- Sep 13, 2002
- 97,112
- 201,225
- 113
As always, well-sourced, well-reported and excellently written:
By Mark Leibovich
In the summer of 2015, back when he was still talking to traitorous reporters like me, I spent extended stretches with Donald Trump. He was in the early phase of his first campaign for president, though he had quickly made himself the inescapable figure of that race—as he would in pretty much every Republican contest since. We would hop around his various clubs, buildings, holding rooms, limos, planes, golf carts, and mob scenes, Trump disgorging his usual bluster, slander, flattery, and obvious lies. The diatribes were exhausting and disjointed.
But I was struck by one theme that Trump kept pounding on over and over: that he was used to dealing with “brutal, vicious killers”—by which he meant his fellow ruthless operators in showbiz, real estate, casinos, and other big-boy industries. In contrast, he told me, politicians are saps and weaklings.
“I will roll over them,” he boasted, referring to the flaccid field of Republican challengers he was about to debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library that September. They were “puppets,” “not strong people.” He welcomed their contempt, he told me, because that would make his turning them into supplicants all the more humiliating.
“They might speak badly about me now, but they won’t later,” Trump said. They like to say they are “public servants,” he added, his voice dripping with derision at the word servant. But they would eventually submit to him and fear him. They would “evolve,” as they say in politics. “It will be very easy; I can make them evolve,” Trump told me. “They will evolve.”
Like most people who’d been around politics for a while, I was dubious. And wrong. They evolved.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Trump told me the following spring, as he was completing his romp to the 2016 nomination. We were talking on the phone, and Trump had just wrapped up a rally in Anaheim, California. Former Texas Governor Rick Perry had recently endorsed him, despite dismissing Trump earlier as a “cancer on conservatism” and “a barking carnival act.”
“He made a statement saying something like I’m ‘the smartest guy ever to run for office,’ ” Trump told me (Perry didn’t say exactly that, but close). “How do you get from ‘cancer on the party’ to that? I get it, I get it; it’s how politicians are. But I couldn’t do that.”
Trump accepted Perry’s support, and then promptly taunted him. “He was going [around] saying the worst things about me!” Trump said at the Anaheim rally. “I have never seen people able to pivot like politicians.”
“It’s happening with all of them,” Trump said. “Lindsey Graham just called and was very nice … even though he used to say the worst things.” (Graham had called Trump, among other not-nice things, “a race-baiting, xenophobic religious bigot” and “a kook.”) Soon enough, the last holdouts would come around too. “It’s just so easy, how they do that,” Trump said.
As went individual Republican politicians, so went the party. Reince Priebus, the chair of the Republican National Committee in 2016, would become frustrated with Trump over his obvious scorn for his organization. Still, Priebus would gamely try to assure me that the GOP was shaped not by one man but rather by a set of traditions, principles, and conservative ideals. “The party defines the party,” Priebus kept telling me.
After Trump won the nomination in 2016, “The party defines the party” became a familiar feckless refrain among the GOP’s putative leaders. House Speaker Paul Ryan vowed to me that he would “protect conservatism from being disfigured.” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told the radio host Hugh Hewitt that “Trump is not going to change the institution,” referring to the GOP. “He’s not going to change the basic philosophy of the party.”
In retrospect, this was hilarious.
By the second night of the 2024 Republican National Convention at Milwaukee’s Fiserv Forum in July, some attendees had started showing up with a gauze pad slapped over their right ears, a tribute to the boxy white dressing Trump wore to cover the injury he’d suffered in an attempt on his life in Pennsylvania just days earlier.
The near miss had cast a peculiar aura over Trump’s jubilee in Milwaukee. For one thing, the bloodshed reaffirmed the popular Republican notion that Trump is a uniquely marked and defiant figure, as reflected by the T-shirts being sold depicting the wounded nominee raising his fist (as well as the still-fashionable mug-shot merchandise). But I spoke with several convention-goers who appeared stunned into a heightened sense of vulnerability by the event: Trump’s physical vulnerability, yes, but perhaps something shared as well. One could view the ear bandages in the crowd as a communal gesture of humanity, or even empathy.
Whatever was behind them, the ear accessories quickly spread through the crowd and became ubiquitous. In a sense, the entire Republican Party has become an accessory. To no one’s surprise, everything in Milwaukee revolved around its unavoidable protagonist, “our 45th and soon-to-be 47th president, Donald J. Trump.”
On the first night of the convention, Trump made what would become his familiar WWE-style entrance. His head filled the big screen as the Republicans’ official cantor, Lee “God Bless the U.S.A.” Greenwood, provided the walk-up sermon. “Prayer works,” Greenwood called out as Trump stood in the wings. And God ensured, “as Donald Trump turned his head just slightly, that the bullet missed him just enough.” Trump was then seen on-screen doing a quick twirl of his finger, the universal gesture for Let’s get on with this.
“We have believed for so long that God will make some changes in this country,” Greenwood continued. (This was a few days before the other party’s God, Joe Biden’s “Lord Almighty,” would finally get through the White House switchboard.) Greenwood persisted in bestowing his blessings until Trump could wait no longer and began his slow walk onto the convention floor.
The roar was colossal. Trump waved and clapped for himself. Everyone he passed stepped back in reflexive obedience, or awe. I’d been watching Trump’s adulators work the arena all week, trying to outdo one another. “My fellow Americans,” Senator Marco Rubio said from the podium while Trump—his Audience of One—squinted up at him like a building inspector. As with many other brand-name Republicans in the arena, Rubio had once despised Trump. He ran against him for president in 2016. It got ornery. Rubio implied that Trump had a small penis; Trump derided Rubio as “Liddle Marco” and called him “weak like a baby.” That last assessment held up well.
“The only way to make America wealthy and safe and strong again is to make Donald J. Trump our president again,” Rubio declaimed from the podium. Trump nodded along from his center box, radiating pride of ownership—Liddle Marco had grown up so beautifully.
Hypocrisy, Spinelessness, and the Triumph of Donald Trump
He said Republican politicians would be easy to break. He was right.By Mark Leibovich
In the summer of 2015, back when he was still talking to traitorous reporters like me, I spent extended stretches with Donald Trump. He was in the early phase of his first campaign for president, though he had quickly made himself the inescapable figure of that race—as he would in pretty much every Republican contest since. We would hop around his various clubs, buildings, holding rooms, limos, planes, golf carts, and mob scenes, Trump disgorging his usual bluster, slander, flattery, and obvious lies. The diatribes were exhausting and disjointed.
But I was struck by one theme that Trump kept pounding on over and over: that he was used to dealing with “brutal, vicious killers”—by which he meant his fellow ruthless operators in showbiz, real estate, casinos, and other big-boy industries. In contrast, he told me, politicians are saps and weaklings.
“I will roll over them,” he boasted, referring to the flaccid field of Republican challengers he was about to debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library that September. They were “puppets,” “not strong people.” He welcomed their contempt, he told me, because that would make his turning them into supplicants all the more humiliating.
“They might speak badly about me now, but they won’t later,” Trump said. They like to say they are “public servants,” he added, his voice dripping with derision at the word servant. But they would eventually submit to him and fear him. They would “evolve,” as they say in politics. “It will be very easy; I can make them evolve,” Trump told me. “They will evolve.”
Like most people who’d been around politics for a while, I was dubious. And wrong. They evolved.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Trump told me the following spring, as he was completing his romp to the 2016 nomination. We were talking on the phone, and Trump had just wrapped up a rally in Anaheim, California. Former Texas Governor Rick Perry had recently endorsed him, despite dismissing Trump earlier as a “cancer on conservatism” and “a barking carnival act.”
“He made a statement saying something like I’m ‘the smartest guy ever to run for office,’ ” Trump told me (Perry didn’t say exactly that, but close). “How do you get from ‘cancer on the party’ to that? I get it, I get it; it’s how politicians are. But I couldn’t do that.”
Trump accepted Perry’s support, and then promptly taunted him. “He was going [around] saying the worst things about me!” Trump said at the Anaheim rally. “I have never seen people able to pivot like politicians.”
“It’s happening with all of them,” Trump said. “Lindsey Graham just called and was very nice … even though he used to say the worst things.” (Graham had called Trump, among other not-nice things, “a race-baiting, xenophobic religious bigot” and “a kook.”) Soon enough, the last holdouts would come around too. “It’s just so easy, how they do that,” Trump said.
As went individual Republican politicians, so went the party. Reince Priebus, the chair of the Republican National Committee in 2016, would become frustrated with Trump over his obvious scorn for his organization. Still, Priebus would gamely try to assure me that the GOP was shaped not by one man but rather by a set of traditions, principles, and conservative ideals. “The party defines the party,” Priebus kept telling me.
After Trump won the nomination in 2016, “The party defines the party” became a familiar feckless refrain among the GOP’s putative leaders. House Speaker Paul Ryan vowed to me that he would “protect conservatism from being disfigured.” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told the radio host Hugh Hewitt that “Trump is not going to change the institution,” referring to the GOP. “He’s not going to change the basic philosophy of the party.”
In retrospect, this was hilarious.
By the second night of the 2024 Republican National Convention at Milwaukee’s Fiserv Forum in July, some attendees had started showing up with a gauze pad slapped over their right ears, a tribute to the boxy white dressing Trump wore to cover the injury he’d suffered in an attempt on his life in Pennsylvania just days earlier.
The near miss had cast a peculiar aura over Trump’s jubilee in Milwaukee. For one thing, the bloodshed reaffirmed the popular Republican notion that Trump is a uniquely marked and defiant figure, as reflected by the T-shirts being sold depicting the wounded nominee raising his fist (as well as the still-fashionable mug-shot merchandise). But I spoke with several convention-goers who appeared stunned into a heightened sense of vulnerability by the event: Trump’s physical vulnerability, yes, but perhaps something shared as well. One could view the ear bandages in the crowd as a communal gesture of humanity, or even empathy.
Whatever was behind them, the ear accessories quickly spread through the crowd and became ubiquitous. In a sense, the entire Republican Party has become an accessory. To no one’s surprise, everything in Milwaukee revolved around its unavoidable protagonist, “our 45th and soon-to-be 47th president, Donald J. Trump.”
On the first night of the convention, Trump made what would become his familiar WWE-style entrance. His head filled the big screen as the Republicans’ official cantor, Lee “God Bless the U.S.A.” Greenwood, provided the walk-up sermon. “Prayer works,” Greenwood called out as Trump stood in the wings. And God ensured, “as Donald Trump turned his head just slightly, that the bullet missed him just enough.” Trump was then seen on-screen doing a quick twirl of his finger, the universal gesture for Let’s get on with this.
“We have believed for so long that God will make some changes in this country,” Greenwood continued. (This was a few days before the other party’s God, Joe Biden’s “Lord Almighty,” would finally get through the White House switchboard.) Greenwood persisted in bestowing his blessings until Trump could wait no longer and began his slow walk onto the convention floor.
The roar was colossal. Trump waved and clapped for himself. Everyone he passed stepped back in reflexive obedience, or awe. I’d been watching Trump’s adulators work the arena all week, trying to outdo one another. “My fellow Americans,” Senator Marco Rubio said from the podium while Trump—his Audience of One—squinted up at him like a building inspector. As with many other brand-name Republicans in the arena, Rubio had once despised Trump. He ran against him for president in 2016. It got ornery. Rubio implied that Trump had a small penis; Trump derided Rubio as “Liddle Marco” and called him “weak like a baby.” That last assessment held up well.
“The only way to make America wealthy and safe and strong again is to make Donald J. Trump our president again,” Rubio declaimed from the podium. Trump nodded along from his center box, radiating pride of ownership—Liddle Marco had grown up so beautifully.