. So Ill endorse his friends. Graham laughed uproariously.

I was curious when Trump said he had kept in touch with other world leaders since leaving office. I asked whether that included Russias Vladimir Putin and Chinas Xi Jinping, and he said no. But when I mentioned North Koreas Kim Jong-un, he responded, Well, I dont want to say exactly, but before trailing off. I learned after the interview that he had been telling people at Mar-a-Lago that he was still in contact with North Koreas supreme leader, whose picture with Trump hung on the wall of his new office at his club.

He demurred when I asked if he had taken any documents of note upon departing the White Housenothing of great urgency, no, he said, before mentioning the letters that Kim Jong-un had sent him, which he had showed off to so many Oval Office visitors that advisers were concerned he was being careless with sensitive material. You were able to take those with you? I asked. He kept talking, seeming to have registered my surprise, and said, No, I think thats in the archives, but Most of it is in the archives, but the Kim Jong-un letters We have incredible things.

In fact, Trump did not return the letterswhich were included in boxes he had brought to Mar-a-Lagoto the National Archives until months later. The Washington Post reported on it in early 2022; the Justice Department began investigating how the classified material made its way in and out of the White House residence. (In one of our earlier interviews, I had asked him separately about some of the texts between the FBI agent and the FBI official working on the Robert Mueller investigation whose affair prompted the agents removal from the case; we had learned the night before Bidens inauguration that Trump was planning to make the texts public. He ultimately didnt, but he told me that Meadows had the material in his possession and offered to connect me with him.)

Over the course of our conversations, he appeared reluctant to take shots at many of those people on whom I knew him to have been toughest behind closed doors. His campaign manager Brad Parscale spent money unwisely, he said, but he did not criticize him beyond that. I asked why he had given Jared Kushner expansive power. I didnt, Trump said, although he had done exactly that. When I pressed, Trump said, Look, my daughter has a great relationship with him and thats very important. (In the fall of 2016, ahead of the election, Trump once tried to call Kushner to complain about why the situation in Florida was bad for him. Kushner, who usually didnt answer his phone on the Sabbath, was unresponsive. Fucking Shabbat, Trump groused, asking no one in particular if his Jewish son-in-law was really religious or just avoiding work. When I later asked him about this, he denied that he had said it.)

He was not so sanguine about Mike Pence, who had begun to defend his own actions on January 6 with increasing stridency, prompting Trump to escalate his condemnation of his former vice presidents judgment that day. I said, Mike, you have a chance to be Thomas Jefferson, or you can be Mike Pence, Trump recounted to me, repeating an inaccurate comparison to the election of 1800. He chose to be Mike Pence.

I brought up another potential future primary rival, by mentioning that he had been compared to New Jerseys feisty Governor Chris Christie before the two men faced off in the 2016 primary. Trump replied, I was compared to him? Why? I didnt know I had that big of a weight problem. A small smirk followed. Then: Hes an opportunist. I heard that Trump was describing Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in similar terms, calling him fat, phony, and whiny, while claiming credit for making his candidacy in 2018.

Even as he talked about launching another campaign for the presidency, Trump was more comfortable looking backward than forward. When I told Trump I wanted to talk about 2024, he asked, quizzically, 2024?

By the time we spoke at Mar-a-Lago, I had covered Trump as a political figure for many years, and little was surprising. And still the choreography of in-person interviews could reveal moments of unintended candor. He started to explain why he doesnt like when audiotapes of his interviews are released. Being on camera was much different, he said. Whereas, he said, in a written interview, Ill repeat it 20 times, because I want to drum it into your beautiful brain. Do you understand that? He repeated himself again. One of the things Ill do, if Im doing, like with you, for the written word, is I got to drum it into your head. So Ill repeat something six times.

His interest in repetition was not news to me, but his self-awareness of it was notable. At another point, he was going on a stem-winder about New Yorks then-outgoing Mayor Bill de Blasio canceling a contract with the Trump Organization to manage a public golf course in the Bronx after January 6. De Blasios choice to replace Trump was deeply controversial, and a judge later ruled in Trumps favor.

Its like communism, Trump said, asking what the word was for when someone takes your property. (It came to him 20 minutes later. Confiscate is the word, he declared in the middle of another thought.) I tried redirecting him, but he cut me off. Let me just finish it, he said. Just let me do this, and then Im going to tell you. He seemed to hear himself, and smiled. Then he turned to the two aides he had sitting in on our interview, gestured toward me with his hand, and said, I love being with her; shes like my psychiatrist.

It was a meaningless line, almost certainly intended to flatter, the kind of thing he has said about the power of release he got from his Twitter feed or other interviews he has given over the years. The reality is that he treats everyone like they are his psychiatristsreporters, government aides, and members of Congress, friends and pseudo-friends and rally attendees and White House staff and customers. All present a chance for him to vent or test reactions or gauge how his statements are playing or discover how he is feeling. He works things out in real time in front of all of us. Along the way, he reoriented an entire country to react to his moods and emotions.

I spent the four years of his presidency getting asked by people to decipher why he was doing what he was doing, but the truth is, ultimately, almost no one really knows him. Some know him better than others, but he is often simply, purely opaque, permitting people to read meaning and depth into every action, no matter how empty they might be.

This article is adapted from Habermans forthcoming book Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America.

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Maggie Haberman: A Reckoning With Donald Trump - The Atlantic

U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney said she would do whatever it takes to make sure former President Donald Trump is not the GOP presidential nominee during the 2024 elections, including stumping for Democrats running against election deniers running as Republicans.

When asked by Texas Tribune CEO Evan Smith if she would consider running for president toward that end, the Republican congresswoman reiterated she would do everything in her power to prevent the former president from representing her party in the next presidential election.

I certainly will do whatever it takes to make sure Donald Trump isn't anywhere close to the Oval Office, Cheney said during the closing night of The Texas Tribune Festival.

Cheney, who lost to a Republican primary challenger in August but will continue as vice chair of the House Jan. 6 Committee until she leaves office in January, said she continues to identify as a Republican, celebrating the legacy of the likes of Ronald Reagan and Dwight D. Eisenhower.

But she said she would no longer be a Republican if Trump gets the partys nomination in 2024.

I'm going to make sure Donald Trump, make sure he's not the nominee, Cheney said. And if he is the nominee, I won't be a Republican.

Cheney maintained that she is an ardent conservative on policy issues, voting in near lockstep with Trumps legislative agenda when he was in office. But she warned a House Republican majority would give outsized power to members who have been staunch allies of the former president and his efforts to keep the White House, including U.S. Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert and Jim Jordan.

Cheney excoriated Trump for his failure to call off rioters at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. She said without equivocation that any decision by the investigating committee about whether there should be criminal prosecution would be unanimous across the seven Democrats and two Republicans. She did not say whether the committee would decide in favor of a criminal prosecution.

One of the things that has surprised me the most about my work on this committee is how sophisticated the plan was that Donald Trump was involved in and oversaw every step of the way, Cheney said. It was a multipart plan that he oversaw, he was involved in personally and directly.

While leaders in Congress were begging him, Please, tell the mob to go home, Donald Trump wouldn't, Cheney said. And just set the politics aside for a minute and think to yourself, What kind of human being does that?

The committee is gearing up to wrap up its work in the coming weeks and is slated to meet this Wednesday for another public hearing, offering no details about what will be discussed then. She said next weeks hearing is unlikely to be the committees last, despite committee Chair Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., suggesting the opposite earlier this week.

When asked if she would like Trump to testify before the committee, she paused for a moment before offering the following: Any interaction that Donald Trump has with the committee will be under oath and subject to penalty of perjury.

Cheney suffered a precipitous loss in the Republican primary for her Wyoming seat for her role on the committee, and she said Saturday that she would not vote for the Republican nominee for her seat, Harriet Hageman, in the general election.

But she challenged the audience not to question her ability to keep fighting against Trump after she leaves the House.

When asked about her own presidential ambitions, Cheney demurred.

It's really important not to just immediately jump to the horse race and to think about what we need as a country, Cheney said.

Her criticisms arent limited to the former president. Cheney also flatly said she does not believe House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy should ever become Speaker of the House, which would put him second in line to the presidency behind the vice president.

At every single moment, when our time of testing came and Kevin had to make a decision hes made the politically easy-for-him, or the politically expedient, decision instead of what the country needed, she said.

But Cheney didnt give up hope in her party, saying: I think we have to have a Republican Party that can be trusted to fight for issues such as limited government and strong national security.

Cheneys father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, is another vocal opponent of Trump. He called the former president a coward and the greatest threat to our republic in history in a campaign ad supporting his daughters primary run. Liz Cheney said that her father offered her a piece of advice on New Years Day this year: Defend the republic, daughter. And I will, she said.

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Liz Cheney says she will do whatever it takes to keep Donald Trump from the White House, even if it means leaving the GOP - The Texas Tribune

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Politico founding editor John F. Harris declared "The Best Way To Save The Constitution From Donald Trump Is To Rewrite It" in a Thursday column.

Harris claimed that the former president, though "a constitutional menace," exploited the Constitutions "defects" in order to hold his position. For the sake of holding back a second Trump term as well as promote several progressive causes, he wrote that working around the Constitution might become a necessity.

"Correcting or circumventing what progressives reasonably perceive as the infirmities of the Constitution, in fact, seems likely to be the preeminent liberal objective of the next generation. Progress on issues ranging from climate change to ensuring that technology giants act in the public interest will hinge on creating a new constitutional consensus. Trying to place more sympathetic justices on the Supreme Court is not likely to be a fully adequate remedy," Harris wrote.

He added, "There are more fundamental challenges embedded in the document itself in particular the outsized power it gives to states, at a time when the most urgent problems and most credible remedies are national in character."

Facimile of The Constitution for the United States of America dated September 17, 1787. (Fotosearch/Getty Images)

PROFESSOR FINDS MOST STUDENTS CANT DIFFERENTIATE BETWEEN US AND RUSSIAN CONSTITUTIONS

Harris also complained how Trump supporters hold an almost divine perspective of the Constitution.

"Expressing solemn reverence for the Constitution has become a way of signaling right-mindedness across the political spectrum, even among Trump supporters whose actions plainly undermine constitutional order. In much of this rhetoric, the Constitution is elevated from a secular document to a sacred one, infused with mystical dimensions," Harris wrote.

While Harris did acknowledge there was something "wondrous and enduring" about the document, he didnt hold the same reverence for the Constitution.

We The People - An old USA Constitution on parchment paper lying on a old American flag. (iStock)

"Another answer, however, is: Who cares what [the Founders] thought then? The Constitution was written at a time when states were indeed foundational a central part of peoples identity and way of life. This has not been true for nearly a century, as both national government and national identity have become stronger," he wrote.

POLITICO EDITOR SLAMS JOURNO FOR NOT REPORTING RBGS POOR HEALTH AND HELPING SAVE ROE V. WADE

Harris continued on to list several amendments, most of which were framed around liberal priorities, that could already gain "majority support" from the nation including "altering or abolishing the Electoral College, term limits for the Court, creating some check on abuse of the pardon authority" and cleaning up "the infuriatingly murky language of the Second Amendment."

Progressive activists have increasingly called to amend or ignore the Constitution. (istock)

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Within the last year, several media outlets and pundits have criticized or called for amending the Constitution after the failure to promote several progressive causes. In August, the New York Times featured a guest essay insisting that liberals stop caring about the "broken" Constitution.

Lindsay Kornick is an associate editor for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to lindsay.kornick@fox.com and on Twitter: @lmkornick.

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Constitution must be rewritten to stop Donald Trump, Politico's founding editor writes - Fox News

Happy Monday, OnPolitics readers!

Without being a candidate for any federal office, former President Donald Trump is trying to reshape the Republican Party into a movement focused on devotion to him rather than to ideological principles.

At the top of the agenda for the former president is enlisting loyalists to help him settle his grievances over his loss in the 2020 presidential race.

Trumps vehicle for this is a fundraising machine called Save America. Started just after he lost the 2020 election and at the height of his efforts to overturn the results, the PACs surrogates routinely send out misinformation including conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and the FBI's search of Trump's Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, to rake in donations from the public. It operates like a veritable slush fund, paying for personal expenses like luxurious hotels and even a fashion designer.

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The money given directly to the candidates by Save America usually $5,000 each is a lever that the former president can pull on to encourage loyalty and exert influence.

Save America has backed 28 candidates for state office in nine states. In three of those states, Save America has backed candidates for state legislature, a level virtually unheard of for a PAC of a former high-ranking federal official. At the federal level, Save America has backed candidates for 131 seats in the House and 18 seats in the Senate. The vast majority are election deniers.

And theyve been largely successful. Two-thirds of Save America candidates running at the state level won their primaries, including all of them in Arizona and Texas. All but a handful of the PACs federal candidates have advanced from their primaries and will be on the ballot Nov. 8.

For a breakdown of PAC-supported campaigns by state, check out this interactive map at the bottom of the story.

It's Amy with today's top stories out of Washington.

What's next On Politics: The next hearing for the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitolresumes Wednesday. Check back at USATODAY.com tomorrow and Wednesday as the news develops. -- Amy

Excerpt from:

How Donald Trump's Save America PAC is influencing the 2022 midterms - USA TODAY