The idea for a barrier on the southern border had been touted in the 1990s by Pat Buchanan and in 2006 by Iowa congressman Steve King, an anti-immigrant Republican who hosted one of Bossie’s Freedom Summits in Des Moines in January 2015, where Trump spoke forcefully about border security—but didn’t yet utter the term “wall.”1 In the 2012 campaign, Republican hopefuls had talked about various forms of a barrier, the most extreme being Herman Cain’s idea for an electrified fence that would kill would-be crossers but have, in fairness, posted signs on the Mexico side saying, “It will kill you. Warning.”2 Candidate Rick Perry was pilloried as soft for suggesting that there were better ways of dealing with immigration than a physical barrier.
Pat Buchanan: We called it the “Buchanan Fence.” When I was in the hospital [during the 1992 campaign], my sister got it written into the 1992 platform. It calls for structures on the border. If you’re going to secure the border, how are you going to secure it? You’re either going to put a fence on the border or you’re going to put a wall on the border. It doesn’t take a genius. His wall and the fact that the Mexicans are going to pay for it, that’s probably his innovation. But the Buchanan Fence was mine.
Roger Stone: Parts of it [are Buchanan’s idea] but not all of it. Trump absorbed the America First concept.
David Bossie: He found his own way of having his own thing. A blunt New York fashion, but he came up with “Make America Great Again” and “Build the Wall.” All of these different sayings that he would intertwine in his speeches and these events became like a rock show. There’s tremendous energy out there. He won over the conservative movement, which was skeptical of his team.
Over about a year’s time, Trump’s anti-immigrant message was built from the raw material of his broad ideas along the mental workbenches of his disparate team, who tinkered with and tested it before it was sent back into Trump’s mind for polishing. It finally came out of his mouth in memorable, rabble-rousing, hard-line form.
He was mentioning a border fence in a roundabout way at least as early as a March 6, 2014, CPAC speech in Maryland. There, though, he focused on the idea that granting amnesty to those in the country illegally was not going to help Republicans.
“No matter how soft you are, no matter how many times you say rip down the fence and let everybody in, you’re not going to get the votes,” he said. This was not Trump taking a principled position. He was talking mostly about strategy, what position was going to get votes, which made a certain sense since the room was filled largely by activists. The audience was listless, applauding with a smattering of strength only at the top of his immigration remarks when he said, “If you don’t have a border, what are we? Just a nothing.”3
Sam Nunberg: The wall was my idea. The wall was about immigration, but it involved Trump and his political, marketing, and business brand. It was our idea. Roger and I had spoken about it. I called up Bannon about it and ran it off him.
Steve Bannon: It was Sam who actually came up with the concept.
Roger Stone: Trump saw that he would have to move right to win the party’s nomination, but this idea that Roger Stone or Sam Nunberg or Steve Bannon provided him his agenda is just not true. Sam deserves a lot of credit for helping Trump frame some of the things he wanted to say in memorable ways, but it’s all pure Trump. Trump is the one who sees immigration as an issue, who has been talking about trade imbalances and our NATO allies not paying their fair share all the way back to 1988. He formulates his own platform, and he road tests it. He knows where the applause lines are.
Sam Nunberg: I was on the phone with Roger. It was sometime in July of 2014. Roger knew Trump was going to be very strong on border security, but we wanted to make sure that, frankly, he gave speeches where he didn’t just talk about himself. So this policy platform, in terms of saying he will build a wall and get Mexico to pay for it, was something we thought he would like and use frequently. So I sent it to Roger and then Roger called Trump and Trump loved it.
On August 5, 2014, Trump tweeted: “SECURE THE BORDER! BUILD A WALL!” He would not regularly add the term “wall” to speeches until the next spring.
Despite numerous accounts of Trump first beginning to speak of a “wall” in a January 2015 Iowa Freedom Summit speech, a C-SPAN video records Trump advocating only for a “fence” and adding, “Who can build better than Trump?”4 He also doesn’t yet say terrorists “are” coming across the southern border. He says they “can.” He refers to “criminals” and “crooks” crossing, not, as he would later, rapists. Trump’s rhetoric was not yet honed to an edge that would dependably cut to the core of his target audience. Just as he’d pushed gossip writers decades earlier to refer to him as a billionaire at every mention, truth was not the end goal. What would motivate a crowd and sell like sensuously edged Breccia Pernice marble was.
Sam Nunberg: Look, I don’t want to take credit for all of it or Trump will say, “Oh, you’re taking credit.” When he tweeted about immigration, that was the equivalent of our focus group, and we’d get a lot of retweets. Trump was a little ambivalent about it at first, but it was a perfect vehicle for him. Donald had consistently said, “I don’t want to be told what to say. I don’t want to be handled.” Roger says to Trump, “I’m helping you sell yourself as a product in a different market. You’re gold. You know the classic is gold. You’re gold. Let’s figure out a way to make this gold valuable and political.” Trump thought maybe the wall proposal could hurt his business, which is something he never talked about. I don’t know if he used the word “fence” in that speech, but he was already tweeting about it. I mean, we had already suggested to him it should be a wall. I don’t know why he said “fence.”
A lot of business got done in Iowa in January 2015. In his speech, Trump turned on Republican politicians who “disappointed” him. “It can’t be Mitt. Because Mitt ran and failed. He failed. He choked. He had that election won.” And “the last thing we need is another Bush.”
Steve Bannon: Bossie started putting on these forums. I’m going because we have a SiriusXM show and Breitbart’s on fire. Breitbart’s the voice of this. Trump’s there with these other guys. Rand Paul’s on the cover of Time magazine. You’ve got Ted Cruz. And you’ve got Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum and Rick Perry. Chris Christie. Marco Rubio. The cattle calls are very important because there’s 500 people in the room who are activists who are going to organize people and ring doorbells. They’re not in big arenas. I noticed right away Rubio and particularly Jeb Bush had no command presence. These activists are there for the emotional part, but they’re also pros. Trump kind of phones it in. He’s good but he’s not great. Scott Walker comes in and fucking takes the microphone and walks around the stage and owns it. And the whole media jumps on him, and Scott Walker’s now the hot guy.
David Bossie: We were in a VIP room where some of the candidates were. Everybody had 20 minutes onstage, so we had multiple candidates in the greenroom at any one time. There were donors, VIP types in there, maybe a member of Congress or two from Iowa. Mr. Trump rolled in, and I introduced Don [McGahn, a campaign lawyer]. I told Trump he was the best in the business, and that’s who he should have. We stood there and chatted for a few minutes. And Corey ended up hiring him.
Jeff Jorgensen, Pottawattamie County, Iowa, Republican Party chairman: Me and Margaret Stoldorf, our district executive committee chairwoman, went to Des Moines to see if we couldn’t get somebody to deliver the keynote address to the Pottawattamie County Lincoln–Reagan Day dinner in May. I was really interested in meeting with Carly Fiorina. There were 17 potential candidates. It was still early in the election cycle. We told Carly what we were out here for, Pottawattamie County. She would tell her staff, she would think about it, and she would get back to us. But as Margaret and I were walking out of Carly’s suite to the lobby, there’s a television crew interviewing Donald Trump. So I thought, “Here’s a fella.” There’s another fella standing there that I knew wasn’t from Iowa, the way he dressed. Sharkskin suit. He’s got to be with Donald Trump. I gave him my card. “We’re having a Lincoln–Reagan Day Dinner in May and looking for a keynote speaker.”
He looked at my card and said, “This is you?” I said, “Yeah, chairman, Pottawattamie County Republican Party.” He brought Mr. Trump over and introduced us. We had our picture taken. The fact that he knew who I was tells me that they were doing some advanced research in Iowa. I’m guessing that they knew that I had endorsed a former businessman in the last presidential election cycle—Herman Cain. We left and I’m thinking, I will never hear from Donald Trump.
Carly Fiorina—her staff didn’t get back to us right away. I called and pressed. “We’d like to find out.” “Well, we don’t know yet. We’re not sure yet. We’ll look at her schedule.” About two weeks later I get a phone call from Rhona Graff, his personal secretary. “Mr. Trump has accepted your invitation.” I said I’m going to have to bring it up with my central committee at our next meeting and as soon as I get their approval, I will notify you. She said, “That’s fine.” She’s a very nice gal. We had an interesting discussion about the weather in Iowa. She was kind of impressed with the state of Iowa. I don’t know if she had ever been here or not. I really started pressing the issue with Fiorina. “If you guys don’t want to be here for our event, Donald Trump will. So you guys have to make a decision right now.” Again they declined to get back to me. And then I brought it up to my central committee and they said, “Sure, why not?” I called Rhona back and said that we’d certainly like to have Mr. Trump out here.
Katrina Pierson: At Steve King’s event [in Iowa], I was in the back and Trump was coming through, and he saw me. I gave him the nod, and he said, “You should come see me.”
Steve Bannon: Trump goes to South Carolina next. Trump doesn’t own it down there. He’s good, but it’s not like before. He’s not owning these things. I think he’s great and he’s talking this language. But Scott Walker and these other guys got some heat.
Trump had attended the Conservative Political Action Conference nearly every year since 2011. He had grown frustrated with his poor showings in the event’s straw polls. He’d never won and often finished below fifth place. On February 27, 2015, Trump brought the recently rehired Sam Nunberg with him to CPAC in Maryland and finished in eighth place. It got ugly.
David Bossie: I had Trump come to CPAC several times because I wanted to make sure we highlighted him. The conservative movement was incredibly skeptical of any newcomer who is trying to run for president who didn’t have a pedigree. And then they were even more skeptical because Mr. Trump is a New York tabloid-ish TV personality with no grounding in the conservative movement or in conservative policy.
Sam Nunberg: The secret is, when you start appealing to the base, you get the moderates too. They start coming around. You start getting the whole smorgasbord of support.
Marji Ross: At CPAC, he surprised some people by sounding more conservative and being more articulate and passionate than what was expected. He exceeded expectations, and that added to the reaction he got because especially early on there were plenty of conservatives who approached candidate Trump warily.
In his CPAC speech, Trump said: “A lot of people think I am doing this for fun. I am not doing this for fun. Washington is totally broken and it’s not going to get fixed unless we put the right person in that top position.”
After the speech, Fox News’ Sean Hannity asked Trump how likely it was that he would run, on a scale of 1 to 100. Trump answered between 75 and 80, adding, “I am really inclined. I really want to do it so badly.”5 Trump also revealed to CNN that NBC executives wanted to bring back The Apprentice for a fifteenth season, saying, “They want to renew it and I told them I have to put it on hold because I’m doing something that’s far more important.”6
Steve Bannon: Trump goes to CPAC and he only finishes sixth, fourth, or fifth in the poll.* Rand Paul wins it with all the Paulbots. But Trump’s not second. I’m talking to my guys, and Sam walks up and says, “The phone is blowing up. Will you talk to him?” Sam stinks of whiskey. I take it, and a voice says, “The fucking guy’s drunk, isn’t he?” I said, “What?” He said, “Steve, this is Trump. The fucking guy’s drunk, right?” I said, “I don’t know, Mr. Trump. I don’t know.” I always call him Mr. Trump. I never call him Donald. He says, “How the fuck did I write a $25,000 check to sponsor this fucking thing and I lose? Nunberg’s a loser.”
David Bossie: I do recall that being an issue.
Sam Nunberg: Bannon spoke with Trump via phone. I put him on. I also put Trump on the phone with Kellyanne. We all wanted to explain that the results showed that there was an opening for an outsider nonconventional candidate. Ben Carson was overperforming. It is not accurate that Trump wanted to win the straw poll. But he was concerned that he underperformed.
David Bossie: Mr. Trump was unhappy because he did spend some time and resources to be involved at a high level, and it didn’t pay off. I try to tell him it’s a marathon, not a sprint, so you’ve got to be prepared for the long run, to not have too high a high and too low a low. It’s good to win, but it’s part of the process. Rand Paul, who won that, ended up not being the nominee. “People who win these things spend their whole year organizing a win and then they don’t end up doing anything after that,” I told him. “So don’t worry about it.”
Steve Bannon: I said, “The poll thing’s not bad. The Paulbots come down with all the college kids. Your speech was great. Don’t worry about it.” Trump says, “He told me I was a lock in to win it.” Nunberg’s sitting there going, “Tell him good stuff. Tell him good stuff.” And Trump is crawling through the phone. “That fucking loser,” he said. “This is fucked up. Fuck this.” One F-bomb after another. “Listen, let me deal with Sam and I’ll call you back.” When I got off I said, “What the fuck did you tell this guy?” “He had to be a sponsor,” Sam said, “and he never would have written the check if I didn’t tell him he was going to win the poll.” “He can’t win the poll,” I said. “They bring 2,000 Libertarian kids to this thing. That’s how CPAC rolls.” “I know,” he said. “It was a mistake. I shouldn’t have done it.” Sam Nunberg is a genius. Now, he’s got some drawbacks.*
Sam Nunberg: The fact of the matter is I was essential to Trump. And at the end of it, he treated me like shit the minute Corey came. Inexcusable to me. He never respected me. The reason he somewhat appreciated me was I was underpaid, which was always something I did with Trump so I could get rehired.
David Bossie: Sam was fundamentally a good guy to work with. I’m sorry he had his own troubles. I like Sam. He just spiraled a little bit. Bringing in Sam helped bring a little bit of organization to the campaign.
Sam Nunberg: During the exploratory period in 2015, I was surprised he did a lot of events. He went to South Carolina and New Hampshire a lot. He went to Iowa more than I thought he would. Roger and I were worried we were overworking him. He was willing to do that because he figured he had to. He said to me in early 2015, “If I’m going to do this, I’m really going to do this.”
Jeff Jorgensen: There were people who had concerns that this is going to be a no-show. Donald Trump never had an Iowa campaign staff at that time. I was dealing with people that were directly working under him in New York. Sam Nunberg said, “Do us a favor, put together a list of things you’d like to see happen in Council Bluffs, and then we’ll submit it and get everybody on board.” So we got together, brainstorming. We ought to have a business roundtable discussion at the Omaha Press Club. We ought to have a VIP reception and get pictures taken. Then we have a dinner. From three o’clock until nine we had events scheduled with Donald Trump in Omaha and Council Bluffs. I said, “He’s going to need a little downtime.” We told them we’ve got an hour that he can relax. And Sam Nunberg gets back to me. “We want his time filled up. He doesn’t want any downtime.” I’ve never worked with campaign people that were more accommodating, ever. I’ve worked with quite a few of them. The only thing I got was positive feedback. “Mr. Trump is going to be there. Mr. Trump is going to enter the race.” Sam Nunberg would call and say, “Is there anything we can do for you? How’s ticket sales to the event going?” And I’d say, “Oh, it might be a little slow. We’re still about two months out.” The next day they would have Donald Trump being interviewed on KFAB. “If you want tickets to see Donald Trump, Pottawattamie County Republican Party’s event.” They called me. “What else can we do for you?” I said it would be nice if Mr. Trump would provide some gift bag items for our sponsors. Three days later I had United Parcel deliver a box filled with books, ties, tie clasps, and cuff links.
A news database search shows that the first time Trump is recorded speaking publicly about a wall and not a fence was in an interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier on April 10, 2015, in advance of Hillary Clinton’s anticipated April 12 announcement of her candidacy. Trump told Baier he would have his own announcement by June on whether he was going to run.
Donald Trump: People don’t realize Mexico is not our friend. We have to build the wall. We have to stop people from coming in, and you have to stop it now. Nobody can build a wall like Trump can build a wall—believe me. That’s one thing everybody agrees on.
Sam Nunberg: A lot of it, which Trump totally knew and Roger and I loved, was gonzo politics. Grabbing people’s attention. Everybody takes everything so personally. We said this is like one of his licensing deals. You build something, somebody else pays for it, and you have your name on it. That’s like the birth certificate because it’s like a mass deportation thing. Everybody else is going to say they’re tough on immigration. And we said, “Oh, yeah? You’re not as tough as us.”
Roger Stone: He’s not not open to suggestions. He’s very much his own man, but he’ll always listen. He road tested it and he liked it, and it got a good response. It became a signature phrase, kind of like “Make America Great Again.” It’s that simple.
Two weeks later, on April 27, 2015, at a forum in Salem, New Hampshire, Trump was asked how he’d tackle border security. “I will build the best wall, the biggest, the strongest, not penetrable, they won’t be crawling over it, like giving it a little jump and they’re over the wall, it costs us trillions,” he said. “And I’ll have Mexico pay for the wall.”7
Steve Bannon: When he threw out the wall, people fucking jumped on it. And when he said Mexico would pay for it, they jumped on it more. These other politicians are stiffs. Trump reads a room better than anybody and understands the zeitgeist.
Sam Nunberg: He had said “fence” as early as 2013. So maybe he just mixed them up, and then he finally would just use “the wall” because it had been written down so many times for him. We didn’t view it as interchangeable. It was also one of those things where he doesn’t want to be handled, so he didn’t want to immediately do what we were suggesting, but then he eventually does it. Because a wall is bigger than a fence. It’s grander, it’s bigger, and Trump’s a builder. So what’s bigger? What’s more of a barrier? A wall. Right? Because we wanted—his candidacy was going to be the hardest on immigration to the right. So, others would say, “We’ll build a fence.” Trump would say, “I’ll build a wall and I’ll get Mexico to pay for it.”
Anthony Scaramucci, White House communications director July 21–31, 2017: There’s a blend of things that Mr. Trump firmly believes. The trade stuff, that tax cuts would help incentivize growth in the economy, deregulating the economy from unnecessary regulation. How far along the spectrum he believes the immigration stuff and the racial undertones, that I can’t say.
By the time Trump was an official candidate later in the year, he would be saying “rapists” are crossing the border.8 Then, as president in January 2019, he said, “We have terrorists coming through the southern border.”9 So he ended up with the image of an indomitable wall and the shock value of invading rapists and terrorists—a potent combination that could play to a certain audience’s fear of the Other and of change, like the birther attacks on Obama. “The wall” was a carefully crafted catchphrase that crystallized the emotion of something Trump had been talking about for years.