SEVENTY
Trump, Lindsey Graham and Gary Player, the 85-year-old South African golfing great and winner of nine major tournaments, stood on the fairway of the 10th hole of Trump International in West Palm Beach, Florida, on Saturday, May 8.
Trump had left the White House 108 days earlier and was living in his Florida enclave, surrounded by standing ovations from patrons and guests at Mar-a-Lago and his golf club. As he sat eating his well-done steak or hamburger, people would approach and flash him a thumbs-up and call him the rightfully elected president. They passed him printouts of articles alleging election fraud.
Player, 5-foot-6, was a legendary fitness fanatic. He could still leg press 350 pounds and joked, “Sir, lose a couple of pounds,” when Trump awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom the day after the Capitol insurrection.
A Trump friend and supporter, Player selected a rescue club from his bag, a club meant to get a golfer out of trouble.
“This is how to hit 150 yards,” Player said, instead of the usual 250 yards. “Weaken your grip. Open the clubface and take a smaller swing. That gets the ball up and it’s better than hitting your nine iron.”
Player, nicknamed the Black Knight for his all-black clothing, lined up and took a compact, controlled swing. The ball arced up perfectly, hit the green, took one bounce and rolled into the cup.
Whoa! Whoa! Trump and Graham whooped. They laughed hard.
Player’s approach—backing off, toning it down, swinging less extravagantly with a smaller club, asserting more control—was almost a perfect metaphor for what Graham had been preaching to Trump since the election.
“Mr. President,” Graham had said earlier that morning, “there’s just no way this party can grow without you. You are the leader of the Republicans. But we’ve got some damage to repair here.”
Grievance and hate, an unending barrage, had, in Graham’s view, derailed Trump. Graham often wondered whether Trump realized the damage. Was he capable of repairing it?
Trump brushed off talk of the upcoming 2022 midterm elections. The 2020 election was still on his mind. He had been cheated, he repeated. The election was stolen. Republicans had not sufficiently supported him.
He again angrily denounced Mitch McConnell and Congresswoman Liz Cheney. Trump would never forgive McConnell for saying his actions in the lead-up to January 6 were a “disgraceful dereliction of duty.” It was a stab in the back.
Pence could have saved him by kicking the election to the House, Trump added.
“No,” Graham said. “Mike Pence did his job.”
Trump ignored him.
Graham had become used to the routine. Trump would say rigged, cheated and stolen.
“You lost a close election,” Graham said for what seemed like the 100th time. Trump ignored that remark, too.
Graham thought that Trump just might never acknowledge he had lost and was convinced he could be of more help to Trump and the Republican Party by staying part of Trump’s orbit, tempering his worst impulses. The Republicans needed Trump’s help in 2022 to regain the House and Senate.
He could be a go-between for those who couldn’t stand to be in the same room as Trump, but had the same goal—winning. Plus, Trump was fun. His enemies just did not see the charm.
Between shots, Player told Trump and Graham about a new golf course he was thinking of building in the wilds of South Africa. It was a beautiful place where golfers could spot all kinds of animals—buffalo, lions, zebras, elephants—roaming the grasslands.
“What happens, Gary, when two lions look out and say, ‘You know, that’s a pretty thick guy. I’d like to eat him. Let’s go eat him,’ ” Trump joked.
“Well, they’ve got fences and stuff,” Player said.
“You mean they can’t climb over a fence?” Trump asked skeptically.
“If you get in a Jeep, they won’t come into the Jeep,” Player assured him. “But if you get out of the Jeep, they’ll eat you.”
“How do you know they won’t come into the Jeep?” Trump asked.
“I’m not betting my life on it,” Graham said.
Trump persisted.
“Do you carry a gun?”
“No,” Player said.
“Well, I’m carrying a gun,” Trump said.
Graham had not heard Trump laugh and enjoy himself so much in a long time. He was in a good mood, chipper. No presidency. No flurry of tweets. His Twitter and Facebook ban was surprisingly liberating, he claimed.
“I’ve found I’ve got hours a day just to do other things,” Trump had said.
Golf was the ultimate recreation, and that day Trump also had brought along a donor and a caddy. Player brought his grandson. Six men, their golf carts crisscrossing the course for hours with golf balls flying everywhere, like an airport with so much overhead traffic.
Player shot 68, four under par. Trump maybe six over. Graham had six good holes, six bad holes, and six in the middle. Standard, no real score, he said. Trump had criticized Graham’s swing. “You’re lunging at the ball.”
After the golf, Graham kept up his drumbeat. “You’re strongest when you’re talking about your policies,” he said. He had a list: “Securing the border versus chaos on the border, tax reform, smaller government, staring down the Iranians, standing up to China.”
The Democrats and Biden were overreaching, too radical, Graham said. “The Democrats are doing their part to put us back in the game.” Graham even went further, “If the election were held next Tuesday, we’d win the House. We’re going to have a decent chance of coming back and picking up a seat in the Senate.
“We can’t do it without you, Mr. President. You have to help us. But you’re going to have to focus on the future, not the past to maximize our chance at success.”
Graham was like an addiction counselor, struggling to keep his patient from taking one more drink. Trump wanted to sip the past.
“You’ve got to figure out who to endorse and who not to endorse,” Graham said. “You want your best team on the field. It’s in your interest for us to win the House and Senate. That means January 6 is not your obituary if the party can come back.”
And here was the key: “The best way to do that is to pick people who can win in their states, in their districts. And maybe not the person you like best, but the person who can win.” Trump was going to have to endorse some people who were not always-Trumpers or even Trump allies.
“You need to endorse most of my colleagues,” Graham said. In all, 15 Republican senators were up for reelection at that point, including Lisa Murkowski, who had voted to convict Trump in February.
No, Trump said emphatically on Murkowski, absolutely not. She had been very disloyal and unappreciative of all he had done for Alaska, such as opening oil and gas exploration.
In Georgia, Graham told Trump he was working to recruit Trump favorite Herschel Walker. A three-time All American and 1982 Heisman Trophy winner, Walker was considered one of the greatest football players of all time. He was also a longtime friend to Trump.
A Walker candidacy would present a test case for Republicans. He was famous and conservative and a Black American. But in Washington, many veteran consultants were worried about Walker’s past and mental health. He once told ABC he liked to play “Russian Roulette” with a loaded gun pressed to his temple when he had houseguests. He had cheered Trump’s claims of election fraud and his fight to “Stop the Steal.” The Georgia race in 2022 would likely demand discipline.
Graham also told Trump he should draft an America First policy agenda modeled on Newt Gingrich’s 1994 “Contract with America,” the important conservative plan that laid out specific legislation Republicans would enact if they won back the House. Six weeks after being unveiled, Republicans trounced Democrats in the midterm elections, gaining 54 seats in the House and control of both chambers.
After an hour and a half Graham’s post-golf seminar ended. He had made his points.
“I can throw a punch,” Graham said after Trump left, “and I stand up for him. But I’m always the guy pushing him to take the less confrontational approach.
“For 2024, if he wants to run, then he’s going to have to deal with his personality problems. The problems created with Trump’s personality are easier to fix than if the party blew completely up and we had a civil war. A third-party movement would start if you tried to kick Trump out of the Republican Party.
“We are in a pretty good spot on policy. But we’ve got a very damaged team captain.”
Trump saw himself as anything but.
“Are my numbers really that good?” Trump asked one of his longtime pollsters, John McLaughlin, on June 16 during a political briefing at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club.
“Yes,” McLaughlin said, nodding and pointing to his printout of his firm’s May 21 poll of Republican primary voters that said 73 percent wanted him to run again in 2024. And 82 percent said they would support him in the primary campaign if he jumped in.
McLaughlin turned to the next page. The question posed to GOP voters: “Thinking ahead to the 2024 Republican primary election for President, if that election were held today among the following candidates, for whom would you vote?”
The result showed Trump dominating the field of potential contenders, with 57 percent choosing him from more than a dozen others. Mike Pence came in second place with just 10 percent. Florida governor Ron DeSantis, a rising star, came in third place with 8 percent.
“Have you ever seen any numbers like this?” Trump asked.
“No,” McLaughlin said. “These numbers, your numbers, are better than what Reagan had.”
“In many ways, you were a more conservative president than Reagan,” he said. “Tougher on immigration and trade, more pro-life, in many ways. You’ve really transformed the Republican Party into the party of the working men and women of America, whereas Reagan was always working to get Reagan Democrats and attract working-class voters.”
This was not a one-off session. Trump was keeping his political operation fully active, even if its size had significantly shrunk since he left the presidency.
Other public polls showed Trump had deep Republican support, but also significant liabilities. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll in April, among registered voters nationwide, showed Trump with 32 percent positive ratings and 55 percent negative ratings, compared to 50 percent positive and 36 percent negative for Biden.
“The more you get attacked, the more your base gets solidified,” McLaughlin told Trump. “More intensified. Your support is not going anywhere.”
McLaughlin had been arguing to Trump for weeks that Biden’s support could eventually crater like Jimmy Carter’s ahead of the 1980 election, when the Iran hostage crisis overwhelmed his presidency and Ronald Reagan won.
“The pendulum is going to swing back, Mr. President,” he said. “Just be patient. Hang back and wait and see what happens, and there will be buyer’s remorse about Biden.
“These are your vaccines. You’re the one who left the country in a position for a rebound on the economy. Biden is not going to be able to take credit for that.”
Kellyanne Conway was still in Trump’s inner circle. “My Kellyanne, my Kellyanne,” he would begin, calling her up after a summer round of golf.
Since she left the White House the previous year and did not formally join the 2020 campaign, she had some distance from his defeat, now five years after serving as his campaign manager in 2016.
“It’s fine for you to say my Kellyanne,” she said. “But I need you to see me as somebody else.” She was not on the payroll and she was suspicious of the advisers who counted on Trump’s behemoth fundraising apparatus for their post-campaign livelihood. “I am a person, if not the person, close to you who did not take a dime, not a penny from your $1.4 billion reelection campaign.”
Okay, Trump said, understood.
“There are eight or 10 things you need to know. Got to get back to basics. How did you win in the first place in 2016? You won because you have this connective tissue with people. The people are forgotten. You’ve elevated them. They actually benefited financially, culturally, emotionally. They had upward economic and social mobility while you were president. And they are the most hurt by your loss.
“They’re the most hurt because they’re the coal miners and the steelworkers and the energy workers. They’re the middle-wage people. They’re the ones who have not one kid, but three and four who now are going backward in their economic mobility.”
Stop with the grievances. No more obsession with the election. Speak to real anxieties. Win back the support of suburban women who backed you in 2016. Get back to talking angrily about China instead of Georgia.
Trump said he appreciated the advice and felt nostalgic about his 2016 campaign. At the end, it was just a handful of aides flying around on his private plane, going from rally to rally. He wanted that back, be the outsider. His campaign in 2020 had a corporate feel.
“That’s why you’re going to be in charge of everything, honey, the next time,” Trump said.
Conway laughed and made no promises.
“Listen, you were the underdog both times even though you were the president of the United States the second time. But what you didn’t have this time was the hunger and the swagger. And you weren’t under-resourced and understaffed. If anything, Arlington,” where the Trump campaign had its headquarters, “became Brooklyn,” where Hillary Clinton housed her 2016 campaign.
“What do you mean?” Trump asked.
“Trump 2020 resembled Hillary 2016. You had too much money, too much time, too much ego.”
Later, again on the golf course with friends and donors, Trump told his golfing group he was thinking about using his private Boeing 757 airplane as a way of taunting Biden. A shadow Air Force One, flying around the country ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.
“The American people love that plane,” he said. “I am thinking of getting it repainted in red, white, and blue. Like Air Force One, the way I believe Air Force One should look.
“That’s my brand. I don’t do the corporate jet thing. I’m not going to show up in a little Gulfstream like a fucking CEO.”