In early March 2016 the three of us (Arthur, Larry, and Steve) got urgent calls from our longtime friend Corey Lewandowski. Corey was a political activist and organizer extraordinaire, who had worked as the state director in New Hampshire for Americans for Prosperity, a major national taxpayer organizing group.
Corey had been tapped to be the campaign manager for the upstart, long-shot Donald Trump for president campaign. His message for us would change our lives. “Donald Trump would like to meet the three of you,” Corey explained. “Could you meet him at four p.m. next Tuesday at his office in Trump Tower in Manhattan?”
Wow. That was unexpected. When Trump had announced his run for the White House—about six months before—we, like most people, thought it was mostly a publicity stunt. Trump was saying some headline-grabbing things, throwing out a blizzard of populist policy ideas for the American people to chew over: “Build the wall.” “Repeal NAFTA.” “The biggest tax cut ever.” Meanwhile he was drawing massive, excited crowds at his political rallies across the country.
Donald Trump, although politically inexperienced and disdained by the Mediocracy and the professional political class, was somehow connecting with millions of voters. Rival candidates (perhaps with the exception of Bernie Sanders) were in denial and ignoring the signs of voter unrest at their own political peril.
We were initially anything but devoted fans. He was part of the New York City scene and had never taken on a significant role in the conservative free market movement. Trump’s statements seemed to us to be all over the map, a pastiche of conservative and progressive ideas. True, we were iconoclasts ourselves, and some of our own ideas—our advocacy of a more open legal immigration policy and our confidence that economic growth could balance the budget—were considered borderline heretical by some factions of the conservative coalition to which we belonged.
All three of us had written columns and research papers that had been critical of several of Trump’s positions, especially on trade. We were and are staunch free traders. Larry and Arthur had met Trump on many occasions in the past and liked him very much personally. Steve had never met Trump and was somewhat turned off by his brash, media-hogging style.
But all three of us were intrigued by the grassroots political movement that we now know as Trumpism, which was building throughout the country. And we liked what he was saying about chopping tax rates and restoring American greatness. We had openly supported his big ideas on changing the IRS tax code. Trump (and Corey) had taken notice of our public praise.
In several early major primary events, Trump had called out Larry by name. “Larry Kudlow loves my tax plan,” Trump had thundered several times in debates and rallies. Larry, on CNBC, was one of the first economic analysts to give Trump credit for some bold reform initiatives on taxes and rolling back unnecessarily burdensome government regulations. Similarly, Trump had gloated to conservative audiences: “I got my tax ideas from the great Reagan economist Arthur Laffer.”
We also loved Trump’s unyielding optimism about America’s potential for much faster economic growth, which would pull us out of the slow-growth ditch the nation had careened into during George W. Bush’s last years in office and Barack Obama’s entire presidency.
Trump was proclaiming that we could get to 5 percent growth with the right set of pro-business policy ideas. Though we thought that 5 percent was overly optimistic (we thought 3 to 4 percent was definitely doable), we loved the aspiration! We recognized that Trump, as a real estate developer who built skyscrapers and five-star resorts, thinks very big and does not shy away from dramatic license. The October 6, 2016, issue of The New Yorker (in an obvious attempted character assassination just before the election) reported Trump saying to [architect Der] Scutt, ahead of a 1980 press conference, “Give them the old Trump bull[s*&%]. Tell them it is going to be a million square feet, sixty-eight stories . . .”1
We certainly agreed—wholeheartedly—that the economy could grow much, much faster than most economists believed. The standard trope on the left at the time was that 1 to 2 percent growth was the best America could achieve.2 After all, if the left’s political messiah, Barack Obama, couldn’t get the economy moving faster, how could a mere mortal like Donald Trump presume to?
We were ecstatic that finally someone was frontally assaulting the tyranny of low expectations that sold America short. And we loved that Trump seemed to relish that the professional political class ridiculed his Make America Great Again (MAGA) theme. We did not agree with all Trump’s policy prescriptions. That said, he certainly had all the right enemies attacking him.
So, yes, we told Corey, we definitely wanted to meet with candidate Donald Trump.
Trump Tower
A few days later we arrived at Trump Tower in New York City and sifted through the massive security detail and what seemed like a tsunami of media cameras in the lobby, heading up to the twenty-sixth floor . . . and Donald Trump’s personal office.
One thing especially impressed us immediately: everyone around him seemed to love Donald Trump. Trump treats his people well.
It wasn’t an act. The Trump team displayed genuine affection for him, affection clearly mirroring his for them. You can tell a lot about a person from how he treats those who work for and with him every day. The vibe of deep mutual respect and obvious affection was telling.
We encountered no arrogance or stiffness. Team Trump was uniformly made up of polite and sweet people, all instantly likable, including our now good friend Rhona Graff, Trump’s longtime personal aide and one of his greatest assets.
Donald Trump, also, was punctual.
Our meeting was scheduled for four p.m. At 4:05, Donald Trump came bounding out of his inner office and pumped our hands up and down with an affectionate handshake and a charming smile. While at the Wall Street Journal, Steve Moore had once interviewed the famous college basketball announcer Dick Vitale—the live-wire personality with boundless energy and enthusiasm about everything. Trump seemed to Steve to be a political version of Vitale. We were a bit humbled by this warmth.
We immediately felt at ease as Trump ushered us into his office and excitedly showed us around. Trump’s office is like a museum filled with sports and entertainment memorabilia. He shared with us footballs and photos with (and many signed by) George Steinbrenner, Joe Namath, and other sports legends. The wall was also covered with dozens of framed magazine covers—from GQ to Esquire to New York magazine and on and on—featuring Donald J. Trump. The man loves his celebrity status—and no one has ever played the media better, as we would soon discover.
There were just us and Donald Trump in his office. He included no aides, no “handlers,” no self-important people tapping on tablets. He wanted to take photos and sign books, and it was all very engaging. We were surprised that, though he was arguably the busiest person in America at that moment, he acted as though he had all the time in the world for us.
Then our host sat down behind his giant desk and hunched toward us—in his signature style. He began to pepper us with questions about the economy and what we thought of his campaign. “How am I doing?” he asked, as he always did throughout the campaign. He proved inquisitive about everything. “What do you think of my tax plan?” “Is the economy headed to a recession?” “Don’t you think we have to worry about China?” “We’re doing great in the polls, have you seen our numbers?” (Yes, Trump showed an obsession with the polls.) “What should we do about the deficit?” “Should I keep Janet Yellen at the Fed?”
Trump didn’t lecture us. He asked for our opinions, straight up. He listened. When he disagreed with us, he would challenge us. Donald Trump, while open-minded, is nobody’s pushover.
One of the first things Steve said to him was: “I just attended one of your rallies a few weeks ago and met a lot of the people there. Donald, I don’t know if I love you, but I sure love your voters.” Trump almost burst out of his chair. “I love these people too. They’re the greatest Americans, aren’t they? They love our country.” (Now you know why he loves to do political rallies even as president. It recharges his batteries.)
The next thing we said to him was: “Thank you for sticking by Corey Lewandowski.” Corey at that time was under attack from the left, unfairly so, for allegedly assaulting a reporter away from Trump at a rally. It was a preposterous charge, obviously designed to undermine Trump, by separating him from the talented and loyal Lewandowski. The sharks were out to get Corey.
To his credit, and astutely, Trump stuck with Corey through the thicket of slander. Shrewd move. In return, Corey helped mastermind one of the greatest upsets in modern American political history: Trump’s winning the GOP nomination. History might show this to have been an even more herculean challenge than Trump’s winning the general election.
We discussed trade. Trump knew full well we were on the free trade side, while he publicly and stubbornly declared that he was more for “fair” than “free” trade. A few months earlier Larry and Steve had penned a piece in National Review called “Smoot-Hawley-Trump,” arguing that Trump could wreck the economy should he follow in the footsteps of Herbert Hoover, the last (and disastrously!) protectionist president.3 Hoover signed the infamous Smoot-Hawley tariff. That bill exacerbated the Great Depression by inciting a global trade war.
Don’t go there, Larry and Steve had unflinchingly written. It was a tough piece and he clearly knew about it. Yes, Trump is always attentive to any criticism—especially when it comes from his friends. (He reminded us a little bit of our late friend Jack Kemp, who took every criticism personally.)
Arthur had been nervous too. He had written an article later that year noting, “I know of no politician who understands a single word of the benefits of trade or even how to think about trade . . . trade is not about jobs at all or even about total employment, but instead trade is about the value of income.” As you can see, free trade is something the three of us were and are very passionate about in the realm of good economic policy.
Trump briefly articulated his concern that countries like China and Mexico were “eating our lunch.” When we suggested that he was flirting with protectionist tariff policies, he held out his arms and seemed slightly insulted. “I am not a protectionist,” he insisted. “But China isn’t playing fair.” We weren’t persuaded, but he had a point. For instance, both Japan and China utilize non-tariff barriers to trade and manipulate their currencies in ways that actually do hurt the U.S. economy. Trump wasn’t just shooting from the hip. He knew his stuff.
Politely, we reminded him that he would want to steer clear of a trade war, an event that could crash the stock market and slow the economic growth on which he had so convincingly campaigned. We felt then and now that, at the very least, our arguments have given him some food for thought.
Trump wanted to talk in depth about taxes. We liked his tax plan. We wished to persuade him of the benefits of a more comprehensive tax reform that would also close loopholes. This was our message to all the GOP candidates. We had delivered this tutorial to every Republican presidential aspirant who had asked for our help on tax policy. The only notable exception in the field was Senator Marco Rubio, whose tax plan was tilted more toward tax credits than supply-side growth.
We assured Donald Trump that a business tax cut would help most dramatically to restore American economic growth. He asked how big of a tax cut we could afford. We told him to go as big as possible . . . to get the economy jump-started and to help middle-class workers. “Don’t get stressed out by the phony numbers of Washington’s bean counters,” Larry instructed. “They are always wrong. And the benefits of a higher economic growth rate far outweigh the cost of short-term deficits.”
This principle has become a pillar of Trumponomics. We strongly contend that it is the right way to examine tax policy changes. To paraphrase legendary football coach Vince Lombardi, “Growth isn’t everything; it’s the only thing.”
Larry stressed repeatedly that the big winners from a business tax cut would be workers, who would command higher wages. If a company has 19 trucks and now, thanks to a tax rate cut, has the money to buy a twentieth, that’s one more truck driver the firm will have to hire. Trump’s a businessman. He got it.
Trump had already articulated the rough outline of a campaign tax plan. He told us that most of the ideas had come from the campaign’s discussions with Arthur. We considered the plan to be a diamond in the rough and very much liked its broad outlines. The Trump campaign’s rough sketch stressed a 15 percent tax rate on corporations and a lowering of rates for workers and small business owners. He said very emphatically—at least twice: “I’m for cutting the corporate tax, but I want to make sure that every small business in America also gets a tax cut.” We admired his instincts on this. About two-thirds of jobs are created by small firms with fewer than 100 employees. Plus, as a matter of politics, Americans love small business, but they aren’t too fond of corporate America—big business—which voters think too powerful, too fat, and too dumb and happy . . . often with good reason.
Then he cut to the chase: Could we refine his tax ideas so that the reforms provided the biggest bang for the buck but still included revenue-raising base-broadeners and loophole closings so that the numbers added up?
Sure, we replied. We would be honored to. We promised to get to work putting some meat on the bones of his tax plan and to crunch the numbers to make sure that this could all be done without unduly increasing the federal deficit. We assured him we would give him dynamic scoring, taking into account the larger national output and job base that one could reasonably expect as a consequence of the tax rate cuts.
Trump, ever the no-nonsense business exec, wanted us back to show him our calculations in a mere two weeks. Short fuse, but justified by the calendar imposed by the presidential campaign itself.
As we walked out, he put his hands across our shoulders, like a big brother . . . or a football coach. Like, for instance, Vince Lombardi.
Charm Offensive
Our meeting had lasted about 50 minutes. We each felt strangely exhilarated. We know well two years later that the very charismatic Donald Trump has that effect on people. He isn’t the bully or the egomaniac that he sometimes plays on TV or is portrayed as by his adversaries. (Yes, sure, he does crave affirmation, and he does have a big ego.)
We sensed that he instinctively “gets” what makes an economy work. Clear away the excessive government taxation, bureaucracy, red tape, and inane rules . . . and much faster growth is possible. Trump knows this not from studying economics books but from his own business background and his many interactions with government agencies in Washington and New York City. Economists and politicians only study and talk about the economy, which is made up of Donald Trump and people a lot like him! It is doers and risk takers like Donald Trump who put our ideas into action. Love him or hate him, Donald Trump has New York street smarts—and that’s worth a lot.
This surely injures the vanity of the Ivory Tower snobs. Yet when it comes to getting the job done—creating jobs and economic growth—the voters were starting to show more smarts than the intelligentsia.
Sure, we disagreed with him on trade and on some of his tough-on-immigration policies. But in so many ways he sounded to us more pro-growth and more pro-business than any other presidential aspirant in the field. In fact, to us he sounded more pro-growth than any other candidate since Ronald Reagan.
And there was something else. The two of us have been around politicians all our working lives. We’ve met all the presidents since Reagan. Arthur goes back to President Nixon, whom he worked for in the White House under George Shultz. In fact, Arthur has a Camp David windbreaker given to him in 1971 when he was involved in the formulation of Nixon’s “New Economic Policy,” which included the temporary closing of the gold window.
As mentioned earlier, the three of us have worked with scores of governors, senators, congressmen, even mayors. We’ve vetted hundreds of candidates for public office. We have developed a pretty good sixth sense of what a winner looks like. Winners project a certain aura, a sense of confidence, and a connection with the voters.
Trump connects. The only three presidents with whom we’ve interacted who demonstrated that uncanny ability to connect—to light up a room when they walk in? Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama. And now, Donald Trump.
Trump demonstrated to us that “X factor” so critical to winning elections and succeeding in politics.
After that initial meeting, Trump asked us to wait in the conference room adjoining his office so we could meet with a few others in the campaign. After about ten minutes Trump popped his head in the door of the conference room to say, “I just wanted to make sure you guys are doing OK. You need anything?”
“No, sir, we’re just fine, thank you.” We looked at one another and smiled as we blurted out the same line at the same time: “My God. This guy is for real. He can win this thing.”
* * *
One last thing struck us from that first meeting.
Corey asked us to meet with his senior staff in the campaign office, a few floors down from Trump’s personal office. When we got off the elevator at campaign central, we confronted a giant, cavernous office with tables, rows of cubicles, campaign posters on the wall, and Trump paraphernalia strewn everywhere. The campaign was entering the height of the primary season. We were astounded that there were perhaps ten people roaming around, plus a few tucked into offices. The rest of the campaign area was quiet and mostly empty. This was unexpected and extraordinary.
We looked at each other quizzically. Where is everyone? We were standing in the middle of the central nervous system of the campaign of a candidate who at that time was the unexpected front-runner in the Republican primary. And nobody was here. There was less buzz and activity than you would see in the campaign office for someone running for a local city council seat. Amazing!
“Corey, where is everyone?” Steve finally asked, puzzled. “This is the campaign staff,” he replied. “You’re looking at it.” Really?
“Mr. Trump doesn’t like to waste money,” Corey explained patiently. Trump had promised voters in the primary he would take no special-interest money and fund his own campaign. He was attempting the biggest upset in presidential political history. And he wasn’t squandering money in the process.
Corey explained that every month he would show Trump the expenditure report for the campaign in the previous weeks. Trump would rake through it and query this or that expense. At one point he asked Corey why they were paying eight field officers in Iowa. “Do we really need eight people?”
Corey responded, “Well, sir, it’s a big state that we have to do well in.” Candidates like Jeb Bush and Scott Walker had spent tens of millions of dollars in Iowa without success when the votes were cast, while the frugal Trump finished second, behind only Ted Cruz. Whatever his other services to the nation, Trump certainly deserves high praise for demolishing the myth that big money buys elections.
That visit to the campaign office confirmed two other admirable characteristics about Trump. First, he’s frugal and watches every penny. Someone like this, we commented to each other, would have a field day going through the federal budget and rooting out the rampant waste, fraud, and redundancy.
Second—and we loved this—Trump’s campaign completely bypassed the professional campaign consultant apparatus that makes tens of millions of dollars on pundits, field officers, pollsters, campaign advertisers, and the like. Trump rendered the consultants inconsequential. They didn’t make a penny off him.
This fact goes a long way to explaining why the professional Republican political class detested, and still detests, Trump. He thwarted their protection racket. Trump wasn’t paying the usual dues to the GOP’s political mafia. Trump even ran few political ads on TV—which is how, via commissions, the consultants typically make their millions.
The consultants felt a need to destroy him, lest he set a dangerous (to them) precedent. This is why Bush and Romney operatives like Steve Schmidt, Stuart Stevens, and Rick Wilson denounced Trump week after week on TV. In the end the political class didn’t destroy Trump. He destroyed them.
Couldn’t have happened to a nicer group of people.
So that was our first meeting with the man who would be president, Donald J. Trump. It was the first step in our playing a much bigger role.
The Trump Phenomenon
It’s worth recalling what was going on at this moment in the presidential race. It was perhaps the critical juncture of the bid for the GOP nomination.
Donald Trump had been enduring intense ridicule from the media and the intellectual class on the left and right. He was dismissed as a buffoon with zero political experience and no chance of winning the presidency. No less than Jeb Bush had said about Trump early on: “I guarantee you, Donald Trump is not going to be the nominee.”4 Many pros said he would be out after the Iowa caucuses. As our friend Kellyanne Conway, now a White House advisor to President Trump, used to tell us: “There is no more pervasive and self-serving lie in American politics than ‘he or she can’t win.’ ”
When Corey called us, Trump was causing a cardiac arrest within the GOP establishment because he was winning. It was still topsy-turvy, and Trump had suffered setbacks in a few early primaries. He lost Iowa to Texas senator Ted Cruz. The political insiders believed that the odds were still heavily stacked against him winning the primary, let alone the general election.
Remember, at this still early stage of the race, there were 15 other Republican candidates vying for the GOP presidential nomination. Many Republican operatives described this field as the best slate of candidates the Republicans had fielded in many years, perhaps ever. The contenders included Florida’s former governor Jeb Bush, Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, Ohio governor John Kasich, Texas governor Rick Perry, and Scott Walker, the Wisconsin governor who had become a hero of a few well-heeled conservatives for taking on the state employee union kingpins in Madison . . . and for not backing down under intense political pressure when the state capital came under siege from leftwing protesters.
Then there were the senators: Florida’s Marco Rubio, Kentucky’s Rand Paul, South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham, and Texas’s Ted Cruz. The social conservatives had their favorites as well, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee and Pennsylvania’s former senator Rick Santorum. Some moderates quietly hoped that Mitt Romney would be a late entry into the race.
There were also two other initially formidable non-politicians in the race: neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina. At one point in the early primaries, the “anti-politicians”—Trump, Carson, and Fiorina—were first, second, and third in the polls.5 This fact alone should have set off alarm bells in Washington, signaling the pervasive rage of voters who had come to recognize that the political class had steered America into an economic and cultural cul-de-sac.
By the way, as we discuss in Chapter Three, our view was that Americans—especially in the Rust Belt states of the Midwest—had full justification for their dissatisfaction with the political elite. America had badly underperformed, economically speaking, in Bush’s disastrous last years in office. The weak recovery under Obama was deeply disappointing and had flattened middle-class income growth. Average gross domestic product (GDP) growth was tortoise-paced over the past decade and a half. Jobs weren’t coming back, except for low-paying menial and unskilled jobs. Obamacare was making healthcare unaffordable.6 Annual federal deficits were averaging more than $1 trillion.7 Big business bailouts and welfare handouts were becoming the norm.
The elites on the left and the right were so out of touch that they were flabbergasted to discover how unhappy Americans were with the state of affairs in America. They were oblivious to their own polls, which had shown for years that about two-thirds of voters believed the country was going in “the wrong direction.”8 Only two candidates in America seemed to recognize and capitalize on this voter unrest: Trump on the right and Bernie Sanders on the left.
The so-called experts in the GOP had all been assuring us that Jeb Bush would eventually emerge as the party’s nominee—and we originally thought so too. This was the Republican Party after all, which over the course of history has unfailingly relied on “the next in line.”
Think about it. In 1968 it was Nixon, Eisenhower’s VP, then Ford, Nixon’s VP, in 1976, then it was Reagan’s turn in 1980, then George H. W. Bush, Reagan’s VP, in 1988, then Bob Dole in 1996, George W. Bush in 2000, John McCain in 2008, Mitt Romney in 2012, and now the very successful and highly admired former two-term governor of Florida, Jeb Bush, son and brother of presidents, richly funded by family connections—the dynastic choice.
But Jeb, despite a treasure chest of $100 million from the Bush family political money machine, was languishing in the polls. Everyone was waiting for his big breakout, but it didn’t happen. Trump had dubbed Bush “low energy,” and the aura of his campaign so far certainly felt that way. Quite possibly the best image of the lackluster nature of Jeb’s campaign occurred at the end of a speech in Hanover, New Hampshire. He pathetically urged the audience to “Please clap” for him after his closing remarks, which were initially met by crickets.9 Jeb had just finished in sixth place in the Iowa Caucus.
The shocking and almost inconceivable leader of the pack was one Donald J. Trump—the brash real estate mogul and star of the TV hit show The Apprentice, who was most known by Americans for his memorable line, “You’re fired!”
Everyone we knew—and we mean everyone—believed that Trump would be a flash in the pan. The polls couldn’t possibly be right. Odds makers on betting lines still had his chances of winning the presidency at about 1 in 20. When he announced six months earlier his intention to run for the White House, he was the 100-to-1 underdog. A Hillary operative once told us that it was more likely that the New York Islanders would beat the New York Knicks in basketball than that Trump would ever beat Clinton.
But Trump was connecting with voters in a way none of us, or just about anyone in the media, had witnessed before. Those red-and-white Make America Great Again hats seemed to be cropping up on every street corner in Middle America far below the ivory towers of Washington, D.C., and Manhattan, those bastions of snobbery.
The more outrageous Trump’s statements, the more his voters seemed to adore him. As we would soon learn firsthand, with Trump it was always “another day, another banner headline or lead cable news story.”
Steve attended a Trump political rally in early 2016, mostly out of curiosity, but it was there that he had an epiphany about Trump. The crowds were large and boisterous—with the energy level of a Rolling Stones concert. But what was shocking was the type of people who attended. This wasn’t the country club set.
These were people we now describe as prototypical Trump voters and whom Steve mentioned to Trump in that first meeting—blue-collar, working-class, culturally conservative folks not strongly aligned with either party. They were angry, patriotic, frustrated, financially stressed out, and searching for a great change of direction for a nation that they believed was showing all the symptoms of an economic and cultural breakdown.
There were schoolteachers, cops, construction workers, bikers (hundreds of motorcycles parked on the side of Trump rallies), soccer moms, grandparents, small businessmen and businesswomen. A surprising number of blacks and Hispanics were among this crowd of attendees. When asked what they liked about Trump, they said things like “He speaks his mind about what’s wrong with America,” “We need someone who will rattle the cages,” “He will shake things up in Washington,” “The fake news media lies about him,” “I’m sick of politicians, we need a successful businessman.” These were voters who didn’t like Obama at all, but they also had little good to say about George W. Bush.
Neither party was paying attention to these voters, and when either party did pay attention, it was nothing more than a patronizing pat on the head. Many times we felt the same frustration with the political class.
What so many of these voters liked most about Donald Trump was that he would drain the Washington swamp.
The political left ignored and dismissed these voter complaints as irrational and witless—in the end to their own detriment. Hillary Clinton was so contemptuous of this voter uprising that she infamously told a group of her millionaire and billionaire donors that many Trump voters were “deplorables” and, even, “irredeemable.” The left regularly ridiculed the Trump voters as xenophobes, Islamophobes, racists, misogynists, and homophobes who wanted to turn back the clock.
The view of most political elites—both Republican and Democratic—was that they were culturally, morally, and intellectually superior to the Trump troops. They had, and showed, contempt for working people.
When we would ask the folks at these rallies or later during the campaign what they thought about the Obama recovery, they would often respond with disdain: “What recovery? This is Michigan.” Or Ohio. Or Illinois. Or West Virginia. Or upstate New York. Or Iowa. Or the other half of America not on the coasts and not connected to Hollywood, Silicon Valley, Wall Street, or Washington, D.C.
These voters were visibly giddy with excitement; they had typically waited three or four hours to see and hear Trump in person. Everyone was eager for the Mick Jagger of politics to show up. You couldn’t help getting caught up by it all.
The more the left threw temper tantrums over Trump, the more voters he attracted. Leftism was in-your-face and reverberating across America—and you had to accept their ideas or you were a small-minded bigot. As columnist Peggy Noonan put it so well, it wasn’t enough for Middle America with Christian values to accept things like same-sex marriage, now they had to bake the wedding cakes.10 Trump stood up to the bicoastal elitists and challenged their political correctness and speech codes. It turns out he was speaking for tens of millions of what are now called the “forgotten Americans.”
We learned as we attended more of these rallies that the routine was always the same. When the Trump plane arrived, it was bedlam. The plane would circle to a halt 100 yards from the rally, and then the door would open. Trump would walk out and stand at the top of the stairs, waving to the crowd and soaking in the adulation.
He was dressed immaculately—always. White shirt, red tie, and dark blue suit. He was theatrical and seemed bigger than life. In some ways, he was.
He would step out onto the stage to hysteria, as if Bobby Thomson had hit the game-winning home run to send the Giants to the World Series.
He would walk around with two thumbs up, wait a few minutes for the chaos to die down, hold his arms out as if a wide embrace were coming, and shout: “You are. My people.”
That brought the house down again. Then he would roll out his campaign slogans. Build the wall. Who will pay for it? The crowd, in unison, in call-and-response mode: “Mexico!” End NAFTA. The biggest tax cut ever. Repeal Obamacare—every word of it. Put coal miners back to work. Rebuild our infrastructure. And then, of course, the closer: Make America Great Again.
He was P. T. Barnum. What a showman! What a gifted orator. Was there some demagoguery here? Sure. But it always made us laugh that when Trump said Build the wall he was denounced as a dangerous demagogue, whereas when Barack Obama promised to prevent the rise of the oceans, he was viewed like a Greek god as the media swooned over his stage presence and charisma.
We had a sense early on that Trump was breaking all the rules and conventions and . . . for better or worse, was on the verge of making history. And, of course, we wanted to be part of pulling it off.
Back at Trump Tower
Exactly two weeks after our first meeting with Trump, we reconvened in Trump’s office in Manhattan. We went through the same security screening and chatted amicably with his charming office staff. After a brief wait, Trump ushered us into his office.
At this meeting, Larry and Steve were joined by Stephen Miller, Trump’s new and indispensable campaign policy director. We had known Miller from his time as the press secretary for Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama. Miller came over to the Trump campaign when Sessions became the first major Republican national legislator to endorse Trump.
Miller is sharp, organized, policy savvy, an amazingly gifted writer, and as conservative as they come. On Capitol Hill he’d helped advance some of Senator Sessions’s best budget ideas, welfare reforms, and a flurry of other money-saving ideas. In a short time, Miller had become the point guy who was pulling the policy strategy together. He traveled with Trump, crafted many of the speeches, knew Trump’s voice, and instinctively understood his philosophy better than anyone. Trump could not have been better served.
We were still refining the tax and budget numbers for Trump’s tax plan but had come with a briefing book of preliminary numbers and a series of policy options for Candidate Trump to decide from as he moved forward with a bulletproof plan. We recognized that this could be a make-or-break document for the Trump campaign, already under relentless assault from entities who claimed the plan would balloon the federal deficit.
The media was disparaging Trump’s tax plan as “voodoo economics on steroids,” as one critic put it.11 Many deficit hawks were denouncing Trump’s budget and tax plans as unrealistic. Trump had called himself the “king of debt” in business, meaning, of course, that he was a virtuoso at using debt financing to build enormous wealth. Now some of his political adversaries sought to twist the meaning of “king of debt” to imply profligacy rather than virtuosity.
But in this second meeting with us, Donald Trump didn’t get into the weeds of the policy proposals. The first thing he asked was: “Where’s Laffer, we need him here.” We explained that Arthur was out of the country, but he was on board. We chatted about the latest in the campaign free-for-all, but it was clear he didn’t want to talk about the contours of the tax plan at this meeting. Instead, he got right to the point. “I want the two of you and Arthur Laffer to serve as senior economic advisors to my campaign.”
We looked at each other in a bit of shock over the offer. Huh? Larry broke the silence by saying, “Well, Donald, I’m not sure we can work for you, or even that you want us to. We are for free trade and you’re a protectionist.”
Trump’s reaction was instantaneous. He first challenged our description of him as a protectionist. He responded as if he were slightly insulted. “First of all, I understand the benefits of trade. I just want a better deal for American businesses and workers. I want free and fair trade.”
That was reassuring to a couple of free trade die-hards like us. Then he said something even more reassuring: “Guys, we can agree to disagree on trade. But I really need your help on taxes, energy, regulations, and other economic issues. I really want to blow out this economy.”
That declaration revealed a lot about Donald Trump, revelations that many political elites have still not grasped. Trump does not require ideological loyalty. There could be disagreement on issues. That was fine with him. There was no “purity test,” no dogma.
We didn’t always win the policy fights, and we still have skirmishes with him and his team. Trump is not ideological like Reagan was—and that was frustrating to us at times. But he does encourage honest and fair-minded policy debates. This man is a commonsense conservative who is about producing results, not adhering to ideological litmus tests.
There is something else about Trump’s personality that many don’t appreciate. Donald Trump—whatever his many other virtues (and vices) might be—is hard to say no to. His enthusiasm and can-doism are highly contagious. These qualities are no small part of the secret of his success in business . . . and politics.
Trump is also no-nonsense. He wanted an answer right then and there. We thought about it for a minute or so, weighing our reservations. Then, enthusiastically, we couldn’t help ourselves: we said yes. He jumped out of his chair and said, “Good, let’s get going then.”
We were off to the races. It was brutal and bruising and exhausting, but we had the time of our lives being part of what was arguably the greatest political upset in American history.
Postscript
In passing, let it be noted that none of us asked for or received any compensation for our advice and counsel and research during the campaign. This was a matter of national service that we were proud to undertake at our own expense. We later joked that our compensation was four front-row seats in the Trump box at the U.S. Open tennis tournament that summer. (Steve took a four-month unpaid leave of absence from the Heritage Foundation think tank to work on the campaign.) This follows in the tradition of Arthur, who never took a paycheck from President Reagan. Arthur firmly believes that once economists start taking money for economic policy advice, the incentives are such that it is very easy to start ignoring simple truths in favor of complex falsehoods that will curry favor with political benefactors. Arthur also never took the official title that Larry and Steve took: senior economic campaign advisor.
When Trump won the election, we served in various roles in the transition to put the economic agenda together for the incoming president. Then we advised the president in informal roles throughout 2017. And, of course, in early 2018 the president honored Larry Kudlow by appointing him director of his National Economic Council, formalizing his role as advisor. Arthur and Steve were appointed members of the president’s Economic Advisory Council.