TWENTY-FOUR

HOT MIC

The tape was hard to watch. It was harder to listen to.

But we watched and listened to the Access Hollywood video all the way to the end. The words sounded crude and vulgar playing through the small speaker on Hope Hicks’s laptop, even more so with Donald sitting there with us. We figured we had the tape for an hour or so before the whole world would see it, and that time was already flying by. I noticed something else on the video, and it added another level of complexity to the growing mess. The video was date- and time-stamped.

September 16, 2005.

I knew what that meant immediately.

Donald’s wedding to Melania, which Mary Pat and I had attended, was in January 2005. “We don’t only have a political problem,” I said to the others in the twenty-fifth-floor conference room. “We have a personal problem, too.” When Donald was caught on a hot mic making all those comments, he and Melania were still newlyweds.

This was the inner circle of Trump-campaign aides. Truly, there was no one else but us. We all sat around together for a good long while that day, trying to come up with the right response. “Clearly, we need to put out a statement,” I said.

People started proposing phrases to quote Trump as saying: “Many years ago.” “Bill Clinton has said far worse to me on the golf course.” “I apologize if anyone was offended.”

It was Donald who offered the best one. “Locker room talk,” he said.

There was an intense debate over the “offended” line. I hated it. “If anyone was offended.” Rudy, Kellyanne, and I all pushed back. “There’s no doubt people were offended,” Kellyanne said emphatically. “We can’t say, ‘If people were offended.’”

“We can’t say ‘if,’” I agreed. “People were offended. That’s the surest bet in the world.”

“No, no, no,” Jared countered. “It’s fine for him to say that. Some people are, some people aren’t.” He and Bannon liked the distance the phrase conveyed. I knew Donald would agree with them, and they refused to budge.

I made my argument directly to Donald. “If this apology isn’t genuine and complete,” I said, “we’re just going to find ourselves having to do it two or three more times. Let’s just do it once and get it over with.”

I lost that fight.

The statement the campaign put out had Trump apologizing if anyone was offended. It also took a jab at Hillary’s husband. “Bill Clinton has said far worse to me on the golf course—not even close.”

Donald went upstairs to talk to Melania. That was a meeting I had no interest in attending.

It was Shabbat. Jared and Ivanka had to leave. Priebus left for DC. Kellyanne, Bannon, and I stayed around for a little while longer, discussing the fact that something else was going to have to be done. We weren’t quite sure where Reince Priebus stood. But we all agreed the evidence was highly damaging. At that moment, all of us recognized that this was a make-or-break moment for the Trump-for-president campaign.

Later that night in New Jersey, I got a call from David Bossie. “We’ve done a video we want to put out,” he said. “Mr. Trump wants to talk to you about it.”

Donald asked if I would listen to the video.

“Why don’t you have someone email it to me so I can look at it?” I said.

“We don’t have time,” he told me. “Just listen to it.”

I listened to the audio over the telephone. “I like the first half where you apologize,” I told Donald when he came on the line. “But I don’t like the second half where you attack the Clintons. Let’s save attacking the Clintons for later. Let’s just get the apology out there now.”

Donald still wasn’t buying my argument. “No,” he said, “I want to do the whole thing.”

It wasn’t until after midnight when I actually saw the video on CNN that I realized how bizarre it was. It had a faux nighttime New York skyline behind him. He was talking stiffly to the camera. It was awful. It looked like a hostage video.

As I went to bed that night, this was only getting worse.

When Donald called first thing in the morning, I told him I thought the video was a mistake. He didn’t want to hear it.

“How fast can you get over here?” he asked.

“I’ll shower and change and come over,” I said.

On my way into the city, Reince Priebus called.

“This is a disaster,” he said. “My phone is blowing up. Everyone wants him to drop out.”

“Well, he’s not going to drop out,” I said, “so let’s move on from there.”

“Are you going to this meeting?” he asked. “I’m on the train approaching Philadelphia right now. If you’re not going to this meeting, I’m getting off in Philadelphia and going back to Washington.”

I told him I was already on my way.

“Don’t lie to me,” he said.

“I’m in the car on the way to New York,” I told him. “I will be there when you get there. You should come to the meeting. You’re the national chairman. You have to be there.”

“Oh, I hate this,” he said. “I hate this. This is awful. It’s terrible. I can’t believe we’re in this position.”

Outside of a political convention or a Super Bowl, I don’t believe I had ever seen more media in one place than when I walked into Trump Tower on the Saturday after the Access Hollywood video was released. It was crazy. I was dressed in khakis and a Mets hoodie. The reporters were screaming questions at me. I ignored everyone as I marched into the side entrance and onto the elevator to the sixty-third floor.

The regular crew had already assembled in the Trump family living room just inside the front door. Jared, Kellyanne, Bannon, Bossie, Rudy—they all looked worn out. Mike Pence was on the road, not in New York. I knew he and Donald had been speaking by phone.

Donald was sitting in a chair with his back to a window. When I walked in, the first thing he said was, “Okay, what do you think?”

I knew that was coming. I’d been rehearsing my answer on the ride in.

“The first thing we need to do,” I said, “is fix your reputation. The campaign will fix itself if we fix your reputation. We’ve got to fix your reputation first. And the only way to do that is for you to give a one-on-one prime-time TV interview with somebody tonight. Apologize completely. Get it over with. Be ready for the debate tomorrow night.”

As an aside, that is exactly what I said that morning at Trump Tower, not the fictionalized version spewed by Steve Bannon and peddled by Bob Woodward in his book. I never said the campaign was over. I never thought it was over. We were running against Hillary Clinton, after all! More erroneous reporting from Mr. Woodward.

Donald didn’t like my suggestion. “I don’t want to do an interview,” he said.

“I just believe you’ve got to answer questions face-to-face,” I told him.

He didn’t want anything to do with that. “I understand what you’re saying, Chris, but I don’t want to do that.”

I sat down while others offered their thoughts, batting around different approaches. “Let’s have a till-you-drop press conference,” Rudy suggested. Nobody liked that idea.

Then Priebus walked in. Trump asked what he thought.

“There are only two alternatives,” Reince said. “Either you drop out—or you will suffer the greatest defeat in American presidential-electoral history, and you’ll take the party down with you.”

He liked that even less than he liked my idea. “You can forget that,” he said. “I’m not dropping out. I don’t care whether I get 10 percent. I’m not dropping out under any circumstances.”

The party chairman held his ground. “There’s no recovering from this,” he said emphatically. “You can’t recover from it.”

As Trump waved off Priebus, he turned to the rest of us and said, “Do you think I need to drop out?” Everyone else said no.

Priebus was eyeballing me, clearly unhappy that I didn’t speak up for him. He motioned me into the dining room for a private chat. “Why didn’t you back me up on that?” he wanted to know.

“Because I don’t believe it,” I told him. “I don’t agree with it.”

“You know he’s never going to win,” Priebus countered.

“Let me tell you something,” I said. “There’s two things I know for sure here. One, Donald Trump will never, ever drop out. He’d rather die than drop out. So why give somebody advice that you know they’re never going to take? And two, we’re running against Hillary Clinton. She’s a dreadful candidate. We’ve still got a shot here. If we do well in the debate tomorrow—this might sound crazy to you—but we’ve still got a shot here.”

“You are crazy,” he said.

I still didn’t understand what Reince thought he could accomplish here. “Why did you give him advice to drop out?” I asked him. “You knew he wouldn’t drop out.” He looked at me with the most serious face I have ever seen.

Said Reince: “Because when they write the book about this, I want to be on record.”

Now I guess he is.

We went back into the living room and kept up the full-court press for Donald to give an interview.

Finally, he relented.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll do an interview. I’ll do an interview, I’ll do it tonight. Fine. Who do you want me to do the interview with?”

We started batting around names. I said I thought the interview should be with a woman. I suggested NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell.

“No,” he said. “I don’t want Kelly O’Donnell.”

Someone else proposed Diane Sawyer from ABC. He said no to her, as well. Other names were mentioned. For one reason or another, he said no to all of them. One thing was clear to me: he did not want to do this interview.

Ultimately, we settled on a male interviewer, ABC World News Tonight anchor David Muir.

Donald said, “Okay, I’ll do it.”

Hope Hicks went to call Muir and offer up the interview. She didn’t have to ask twice. Muir agreed to bring a crew to Donald’s Trump Tower apartment. They hammered out some details, deciding the interview would be conducted in the living room with Donald in the same chair that he’d been sitting in when I arrived that morning. Before Muir and his crew arrived, Donald suggested we all go down to the twenty-sixth-floor conference room and order lunch. That would give us time to prepare him for the Access Hollywood cleanup interview the same way we’d been preparing him for Sunday night’s debate.

Kellyanne got things started, trying out a tough question that Muir would almost certainly ask: “Given what’s on that tape, how can you be trusted by women in America?”

He didn’t really have an answer. I repeated the question, just phrased it in a different way. “Trust and judgment are important in a president. Would you trust the judgment of the person on this tape?”

And that was it. Trump refused to go on—with the practice session or the interview. “Forget it,” he thundered. “I’m not doing this. Cancel it.”

At that point, David Muir was already in the apartment setting up. “What are we supposed to tell him?” Kellyanne asked.

“I don’t care,” Donald fumed.

We went around the table arguing about the wisdom of canceling this interview. Pretty much everyone except for Donald thought canceling was a bad idea. Finally, Bannon said, “If he doesn’t want to do it, we’re not doing it. That’s it. Let’s stop arguing about it.”

Actually, Bannon was right about that. If he didn’t want to do it, it wasn’t going to go well. Most of us thought it was a necessary evil, that he had to take his medicine—but Donald just wouldn’t do it. He had made up his mind.

It was at that point that Bannon brought up a lingering question about Sunday night’s debate: whether the campaign should bring Bill Clinton’s alleged sex-assault victims into the hall.

Under the circumstances, I thought it was too much. Several others agreed. Donald initially wasn’t sold on the idea, but someone had obviously been working it behind the scenes. The women had already been contacted and were ready to come. There was some more back-and-forth around the table, but the issue wasn’t resolved. For the moment, the idea was dropped.

“Okay,” Trump said, “who’s going to do the Sunday shows tomorrow? Chris, why don’t you do Tapper and Stephanopoulos?”

I looked at him and said, “No.

“I’m not going to answer questions that you haven’t answered yet,” I explained. “How do I know what your answer is going to be? How do I know whether I’m giving the answer that’s your answer? It’s a personal thing. It’s just not appropriate for me to do these interviews.”

Donald glared at me.

Then, he turned to Kellyanne. “Well, you do those.”

She echoed what I said. “I think the governor is right. Sir, you’re the one who has to answer these questions. It’s not right for us.”

Then Rudy spoke up. “I’ll do all of them,” he said. “I’ll do every Sunday show.”

That didn’t surprise me, coming from Rudy. He was up for anything, including a round of Sunday shows that were certain to be the network-television equivalent of walking into a lion’s den.

Rudy and I had first gotten to know each other while I was US Attorney. We had mutual professional friends. I was rooting for him in 2007–08 when he was running for president. After that, when Obama won and I resigned to run for governor, Rudy was my first big endorsement. He announced the endorsement on the front lawn of Jon Corzine’s apartment in Hoboken—a great event. He was a regular on the trail for me in 2009 and was a very big help. We have remained friends ever since.

When Rudy spoke up, Kellyanne and I looked at each other, both thinking exactly the same thing: Why did he just say that?

I think it came from a good place, Rudy wanting to be helpful. But it was the wrong thing to do. Still, Trump grabbed the offer like a life preserver at open sea. “Okay,” he said, “Rudy’s going to do the shows.”

With that settled, we went back to discussing the idea Bannon was pushing, that we bring the Clinton women to Sunday night’s debate.

I said I thought it was unnecessary. It might be a mistake, I said. I wasn’t sure it was a mistake, but I was certain it was unnecessary. “Why do this?” I asked. But I was outnumbered. Bannon was totally in favor, and most of the others went along. Finally, we dispatched Kellyanne up to send David Muir home. Donald wasn’t doing the interview.

It was then that Donald, Steve Bannon, and a few others decided to meet with a group of supporters who had gathered downstairs. I decided not to join them. Feeding more tall tales on background to Bob Woodward, Steve would later claim that he and I had a confrontation at the twenty-fifth-floor elevator bank, where I supposedly yelled and cursed at him. The truth? We never had a confrontation that night of any kind. In fact, until that point, Steve and I had never had a cross word between us. There are a few folks who stayed in the conference room that night with me who will back up these facts.

Why did Steve invent this lie? I suspect it was to make himself sound tough at a time when chaos was everywhere. As for a deeper explanation, I’m afraid I would need years of psychological training to unwind all the post-campaign utterances of campaign CEO Steve Bannon.

I left Trump Tower Saturday night feeling terribly down. Donald needed to answer the questions raised by that videotape. He needed to answer them publicly. I didn’t know what those answers were going to be. No one did. And now we were bringing the Clinton sexual-assault victims to Saint Louis for the debate? There was no way I was going to be there.

I’m the only elected official on this team of advisers, I thought, the only person here who currently holds public office. If I showed up at the debate, I’d be pummeled with questions. It was his life, his issue, his public reputation, his marriage. I was firm with Donald about all that. He had to go first. He had to answer the questions before I could. Now none of that was going to happen before the debate.

I called David Bossie on Sunday morning. “I’m not flying out to Saint Louis,” I told Dave. “I can’t answer these questions until he does.”

“I totally understand,” Dave said, “and I’ll convey that to the candidate. You’re an elected official. You’re in a different position than the rest of us.” The New Jersey media certainly thought so.

The next morning, news cameras were parked at the bottom of my driveway when I looked out the window, waiting to see if I would leave the house. It was just Bridget and me at home. Mary Pat and the other kids were away somewhere. “The trucks are still out there,” Bridget, who was thirteen, would report back to me.

I avoided the media the rest of the day. That night, I watched the debate at home on TV. Donald did really well. The work we’d done actually paid off for him.

The Access Hollywood tape, as everyone expected, consumed the first part of the questioning. Moderator Anderson Cooper did not hold back.

In his very first question directed at Trump, the CNN anchor said, “We received a lot of questions online, Mr. Trump, about the tape that was released on Friday, as you can imagine. You called what you said locker room banter. You described kissing women without consent, grabbing their genitals. That is sexual assault. You bragged that you have sexually assaulted women. Do you understand that?”

It had taken him a while to get here, but Donald stepped up.

“I’m not proud of it,” he said. “I apologize to my family. I apologize to the American people. Certainly, I’m not proud of it. But this is locker room talk.” Then, as we’d discussed, he quickly pivoted to other issues of the day, “a world where you have ISIS chopping off heads, where you have—and, frankly, drowning people in steel cages, where you have wars and horrible, horrible sights all over, where you have so many bad things happening, this is like medieval times. We haven’t seen anything like this, the carnage all over the world.”

Anderson didn’t back down quickly, asking Trump if he did “actually kiss women without consent or grope women without consent.”

“I have great respect for women,” Donald answered. “Nobody has more respect for women than I do.” Then again, he shifted the conversation elsewhere, this time to immigration and borders and jobs. The vulgar video was obviously a challenging subject, not something he wanted to feature in a national debate. But as a piece of political performance, which any debate is, he didn’t allow it to throw him completely off his game. He was there to debate Hillary Clinton, and, even under the relentless pressure, he won the debate.

Ten minutes after the debate was over, my phone rang. It was Donald. “What did you think?” he asked.

“You won it,” I said. “You knocked it out of the park. Clear win. Great job.”

Donald sounded thrilled. “You are the greatest debate coach in the history of debate coaches,” he said. “When you get out of office, you should open up a debate school and teach people on how to do debates. You killed Marco. You helped get me ready. I could not have done this without you.”

He wasn’t done. “You know what I was thinking when I was onstage tonight and she would give answers? I was thinking, ‘This was so much harder with Chris than it is with her. This is easy. She’s not nearly as good as he is. That’s how well you got me ready. I can’t thank you enough. And you’re going to do it for the next debate, right?”

I said, “Of course I will.”

“Great. Great. Thanks.”

And then half an hour later, on the way to Trump Force One, he called me again and said, “The reviews are incredible. Everyone is saying I won. You did a great job for me. I can’t thank you enough. You’re in charge again for number three.”

“Okay, great,” I said.

Then I got a call from Rudy Giuliani. He said just one thing. “We couldn’t have done this without you. We’re back in the game. You’re the best.”

As I hung up that night, it seemed to me that Donald understood why I hadn’t gone to Saint Louis. Even why I’d chosen not to appear on the Sunday shows. He definitely didn’t like it. But our relationship was still our relationship. He knew I brought value to him and this effort. He had just lived it on the debate stage. If he was really mad at me, he wouldn’t be calling to thank me ten minutes after the debate was finished, then calling me after that to thank me again. It was another affirmation that this was a peer relationship. It’s more proof that Steve Bannon’s self-aggrandizing accounts on 60 Minutes and in Bob Woodward’s one-sided version of these tales in his book Fear are patently false. If I was “off the team,” as Bannon claimed, then why was Trump calling me, effusively thanking me after the Saint Louis debate? Why did he ask me to lead debate prep for the third debate? Why was I in the room for all the preparations before the third debate, playing the role of Hillary Clinton? Here’s the real truth: Steve Bannon is a fraud, a nobody, and a liar. After getting fired by the president for being the biggest leaker in the West Wing—and that is quite a distinction, given the leaky crew that was there for the first seven months—Bannon launched a never-ending mission to diminish others and rehabilitate himself. It was a shame and a surprise that Bob Woodward allowed himself to be used on such a fool’s errand.

In September 2017, Bannon would go on CBS’s 60 Minutes with Charlie Rose and deliver a version of “Billy Bush Weekend,” as he liked to call it, that was totally made up. An utter and complete lie. Bannon claimed he warned me that if I didn’t get on the plane to the debate in Saint Louis, I would be thrown off the campaign.

“The plane leaves at eleven in the morning,” he quoted himself as telling me. “If you’re on the plane, you’re on the team. He didn’t make the plane.”

Total bullshit.

He never said that to me. He never said anything like it. The entire incident was a fabrication. Bannon and I never spoke about whether or not I would travel to the debate in Saint Louis. The only campaign official I discussed that with was Dave Bossie, who fully understood my reasoning and shared it with Trump.

Despite my supposed banishment, I remained deeply involved with the team and the candidate. We never missed a beat. Donald had gotten through the fire of a huge crisis—and so had our relationship.

Now there were thirty days left to elect him president. And the only thing standing in our way was a very flawed Hillary Clinton.