Donald Trump made his offer—if no one else was in the primary, then he would run for governor. But Rob Astorino was staying in the race, and Ed Cox wouldn’t negotiate.
Trump kept launching tweets and calling reporters, trying to blast away resistance to his bid. “You have to pick somebody and go to win,” he told the New York Daily News on January 11.1 The next day he tweeted, “The Republican Party of New York has been conditioned to lose, and there is no excuse for this. Leadership must move fast and decisively!”
Trump’s larger goal remained a run for the White House. That campaign, Nunberg, Bossie, and others understood, would require a fight against the old guard in the national Republican Party who had knighted Mitt Romney and were likely to align behind another mainstream figure in 2016. In Cox, Trump faced a similar old-guard foe. Trump had already chewed out Sean Spicer and Reince Priebus when they came to see him in Trump Tower following Romney’s loss. This battle with Cox gave Trump a new target to sharpen his attack.
Cox did not have all of Trump’s tools to fight back with, but he did figure out how to land some counterpunches.
Frank Morano: I’m on the bus on the way home after the [January 10 Trump Tower] meeting and Nicole called me. “How did it go? Did he have that special connection with anybody else?” Later that night my phone starts buzzing from text messages and emails. My phone starts doing things I didn’t even know it could do. People are trying to reach me, outraged that Nicole has given a public endorsement of Rob Astorino, saying he’s her favorite candidate for governor.
Nicole Malliotakis: He often said he was going to run for something and then never jumped in. He had said he was going to think about it. It was already late and Astorino was ready to go. If you have a viable candidate who is a good person who wants to run, you can’t hold off, waiting to see if somebody else decides to jump in at the eleventh hour.
Michael Caputo: She had a discussion with Chairman Cox, and she got back on Astorino. When I told Michael Cohen that Nicole Malliotakis had done this, he said, “Who the fuck is Nicole Malliotakis?” I told him who she was and he said, “Forget about it. We don’t care. It doesn’t matter to us. We have no clue who she is.” She was out after that.
David DiPietro: After Nicole endorsed Astorino and crapped on Trump, she had the gall to send him a letter saying, “I’d like my donation that you promised,” and Cohen went ballistic. “Do you think we’re going to give her a fucking penny? Fuck her.”
Frank Morano: I look like a total idiot at this point. I brought this woman into the Trump world. In the short term, the fallout for Nicole was positive because she grew in the estimation of Rob Astorino. They talked to her about being the lieutenant governor. I saw her the following week at a fundraiser, and she thanked me for coming even though she knew I was ticked off at her. She said in front of Ed Cox, “I knew he wasn’t going to run, so I had no problem endorsing Rob.”
Nicole Malliotakis: Sam Nunberg sent me some text message saying never to call them for anything. I’m dead to them.
Cox wasn’t done using his powers. Aware that some Republican officeholders would see advantage in crossing party lines to stand with Cuomo since he was heavily favored to win the coming election, Cox released a letter on January 14 urging Republican leaders not to endorse the Democrat.2 Trump heckled Cox the next morning, tweeting, “The Ed Cox letter to Republicans, which is being so badly ridiculed by the press, should never have been written. WEAKNESS-SAD!” Trump vowed to match the $33 million the Cuomo campaign reported in their account and spend as much as $200 million on the race if he really wanted. “If I ran, it’s a race that absolutely could be won,” Trump told the Buffalo News on January 16.3 By the end of the week, Trump tweeted, “New York GOP leader Ed Cox’s record is abysmal—no victories. Hopefully he can turn things around.”
Those who were looking to Trump saw a way to undermine Cox by bringing Trump together with Carl Paladino, a brash real estate billionaire with a thirst for state politics and contempt for political correctness—a New York Jesse Ventura with a Trumpian bankroll. Inspired by the Tea Party, Paladino spent $3 million winning the GOP primary for governor in 2010. He favored removing road tolls and cutting Medicaid, and campaigned with a baseball bat as a metaphor “for people who want to take their government back.”4
Even though he lost to Cuomo in the general election, his Tea Party–inspired effort served as a conservative case study for a Trump candidacy. Paladino was already picking fights with Rob Astorino, demanding Astorino force out the Republican state senate leader and State Assembly minority leader or he’d mount a third-party primary challenge in 2014.5 On January 20, 2014, Trump and Paladino had a two-hour dinner with Caputo, DiPietro, Cohen, and Langworthy at Jean-Georges, the three-star Michelin haute cuisine restaurant at the base of Trump International Hotel and Tower.
Nick Langworthy: We enlisted Carl to try to help us because we figured, here’s Carl, he’s a brazen developer, maybe they can have a connection.
Carl Paladino: [Nojay and DiPietro] felt they had made a good impression, and Trump was very sincere about running, and I thought it was a great idea. DiPietro called me and said, “Would you go down and see him?” I said, “Of course I will.”
Jessica Proud: Carl is a lot like Trump—a very big personality and very charming when you meet him. He says crazy things in the press, and when you get behind closed doors with him, he’s so loving. He hugs everybody.
Michael Caputo: We met at Trump Tower and went in a limo to Jean-Georges. Trump brought along a big shopping bag of ties and gave each of us five or six Trump ties and we took over the restaurant. A lot of striped ties. I got one on right now.
Carl Paladino: When you have a meeting with him like we did, he’s got a bag of Trump stuff, Trump cologne, Trump ties, and he gives whoever he’s meeting with all this stuff. It was a very elegant restaurant. Trump was very proud of it. It was Mike Cohen, Caputo, Langworthy, Trump, and me. We were up against the window.
Michael Caputo: I had steak, most people did. Trump was very generous, he kept ordering more stuff. That’s when I understood Trump still didn’t drink. I don’t think he ever does. He didn’t order a bottle of wine, and we didn’t order it because we weren’t the hosts.
Nick Langworthy: I had sea bass. I shared the potatoes with Mr. Trump. Dr. Oz was at a table right next to us.
Carl Paladino: We faced each other and he said, “Carl, I admired the way you handled yourself in your election and I have a few questions.” I said, “Before we talk about that, why wouldn’t you want to run for governor?“He said, “Because I want to run for president of the United States. Now, if I won the governorship of New York, I would only be disappointing a lot of people who would be working real hard for me, because I would have to leave within a year and start running for president.” I said, “Why do you want to be president of the United States?” He told me that, like me, he had had financial success. He had a wonderful family. He had all that God could ever give him, and he was a happy guy. But he also knew he could say and do things other people could only think, and he told me he didn’t have any fears. His parents gave him that base that got him going in life and he wanted to leave a true legacy for his parents, and he wanted his children to be able to see a good president of the United States doing good things.
Michael Caputo: Carl started talking to him about how he could actually do this. That he had the intestinal fortitude that was necessary, the funding, and the name ID. The two of them realized they got along very well on issues too.
Carl Paladino: I told him from my perspective it would not be a bad thing for him to leave office and run for president. What he would do for New York politics and for the people in the State of New York by running would be such an awesome change in the direction of the state. It would far offset any feelings he might have about getting people upset. I invited him to come up and speak at a gun rally [in April 2014] I was pushing in Albany. It was going to have at least 10,000 people.
David DiPietro: Mr. Trump was asking Carl a lot of questions about how he ran, what his strategy was, what he did in different areas of the counties, what groups were most receptive, where should he spend his time, and what would make a big impact.
Carl Paladino: I’m going to tell you a little side story which I’m not proud of. We came right from the airport in a cab. I started feeling irritated. By the time we sat down in the restaurant I knew what it was. It was a kidney stone coming on, and I was at a two or three in pain. Out of 10. By the time we finished the meal I was at a six or seven. I was so uncomfortable, I couldn’t eat what I ordered. I was focused on talking to him and did the best I could. I told someone, “I’m having a kidney stone attack.” He says, “I’ll bring you to the hospital.” No. It wasn’t a pleasant time to be speaking. Make a long story short, I decided instead of going to the hospital after the meeting, I went home [to Buffalo]. By the time we landed I was a holy 10.6
Nick Langworthy: Roger always told me this was a lark. Nunberg was in the same boat. Michael Cohen was in the firm camp of wanting Trump to run for governor.
Roger Stone: It became clear he loves campaigning and he’s really good at it. And that probably just reinforces his interest in running for governor. He’s never had a huge respect for polling, he’s more instinctual as a politician. I tend to be more data-driven. On the other hand, if he made decisions based on the polling about running for president, he wouldn’t have run.
Sam Nunberg: Roger had heard through the grapevine that the Cuomo people weren’t nervous about beating Trump, but they were nervous about all the money they were going to have to spend on a campaign.
David DiPietro: Trump had $8 billion, name recognition, the guy connects with the people. He wasn’t a politician. Everything that Cuomo is not Trump was.
Amid the New York State drama, some of Trump’s team kept him on track nationally. Sam Nunberg had arranged for Trump to appear in New Hampshire on January 21, 2014, for a “Politics and Eggs” breakfast with Manchester power brokers, and for McKay Coppins, a political reporter for Buzzfeed, to fly with Trump.
On January 24, when CNBC teased an online poll that would be part of a process of compiling a list of the country’s top business leaders, Trump was among 200 nominees. Michael Cohen hired IT consultant John Gauger to rig the poll by writing a computer code that would vote for Trump repeatedly.7 Trump’s legal team would later deny his knowledge of the poll manipulation.
Michael Cohen, excerpts of Congressional testimony February 27, 2019: I spoke to Mr. Gauger about manipulating these online polls.
U.S. Rep. Mark DeSaulnier (D-CA): And did he use bots to manipulate the poll?
Cohen: He used algorithms and if that includes bots, then the answer is yes.
DeSaulnier:… Did the president have any involvement?
Cohen: Yes.
DeSaulnier: In directing you to do this?
Cohen: Yes.
DeSaulnier: What were the results of the poll?
Cohen: Exactly where we wanted them to be. In the CNBC poll, we came in at number nine.
Back in New York, Nick Langworthy proposed that Trump headline the Erie County Republican fundraising dinner on January 31. This time they’d invite their state GOP chairman Ed Cox so Trump could talk to him in person.
Nick Langworthy: After the Jean-Georges dinner we got into regular telephone communications with Mr. Trump. I said, “Let’s try a trial. Do an event in Buffalo for me.” In 10 days, we sold over 800 tickets on the speculation of him running for governor. It’s exactly why I thought he’d be a great candidate, because of the attention and intrigue he brought to the public and the rank and file.
David DiPietro: We got him at the airport. We took him to Salvatore’s Italian Gardens [in Depew], and there was a line of people for half a mile waiting on both sides of the street waving to him.
Michael Caputo: It had so many statues outside, dozens of statues all over the place. It was very over-the-top Italian. White marble statues of women pouring wine from a jug on their shoulders.
Sam Nunberg: There are people outside with signs, “Run, Trump, Run.” They planted those people but whatever.
Nick Langworthy: His staff saw how many VIP tickets I sold. His assistant Rhona Graff said, “This is gonna be a problem. Mr. Trump doesn’t like to stand and take this many pictures.” I said I would personally handle that and make sure it goes rapid-fire. I busted 200 people through the line in 30 minutes.
Sam Nunberg: We get there, and Trump gives a good speech.
Michael Caputo: It was a great speech. Some big donors, Congressman Chris Collins, and Ed Cox were there. It was the biggest fundraiser in the history of the Republican Party of Erie County. He talked about how the country and New York had gone sour, how New York was overtaxed, how you couldn’t even say “Merry Christmas” anymore, and how the last six years of Obama were terrible for America.
Nick Langworthy: That was certainly his first event in New York State where he was the keynote speaker at a large political gathering for a Republican Party cause.
Ed Cox: It looked like it would be a serious run at that point. I was happy because he was hitting his points well, getting a head of steam, and getting good feedback from the audience. He was sounding like a candidate, speaking about the issues well, developing his style that he would later effectively use in his run for the presidency. He sure got people excited. I was interested in seeing what would happen.
David DiPietro: Afterward there’s a quick dinner in the back room for about 30 people. He’s at the head of the table next to my wife, and then next to me is another person and then Ed Cox.
Sam Nunberg: Everybody’s saying whatever happens after the primary, we all have to be united. That’s when Cox said, “Oh, yeah, we have to be united.”
David DiPietro: Mr. Trump’s going around the room and saying hello. He gets to Ed and he just starts blasting at Ed.
Michael Caputo: He just started ripping into him. “You can’t win, Ed. You never win. I don’t understand how you can win. You don’t know how to win. It’s time for you to step aside and let someone else win.” Ed was trying to talk and he was flabbergasted that he was being called out at the dinner. And I looked at [Congressman] Collins, and Collins made eye contact with me and just smiled. People were hanging their heads. It was very uncomfortable for a lot of the people that were there. Because it was not nice.
David DiPietro: It was crazy. He’s, like, “Ed, why are you against me? I’ve got a chance to help you and the whole party out. Everybody in this room wants me to run. Look at all the chairmen. Why are you the only one?” Ed didn’t know what to say. He started fumbling around. Trump said, “Ed, you haven’t won anything in this state since you’ve been elected chairman. You haven’t won a statewide race. You’re not doing anybody any good.” Trump just leveled Ed Cox, and my wife and I were right in between it. My wife felt like her hair was blown back.
Michael Caputo: I thought it was wonderful because everything he mentioned to Cox was absolutely true. Cox was trying to deny that he was standing in the way of everything. “No, that’s not true.” But Trump was having none of it. He said, “It is true. You can’t win. You haven’t won. When have you won?” And he was like hum-a-na-hum-a-na-hum-a-na.
Ed Cox: I think he was disappointed that I wouldn’t come straight out and endorse him and clear the field, which is what he wanted. My job as chairman of the party at that point was to shepherd the process and develop candidates. He wasn’t a declared candidate and even his most ardent supporters wanted an open state convention. I took that all in stride. My attitude is, hey, that’s my job. I don’t like it, but that’s my job. That left me free to give him straight advice.
David DiPietro: Then others jumped in down the row, and then that was it. Trump ended it and went on.
Michael Caputo: I had never seen somebody so senior dress down a state chairman like that in front of other people. I talked to everybody afterward. They were all thrilled. Nobody likes Ed Cox in Buffalo.
Carl Paladino: I didn’t want Cox to be the chairman from the time I lost that campaign. He showed up for me at different events in upstate New York, but he didn’t have a nickel. He couldn’t raise any money. My central problem all along was Ed Cox’s failure to get in the face of our legislative leaders who had all turned RINO [Republican In Name Only].
Sam Nunberg: That’s the part of it that pissed me off. The Paladino guys were using this to finish old business.