Trump's entire persona was foreign territory, even for Congressmen used to media and meeting well-known people. Trump's long-time administrative assistant, Rhona Graff, described it this way:
"My understanding of Mr Trump's life is it's like an encyclopedia-sized version of how many world leaders, athletes, movie stars, TV celebrities, characters around New York City. I mean, his life is just one celebrity after another". (p.77-78)What Trump and his campaign pulled off is astonishing. Whatever else you think of the man it was quite an accomplishment to decide you want to run for president, put together a staff with little national, or even local, campaign experience, use an unprecedented and very unorthodox strategy and succeed in a stunning upset.
The downside was with the lack of political sophistication, barebones staffing, disdain for policy details, and the peculiar character of the candidate, a series of acts occurred which, while random and uncoordinated at the time, gave opponents the ammunition to construct a compelling, though fake, narrative that would hobble the President.
From those on the campaign staff, it was those very characteristics that caused their disbelief that anyone would think they were colluding with the Russians in the midst of the chaos. You can read it in the testimony - they had their hands full just trying to keep the ship afloat and gave no evidence they had the ability to coordinate an international conspiracy. To them, the conspiracy story was a joke. As usual Corey Lewandowski put it bluntly when asked about a conversation with Hope Hicks, in 2017 after the Russian collusion story became big:
"I probably said this was all bullshit". (p.27)Among the unusual aspects of the Trump campaign was it did no polling or opposition research, both of which are standard practices, though once it became clear Trump would be the nominee the Republican National Committee provided the campaign with its opposition research file on Hillary.
Like communications director Hope Hicks, media director Brad Parscale had no previous campaign experience, being hired because he had done some previous work for the Trump organization. He testified he used "very simple" Facebook targeting with ads that featured Trump talking. Questioning Parscale about ads targeting groups (with the expectation a lot occurred which could then be branded as another divisive, racist Trump tactic) the Democrats on the committee were clearly perplexed when he responded that there were, "no ads based on race, religion . . . or immigration status" (p.90) though some were based on whether the recipient were male or female.
All of those around him spoke to the characteristics we saw on the campaign trail and since and were consistent with Trump's way of operating long before that time.
Rhona Graff had some "Public Relations" responsibility for Trump prior to the campaign, which really amounted to scheduling her boss and screening calls, but Democratic members peppered her with questions as though she really managed Trump's PR and could not comprehend her responses. After listening to the back and forthRep Peter King (R-NY) who'd known Trump for many years helped her out:
"And just like people in the White House say they can't control his tweets, you could not control his PR all the time", to which she responded, "Correct" (p121)Corey Lewandowski:
"The candidate and I, you may not believe this, but sometimes he goes off script and says what he wants to." (p.144)Hope Hicks:
"His private comments echo his public comments" (p.66)Jared Kushner:
"Again, he controls his Twitter, and it comes from what's on his mind at the time" (p.104)(1)Kushner summed it up:
"We had a very different type of campaign than most". (28)For most of the primary season, Trump's national staff consisted of Lewandowski, Hicks and Sam Clovis, with Donald Jr., Jared, and Ivanka providing family counsel. That was it.
Trump went through a senior political advisor (Roger Stone), prior to his announcement, and three campaign managers, Corey Lewandowski (June 2015-June 2016), Paul Manafort (June-August 2016), and Steve Bannon (August 2016). Lewandowski hates Stone and Manafort and Bannon hated Manafort.
How Stone got dumped from the campaign depends on who you ask. According to Lewandowski he fired Stone because, "I didn't believe he brought any value to the organization any longer" (p.54) and adding the following in a Q&A:
"Roger Stone is a liar"According to Stone, he resigned because he disagreed with Trump's plan to run a campaign based upon big rallies and the massive coverage the candidate was sure he could get from cable news networks. In his testimony he admitted, "He was right, I was wrong." (p.21) (2)(3)
"What did he lie to you about?"
"The time of day, the color of his tie, what color of shoes he was wearing, basically everything and everything." (p.66)
Lewandowski managed to alienate a lot of people around Trump, who referred to Hicks and he as "kids", particularly Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, who pushed for his removal. There was also a real and pressing issue facing the campaign as the convention approached. It looked like there would be a concerted effort by the Cruz campaign and other GOP figures to use convention rules to "steal" the nomination away from Trump and the campaign had no one who understand convention rules, and how to deal with delegates and effectively manage the event. Paul Manafort, an experienced GOP political operator, seemed to fit the bill, and indeed he effectively managed the convention.
In his testimony, Lewandowski was blunt about his dislike and more significantly, his distrust of Manafort, believing he was self-dealing and stealing money from the campaign (Manafort's successor, Bannon, thought the same), though he couldn't prove it.
According to Bannon, the plan all along was to replace Manafort after the convention, but the timing was accelerated when Manafort's Ukrainian connections became a big media story (Hillary's campaign had been colluding with Ukranian sources on this). Bannon said the Ukraine story was "a complete shock" to Trump and "he doesn't like surprises".
Hope Hicks told a funny story about Manafort's hiring. Since Kushner had been responsible for Manafort's hiring, Trump assigned him to do the firing. Hicks was with the candidate traveling by car in Louisiana the day Manafort was supposed to be fired. Trump called Jared and Hicks recounts:
"you know has Paul been fired yet? And Jared said no, I'm taking him out to breakfast first. And I remember the response of, 'We don't need to buy him eggs. Let him go'." (p.76)Bannon portrayed himself as the campaign's savior. Here's his version:
"When I came on this campaign, it's 84 days to go or 85 days to go, we're down by 16 points, double digits in every battleground state . . . it was about focus" (p.49)He claimed he advised Trump to only focus on three things, in addition to Clinton's corruption; stop mass illegal immigration and limit legal immigration; bring back manufacturing jobs; and end pointless foreign wars.
"the perception was and reality was we were pretty far behind until the end" (p.194)
"we didn't have any money, not a lot of organization . . . it [the campaign]was driven by media" (p.237)
Bannon's testimony must have been embarrassing for him at times. Though he'd left the White House a few months before, he had given interviews to notoriously unreliable author Michael Wolff who had just published Fire and Fury an explosive expose of the Trump White House in its early days. Bannon, holding a grudge against Kushner who he blamed for being pushed out of the White House, was quoted as calling Jared a traitor for arranging the Trump Tower meetings and saying the chances that Don Jr didn't tell his dad about the meeting immediately after it happened "were zero". (4)
Bannon squirmed around questions as to whether he was quoted directly, but his bad judgment in doing the interviews in the first place reinforced for me his unsuitability to be in the White House in any capacity. He admitted he only knew what he read in the papers about the meeting and was unaware it was Don Jr, not Jared, who set it up.
With the loose organization, disorganization, and its small size and uncontrollable candidate the campaign was vulnerable. And as Kushner noted there were, "lots of marginal characters, the campaign did have a lot of hanger-oners in different ways" (p.45). It's two of those characters, George Papadopolous and Carter Page, we'll next turn to and explain the circumstances under which they became involved with the campaign and the havoc that ensued.
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(1) Michael Caputo, New York State primary director for the campaign and later Director of Communications for Caucus Operations for the Convention, was fired by the campaign for tweeting a joyous cartoon celebrating the firing of Lewandowski. In his testimony, Caputo remarked, "I want to stipulate here that the irony of me being fired for a tweet from the Trump campaign is not lost on me". (p.15)
(2) And, consistent with Stone's behavior over the years, he lied in his testimony to the Intelligence Committee. I downloaded a copy of his indictment by Mueller's goon squad to have handy while I read his testimony (I'd also followed the trial and was familiar with the evidence presented). He lied, and he lied on items of no consequence to the issue of Russia collusion or hacks. As Lewandowski commented, he lied because that's his habit. It was idiotic, but allowed Mueller to add to the collusion narrative he was creating though the specifics of the indictment had nothing to do with collusion. AG Barr was right in intervening to reduce the outrageous sentencing request by Mueller's minions, but Stone did lie and was properly convicted. A fitting end to his career.
(3) Trump's unconventional campaign strategy was brilliant. The cable news channels gave him more coverage than all of his GOP rivals combined. He was great for ratings and for MSNBC and CNN it was like inserting a virus into the GOP race. Even the mainstream newspapers, like the New York Times, were happy to give him disproportionate coverage early on. His approach also supports my thesis that Trump never expected to win the nomination, let along the Presidency, because his primary motives were branding, thwarting Jeb Bush whom he hated, and having fun. His strategy was the low-cost and very cost-effective way to go about this.
(4) I'm convinced Donald Jr did not tell his dad about the meeting, either before or after it happened. I'll explain why in the post on the Trump Tower meeting.
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