How Trump Won the White House (Ep 1)
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Hello and welcome to The Rest Is Politics U.S. with me, Katty Kay. And me, Anthony Scaramucci. And today we are doing something a little bit different, a little bit new for us. We're both a little bit nervous, but excited. Do you want to tell us what it is, Anthony? This is a special series for The Rest Is Politics U.S. It's going to be four episodes on how Donald Trump won the White House in the

in 2016. And I can already tell you that I'm wearing more antiperspirant because when I think about this episode of my life, I have heart palpitations and a little bit of perspiration, but I think it's very important to explain to people that

how Mr. Trump went from a reality television star and a real estate developer in New York, 18 short months later to the American presidency and slaying everyone, slaying the Republican establishment and slaying the Democratic establishment represented by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. So four parts, lots of excitement, and maybe who knows, maybe we'll get a deodorant sponsor out of this at some point.

You were there with Donald Trump. I was reporting on it. And like you, I have a little bit of PTSD every time I think about that campaign because it was the most crazy rollercoaster campaign. We are going to look at the whole story. We'll start off with Donald Trump's decision to run for the White House. We'll look at the Republican primaries, how he slayed his opponents, the ups and downs of

of the campaign trail and then take you right up to November the 8th and that extraordinary night and his completely unexpected victory. So stick with us for the next four weeks if you want to know just how Donald Trump, against all odds, won the White House. Sorry to keep you waiting, complicated business. I am officially running.

For president of the United States. Run for president, but don't be the world's biggest jackass. Calls himself the candidate who speaks his mind, who tells the truth. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. So make America great again.

You're never going to be President of the United States by insulting your way to the presidency. Let's see, I'm at 42 and you're at 3. There's an excellent chance of Donald Trump becoming the next President of the United States. I could shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose any voters. People need to take that very seriously. He's been my candidate from day one because he's not a politician. It's just awfully good that Donald Trump is not in charge in our country. Because you'd be in jail. Election Day is here. People have talked about a miracle.

I'm hearing about a nightmare. I'm so proud to call him the President of the United States because that's what's about to happen.

The important thing, I think the reason we are doing this is because not only did Donald Trump win the White House and have four years as American president, which upended the whole world, not just America, but he completely reshaped American politics. He made the Republican Party something new, something completely unrecognizable. And of course, his presidency ended with that real threat to American democracy of January the 6th. So

Let's start by looking at his actual decision to run. Donald Trump had teased the idea of running for years, but he wasn't really taken very seriously because he'd said, a bit like crying wolf, he'd said he was going to run so often that everybody just assumed he was talking about it and wasn't actually going to do it. I think a key turning point in Donald Trump's decision to run, we have to go right back to 2011.

It was the event of the White House Correspondents Association dinner here in Washington, D.C. I attended that dinner. It's a glitzy kind of gala dinner with all of the press, celebrities, lots of politicians there all schmoozing each other. And Donald Trump was invited to that dinner. And he decides to come to that dinner. And traditionally, at the White House Correspondents Association dinner, the president of the United States stands up and does a kind of roast and does a fun speech.

The president in 2011, of course, was Barack Obama. And Barack Obama stands up and completely takes the piss out of Donald Trump. I mean, he humiliates him in public because Donald Trump had raised the whole issue of Barack Obama's birth certificate and whether he was really born in the United States. And Barack Obama and his team decided to take their revenge. No one is prouder to put this matter to rest than the Donalds.

And that's because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter. Like, did we fake the moon landing? And Donald Trump's face goes white.

And he looks more and more serious. And the tradition at those kind of roasting events is that you fake looking amused. He could not fake looking amused. He was very unhappy. And there'd been a debate in the White House. I remember speaking to some of the people at the time when I was a reporter, and they had wondered whether Barack Obama went too far. What we didn't know, Anthony, was after that dinner, Donald Trump comes away from that dinner and thinks, I hated being mocked like that. Somehow, I

I have to get my revenge and somehow I have to reassert myself and rehabilitate myself. And I think that was a kind of turning point in him deciding to run. No question about that. And then some people would say, well, why didn't he run in 2012?

And he was doing quite well with The Apprentice at the time, making gobs of money off The Apprentice. But I want to take you back, if you don't mind, because having done 71 campaign stops with him, traveled on the plane with him, I just want to provide some color. I'm going to take you back to 1988. It's New Orleans. It's the Republican National Convention in New Orleans. He's there on tour. He's in the

arena that they're hosting the event. And he's looking up at the ceiling and he says, what is all that? And they say, well, that's Mr. Trump. Those are balloons that are going to drop on the last night after the presidential nominee, George Herbert Walker Bush gives the speech. And Trump mutters under his voice, I want that. This is exactly the type of show. This is exactly the type of spectacle that I want. Fast forward, it's 1999. He's thinking about running as a reform candidate.

And he goes up to New Hampshire and he gives a speech and he's organizing himself to run not as a Democrat, not as a Republican. He's been both, right? He's been Democrat and a Republican. He's going to run as a reform candidate. He decides he can't get the vote, so he backs out. In 2011, he comes back from that event that you're describing, absolutely furious. He's going to run for president.

but he's on contract with NBC. So he makes a decision to endorse Governor Mitt Romney. Now, Romney is the exact opposite of Donald Trump. Okay, he's a Mormon. He's buttoned up. He's got 24 or 28 grandchildren now.

He's done everything right in his life. He's almost too perfect to be a presidential candidate, but he meets Donald Trump at the Trump Hotel in Nevada and accepts his endorsement. And if you see the body language between the two of them, Caddy, it is brutal. Okay, they're so ill-fitted with each other.

And this is a seminal thing that I want to add to the story. It is election night. We're in Boston at the campaign headquarters of Mitt Romney. 2012. 2012. I've worked for Mitt Romney. I'm there. Donald Trump walks in with Michael Cohen. He's got the double-breasted jacket that he likes wearing. He walks in. We're watching the results. Romney's getting creamed by Obama.

Trump is furious. He mutters, this is ridiculous. I should have ran. I should not have listened to all the naysayers, so forth. I should have ran. He walks out. He heads for Logan Airport. He flies back to New York an hour before the thing is over and an hour before the Governor Mitt Romney concession speech to Barack Obama.

Why is all this important? Because this has been brewing to run for president in this man's mind for four decades. I think that's a key point, and it's why, in a way, none of us took him quite seriously, us who were reporting on it, because we'd heard so many times that he was thinking of running. He tweeted out in 2014 that he decided not to run for the New York governor's race, but kind of teased again running. I have much bigger plans in mind. Stay tuned. Will happen.

All of this buildup is important because he'd kind of teased people about running. He'd played with the idea of running. So there was a lot of feeling that he wasn't going to be a great candidate. He teased it a lot. So we were all kind of surprised when he actually did run. We're going to get into his actual entry, that famous moment where he comes down the escalator. But I think we should spend just a minute, Anthony, on you mentioned The Apprentice, on what he did there.

before he ran for president and why he was already so famous in America. And I think that's something that a lot of us in the media underestimated, the degree to which Donald Trump had been in people's living rooms for years. So, Cady, The Apprentice is a fascinating part of...

of political history now, because Jeff Zucker, who went out to sign Donald Trump, was head of NBC Broadcasting. He signs him to The Apprentice. The Apprentice does phenomenally well. It lasts for 15 years. Mr. Trump is known as a little bit of an oddball in politics.

real estate in New York. People feel that he inherited a lot of money from Fred Trump, squandered a lot of money, was sort of floundering, declared bankruptcy a few times on different companies, didn't have a great reputation, was always trying to pretend that he was richer than he was. You could always see it in his hyperextended status overbite, if you will. But now he's got a TV contract and it turns out that he's pretty effective on television. He's a television star and they manufacture

this brilliant story of him being a successful businessman. Why is this important in American politics? Because

Americans are getting tired of the humdrum of the garden variety politician. Humdrum, humdrum. Every politician more or less says the same thing. Every politician has equivocating language. They want to walk into a room, Katty K, and say little to nothing, not offend anybody in the room. They pull out of the room. Here comes Donald Trump. He's a successful businessman in the eyes of the American public.

And he's going to come in now. We've always needed in America a successful businessman that could run America like a company. And why this is important is the great irony is Trump has absolutely no executive management skills. He's a rock on tour. He's an entertainer. He's a good communicator. And he's got something that none of us fully understood in the beginning, which we all know now.

He has amazing political instincts, amazing political instincts. And what are those instincts? Everybody in American politics is incompetent. I'm not. I'm going to deliver you the goods, the American people. And he's able to convince enough people of that. Can I tell a quick story? Okay. So it is March of 2015.

It is the day after the finale of The Apprentice. And I've been called by Trump's assistant, Rona. He wants to have breakfast with me. I said, okay, no problem. What time is breakfast? Turns out it's going to be a 9.30 breakfast at Trump Tower. My office is two blocks away. I walk over to Trump Tower. I go to the 26th floor. I'm waiting in the lobby for Mr. Trump. He comes in off the elevator bank. So he's coming down from his residence.

And he says, who is this good looking guy here? This is how he talks to you. And I stand up, I say, Mr. Trump, how are you? Look at this good looking guy, this great figure on national television. Come into my office. So I walk into his office and he's a lot bigger than me. He sits behind his desk. And now, Caddy, his desk is high. Your chair across from the desk is low.

Okay, so I want you to imagine you're now sitting at the desk and you're basically peering up at him. You feel like the kid in school talking to your teacher. 100%, yes, 100%. And he's got it designed like this. Okay, so me being me, I said, what the hell's wrong with this chair? Do you make people sit in a position like this? He goes, goddamn right I do. Okay, so now I'm sitting in the chair. He's leaning over the desk.

and he's telling me how great he was on The Apprentice. Did you see me on The Apprentice? He said, no, I didn't see you on him. I don't watch The Apprentice. You were the only one. The ratings were fantastic. The greatest ratings ever, the greatest show in television history, but the show's over. Show's over. He says, yes, I'm no longer going to do The Apprentice. I'm running for president. I literally laugh in his face. I look at him. I say, you're not running for president. You're just doing this for attention. He

He says, you see, Scaramucci, that's your problem, okay? What were you doing last night? I said, I was watching Fox News. You were at 2% of the polls. He says, yeah, you see, you know why I'm at 2% of the polls? The people are like you, Scaramucci. They think that I'm not running for president. Well, let me tell you something. When I actually declare that I'm running for president, I'm going to go to the top of the polls.

I'm going to stay there until I win. Now, you're good on TV. I want you to do this with me. And then here's the catch line, which is totally untrue, by the way, but the catch line is you don't have to raise me any money. You don't have to be the political fundraiser that you once were. All I need you to do is be a television commentator for me and provide me with media advocacy.

I said, "Well, first of all, I'm with Scott Walker because Reince Priebus put me with him, the former governor of Wisconsin. Yeah, he'll never make it. He'll never make it." I said, "Yeah, but then all of my colleagues and friends are with Jeb Bush. I'm with Scott because I'm trying to help out the RNC." I said, "But then I'm going over to Jeb Bush. Don't you think he has low energy?"

I said, "No, I actually don't think he has low energy. I think he's a great guy and he made a great governor. I'm going to knock him out of the race." Okay, I understand that. I respect your loyalty. You were with Mitt and he said some derogatory things about Mitt. Then he turned to me and said, "Let's shake hands. If those guys leave the race, you'll come work for me." So fascinating. I said, "Yes." I leaned over. I shook his hand and yes, his hands are quite small. I got up. I walked out of the room.

And I said to my staff, I said, this nut is actually going to run for president. Okay. I really believed it at that time. Fast forward. It's now June. I'm getting a call from his office. They've got placards that they've sent to me. Okay. And this, you know, stand with Trump, make America great again. They've sent these cardboard placards to me. And they said, come to this rally at Trump Tower in the lower lobby, come down the escalator, and he's going to announce that he's running for president.

I'm like, "I don't have time for this shit. I'm not doing it." So I said a couple of my colleagues over there. Okay. They go over there, Caddy.

Paid actors in the room. Paid actors in the room. This is 16th of June, 2015, about three months after you'd had that meeting with Donald Trump. Correct. And I remember being on air that day and reporting on this because Donald Trump was a phenomenon. None of us really took him seriously, but I, on the BBC, we covered this announcement live. He comes down the escalator with Melania, who's looking a million dollars. I still remember that extraordinary white dress that she's wearing that kind of has a cape-like thing and there's loads of gold all over the place.

And he comes down and there's a whole bunch of people. And yes, we now know that they were paid actors. And he announces his candidacy. And I remember saying on television, this is going to be the high point of his campaign with a kind of laugh. This is not going anywhere. But he gets into the race. So now Donald Trump is in the race and he's up against quite

a lot of stiff competition. You mentioned Jeb Bush, who is the son of George H. W. Bush, brother of George W. Bush, seen actually as the most kind of serious political contender in the Bush family. He is expected to inherit the mantle. America did away with royalty a couple of hundred years ago, but still seems to like having dynasties.

And he was the governor of Florida, moderate, conventional, establishment Republican. And he was seen as the person that was going to win this primary race. He was not perhaps the most charismatic. And I think that was a problem. That's why Donald Trump called him low energy. There's a moment where he kind of gives a speech and he has to ask the audience to clap because it's one of those classic moments where you expect them to clap and they don't. So he doesn't have, he's very, very different. I mean, couldn't be more different from Donald Trump.

But he's part of this rather, what's seen as a pretty stellar group of Republicans. You've got Jeb Bush, you've got Marco Rubio, who was the son of a Cuban immigrant. He was a senator from Florida. People thought he could be a real challenger for the campaign because- Not to interrupt you, but Jeb Bush mentored Marco Rubio. They're both from Florida. And the Bush people are super mad at Marco Rubio because they say, hey, it's not your time. Stand down, let Jeb do this, but keep going. And they were both-

classic Republicans in the sense of being fiscal hawks, being pro-intervention around the world. They saw America as a kind of global leader, very different in their style. I interviewed him down in Florida when he first ran for the Senate. And I remember you could tell that guy was ambitious.

He wasn't even a senator yet. It was his very first run for senator. And I asked him back then in 2012, am I sitting in the car with the future candidate for the presidency of the United States on the Republican side? And he said, no, no, no, no, no. Of course, no, I'm running to be senator of the great state of Florida. But of course, then he runs. And then there is the person who you've already mentioned, who is Ted Cruz, who is seen as the more radical candidate. So tell us a little bit about

Ted Cruz. Ted Cruz is a conservative rabble rouser, young at the time. He's a little older now. It's 10 years later, but he's

He's a rabble rouser in Texas. He's a Tea Party-like person. And so this took place during the Obama administration. People had this right-wing reaction to some of Obama's policies, and they called themselves the Tea Party, meaning they were going to metaphorically throw the tea overboard like they did in Boston Harbor and revolt against the different policies of Barack Obama. And so Ted Cruz is a champion of the Tea Party, which ultimately becomes a precursor

and evolves into what's called the MAGA movement, the Make America Great Again movement. But what's interesting about Ted Cruz, he went to Harvard Law School. I'm class of 89 from Harvard Law School. He's class of 94. He's a Princeton graduate. So you want to talk about upper crust elitism, Princeton, Harvard, you're not going to get more upper crust or elite than that. But yet he's trying to position himself as this populist leader and

to curry favor. Why is he doing that? He tells people quietly, I don't really believe a lot of this bullshit. I'm doing it because this is the fastest track to get ahead in the Republican Party. If I sound like Romney or Jeb Bush, the garden variety Republican, I'm going nowhere fast in a lockstep fashion. But I can break out by being ideologically more radical. His professors,

at Harvard, whether it was Alan Dershowitz or others, all say the same thing. Moderate guy, very smart guy, but he's now radicalized himself in the Republican Party to get ahead. He's going to now run for president. He gets a lot of money behind him, a lot of good backing. Kellyanne Conway, by the way, is working for him. I'm on the Scott Walker campaign. He's a Midwestern governor. Scott Walker tells me after Donald Trump's announcement, boy, this is going to be fun.

And every single one of those garden variety politicians thinks this is a publicity stunt. Trump is going to flame out. Trump is going to withdraw from the race. They do not. And I want to repeat this with triple emphasis. They do not take him seriously. They do not plan any type of counterattack to Mr. Trump.

There's a couple of other names quickly that we should mention. One is Rand Paul. He was the kind of antithesis on foreign policy, didn't want any kind of involvement in foreign policy. Chris Christie, your friend, the governor of New Jersey who was running. I remember saying about Chris Christie at the time, watch Chris Christie because American politics in the last term of Barack Obama had become dysfunctional.

The country was basically ungovernable. You had divided government. Barack Obama couldn't get anything done. He couldn't get through the Republicans in Congress. And I remember saying on air, Chris Christie is interesting because America needs a bully. At the moment, maybe what we need is somebody who can come in a bit like

LBJ, bang heads together in Congress and force through legislation because nothing was getting done. The last person we should mention is Ben Carson, African-American, the only African-American in the race, neurosurgeon, sort of pretty soft-spoken but

kind of wacky in some of his views. The reason I mentioned Ben Carson is because he once said on national television that I should have my microphone shut off. I was interviewing him and I was asking him about the allegations from various women of harassment against Donald Trump. And he said, shut that woman's microphone off and to,

MSNBC's credit, Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough said, "No, we're not shutting anyone's microphone off." And we carried on with the interview. So not a lot of love between me and Ben Carson. Can I just ask a personal question? Yes. Is that the first time that you've had your microphone suggested to be shut off? Yeah. First and only time. Actually, the only other person who suggested this was John McCain, interestingly,

after the 2008 election, I was interviewing him on television and I was making the point that Sarah Palin, his vice presidential pick, had lost him votes. And he at that point said, I should be fired for

for propagating lies. Actually, I was right. The polls were there. They did show that Sarah Palin had lost in votes, but he's the only other person that turned against. It's always men who decide, powerful men decide they don't like women asking them tough questions is my experience of politics. I think we got to do a DNA test of Katty Kay. I actually think you're more Italian than I originally thought of you.

Do you know, Katty Kay, do you know what Italian Alzheimer's is? No. We forget everything but the grudges, Katty Kay. Everything but the grudges, okay? I just love the fact that you know this stuff off the top of your head. I remember this stuff. So we have the presidential field. We know who all of the candidates are. And at this point, I think it's worth asking who Donald Trump is as an individual, whether he really thinks he's going to run. He was seen, as you said earlier, he was seen as an experienced, successful businessman, and...

As a showman, I think he embodied this kind of American idea that anybody can be anything. Of course, he'd actually inherited a lot of his money from his dad, Fred, as you said. But it was this idea that you didn't have to be somebody who'd run for the Senate or somebody who'd run for the governor. You can just jump in and run for American politics and go straight for the presidency. There was nothing stopping him from doing that.

And I think that was what made him kind of fascinating and interesting. It was also why we all dismissed him because we assumed you had to have run for governor and Senate. But he was an outsider who wasn't locked into the swamp. He wasn't part of Washington. And I think that people at that moment, because of what I was saying about America being kind of dysfunctional and ungovernable, people were really fed up of Washington in the way that

around Brexit in the UK, they were fed up with Brussels. Here, they were fed up with Washington. And Donald Trump was not like Washington. But he also had, I mean, you know this, he had this very charismatic personality. Let me push you for a second. Why were they fed up? Because I honestly, I didn't understand it in 2015. And I've obviously been made aware of it now. But why, in your mind, were they fed up? I think they were fed up because they saw...

All of these politicians who spend half of their time raising campaign funds, not actually working for the American public and literally not getting anything done. Remember, the government had been shut down because the Republicans had refused to allow the budget, which meant that tons of federal workers weren't getting their pay. Washington looked like a mess.

which it was. And it also critically looked like it wasn't working for the American public. And it was caught up in these dynasties, the Bushes, the Clintons. If Bush had won the nomination, if Jeb Bush, who you were working for, had won the nomination in 2016,

The election would have been Bush v. Clinton, exactly the same as 1992, Bill Clinton versus George Herbert Walker Bush. And I think people felt there were these entitled, privileged politicians who

It was all the same, the same policies, and it wasn't getting the American public anywhere. And I know it's still eight years after the 2008 crash, but Americans are still hurting. I want to make an observation, and I want you to, based on your life experience here in America...

to analyze what I'm about to say. Here's the observation. Ross Perot wins 19.9% of the vote, and this is unheard of. As an independent candidate. As an independent candidate, it's Bill Clinton, George Herbert Walker Bush, and Ross Perot. Bill Clinton goes on to win the presidency with 43% of the popular vote. He gets the Electoral College victory with

But he's under 50%. He doesn't have a mandate because of what happened with Ross Perot. The Democratic and the Republican Party panic. They say, oh my God, we're in this duopoly. We can't have a third party come in here. We'll lose our political standing.

So they start to make legal moves to preserve their duopoly. They expand the petition number that you need to get on a ballot in a state. They do all of these different various protocols and procedures that become very expensive for third party candidates. They also create a very wide berth.

a wide berth of gerrymandering. We've talked about this on the Restless Politics US podcast, but if you're in a certain district, you screen out your enemies and you allow your friends into the district and you redistrict. These districts, Cady, used to look like geometric shapes that we could recognize from ninth grade geometry. They now look like jigsaw puzzles.

All of this causes a sclerosis at the top. The Nancy Pelosi's could stay in power for 40 plus years. Chuck Rangel, I guess he's been in power for 700 years. They just stay in power in perpetuity. And this is exhausting the American public. We have an approval rating for the US Congress at 14%.

Yet 98% of the incumbents get reelected. And so from a consumer perspective, you're getting a one-star rating on Yelp, but yet the food is still being delivered from the restaurant to your local doorstep. And this is frustrating the American people in an untold way. And I predict if they don't make reform for this, this is going to be a bigger recipe for a nightmare later. And by the way, it takes 24 years.

You go from 1992 to 2016.

and you now have somebody coming in who's a third party-esque sort of a candidate, but he has to hijack one of the two parties. And that's the most fascinating thing about it. He's not a Republican. He's Trump with Trumpism, but he's now got to implore and impose Trumpism on one of those two parties. Okay. So with Trump up and running in the campaign, we're going to take a quick break. And when we return, we're going to look at that race.

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Welcome back to our special series on how Trump won the White House. In this half, we're going to look at how he captures the nomination,

despite all of us thinking he was never going to do it. And I think an important thing as we head into that first debate to remember is that there were so many moments where Donald Trump did things, said things, performed in a way that we in the press thought would automatically disqualify him. And he's heading into that August debate up in Cleveland, Ohio. You were there, Anthony. I was there on the other side covering it.

And in our minds, we were remembering that just a couple of weeks beforehand, he had insulted John McCain. Senator John McCain of Arizona, a national hero who was captured in Vietnam, held prisoner in Vietnam and refused to be released until all of those...

American soldiers who had been captured before him were released and he comes back with an injury. And Donald Trump in an interview on the 18th of July, 2015 says, he's not a war hero. He's a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren't captured, okay? I hate to tell you that. It's such a kind of crystallizing moment because it was a moment nobody said that stuff.

We assumed that was it. Donald Trump's campaign was over. You cannot insult a war hero. And so we went into that debate in Cleveland already aware of the bombastic polarizing nature of his candidacy and assuming, I remember going there and assuming Donald Trump's going to blow up.

in this debate. He's up against all these regular politicians. He's up against Jeb Bush, the governor of Florida. He's up against Marco Rubio, the senator from Florida. He's up against these people who are real pros. So we go into that debate. I went into that debate assuming he was going to blow up his candidacy again. So give us from your perspective, from behind the scenes, Anthony, what the campaign was saying. Did they think he could win? Did they think he could win that debate and how he was going to handle it? And did he prep at all?

So, Katty, with the benefit of hindsight, what we didn't understand at the time is that the norms were breaking down in the world of politics. So everybody is so frustrated in America now that they want to change in the rhythm and the symphony of politics.

This is a guy that's coming in with cymbals and he's crashing into the music and he's banging into the drum and smashing the piano keys. And people are intrigued. They're like, yes, that's what we need. We need somebody to come in. The current system that got established in 1992 is not working for us. We need somebody to come in and crash the system. So if he's going to break norms, he's going to ridicule war veterans, he's going to say misogynistic things, I'm okay with it.

And we didn't know that at the time. So when he was doing this, guys like Scott Walker say, well, that's going to finish him. Jeb Bush, okay, well, that's going to finish him. And interestingly enough, they could have strangled his candidacy in the cradle. They could have run opposition research ads on him. They could have done a ton of work on all of the defilement in his background, the bankruptcies, et cetera. Every single candidate to a person decides not to do that. Because they didn't see him as a threat.

Correct. Exactly right. They don't see him as a threat, but he is the golem. He is the ghost. He's the golem in the room that's about to wreck their careers. That debate happens August of 2015. We're at that first debate in Cleveland and he goes up on stage and in a classic

Republican debate, you expect the candidates to talk about policy and their experience with policy and governing, which is partly why we didn't think Donald Trump was going to do very well. And he doesn't really talk about anything of that, but he completely dominates the first debate right from the beginning. What are you thinking as you're watching him on stage with all of those other Republican candidates? How are you thinking it's going? I'm thinking it's going, he's a complete asshole.

and he's done a good job of getting a lot of attention for himself, but by September, he'll be out of the race. So that's how stupid I am and that's how much I got it wrong. And the thing he says to Megyn Kelly is so ridiculous. I'm like, if I was Megyn Kelly's brother, I would have smacked him across the face. What are you talking about? You know what I mean? You don't talk like that. Megyn Kelly is the Fox News anchor who is moderating this debate and she lobs him a very tough question on women. You've said that they're slobs. You've said that they're fat.

Why should women vote for you? And then after the debate, he says, he attacks Megyn Kelly and says, You know, you could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever. And again, it's another of those moments where you think,

A politician can't say this. It's a bit like where he makes immigration such a key issue, but he talks about it in these very extreme ways. Remember, as he announced, he called the people coming across the border, the Mexicans coming across the border, rapists and criminals. And now he calls for 11 million undocumented Hispanics

to be thrown out of the country and floats the idea of building a wall. And again, it's extreme and it's out of the norm of American politics and it's very blunt. And it's another reason why we think this kind of

anti-foreigner rhetoric that he wields out at that debate and then later, and it's part of the reason we all thought he wasn't going to win. So fascinating stuff. And let me give you a little bit of backstory because I'm at the time, I'm working on Scott Walker's campaign, but I'm also the host of Wall Street Week for the Fox Business Channel.

which is affiliated with Fox News, which is a right-leaning station, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch. And Mr. Murdoch's company is right-leaning. And there's a gentleman working for him that's running Fox News by the name of Roger Ailes. He's a very famous...

political aficionado, political strategist. He coached Ronald Reagan in the debates. He coached Richard Nixon. He goes way back in the Republican Party. He absolutely hates Donald Trump and everything that Donald Trump stands for. And he's coaching Megyn Kelly. And he gives Megyn Kelly that question. He tells Megyn Kelly, I want you to blow up Donald Trump.

in this first debate. And I want you to ask him this type of a question about what a misogynist he is and what a he-man over masculine hater of women. And so Megan delivers the exact question that Roger writes for her. And Trump says, that's not true. I only said that about Rosie O'Donnell. And everyone is so stunned by that.

The TV, so everyone's so stunned by that. Because remember, he had a lawsuit and a fight with her. Everybody's stunned by that. There's a cascade over the arena. And I'm telling you, Katty, I watched the faces on those politicians.

They didn't know what to do. They came in with a garden variety approach. They came in with on the tip of their tongue, the bullet points related to their policies. And what they didn't understand is that Trump brought them into the entertainment industry. Yeah. They thought they were still in the political arena. Such a good point. Okay.

Okay, they thought they were still in the political arena, so they didn't understand it. And they didn't understand the language he was using because he was bringing and infusing entertainment industry antics into the political arena. And they never, they never made the adjustment. Secretary Clinton didn't make the adjustment. And they're getting slayed now.

Katty Kay and they're getting slayed starting in August of 2015. And there are a whole series of debates. My memory is there were about 12 Republican candidate debates and they were all in this similar vein. And I think as well as bringing in an entertainment fact, I mean, Trump was mesmerizing in the press. We couldn't take our eyes off him.

We gave him $4 billion, it's been estimated, of free airtime that he didn't have to pay for because he was a show. But I think the other critical thing about that first debate and then about these policies that he suggests that seem so extreme is that he never backs down.

And I think for American voters who feel they haven't been represented by their politicians in Washington, that debate and the way he doesn't apologize for the way he responds to Megyn Kelly suggests to them that he is a fighter. And if he's going to fight like that and never apologize, he's going to fight for them.

So it was a show and he produces himself as a fighter. And then of course, he takes this again, he takes his sort of anti-foreign rhetoric coming out of those debates and he's starting to build these lines about build the wall, anti-immigration. We saw it on his announcement and it becomes a central part of his campaign. And it leads up to the 7th of December, 2015, when Donald Trump

following a terrorist attack in California, announces that he is going to have a Muslim ban. And he calls for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the USA. And it was widely criticized from the people he was running against and from the kind of grandies in the party, widely criticized in the press,

But what we didn't realize was that that Muslim ban was going to get him a lot of support with the American people. There was an ABC poll came out shortly after it was announced, 59% of primary voters agreed with that plan. So there was, again, this disconnect between Donald Trump, the candidate, the style of the candidate, what we thought of as kind of a buffoon, the

extreme policies that he was suggesting and what the American public was actually thinking about him. And he continues to make these, what are seen as outrageous kind of statements outside of the norm of the Republican Party. And yet you were watching and his poll numbers were increasing, Anthony. Month by month, poll that comes out, poll that comes out, Donald Trump is winning votes.

and winning support. I think this is super important for me, so I have to express it in this series. If I say the year 1620 to you, what is 1620?

Okay. So you're a Brit, so you don't know what 1620 is. 1620 is the chisel on Plymouth Rock. So the Mayflower arrives in what is ultimately Massachusetts and they chisel 1620. So if you got here in 1620, right? We have a version of our aristocracy caddy. If you got here at 1620, you're pure.

You're the American. You're the Anglo-Saxon European American. Somehow we forget all of the Native Americans that were here before us. We could do a whole series on what the hell really happened, which doesn't reflect well on the United States. But here we are. You get here in 1620. And from that day forward, even though these people are leaving religious persecution in Europe and they want freedom of religion, if you get here after 1620, you're a foreigner.

Go back to the country you came from. We're the nativists. We're the guys here, right? Martin Scorsese did a brilliant film about this. The Irish show up. The Protestants don't like the Irish. They're fighting in New York. The Italians show up. The Protestants and the Irish don't like the Italians. They're fighting in New York. The Italians are trying to assimilate. And the Hispanics show up.

And so we've had waves and waves of immigration and every single group of immigrants that gets to the shores of the United States is met with a form of American nativism. I'm here before you, you suck, get out of the country, go home, you're not welcome here.

Now, there's a portion of the population from inception, 1620, that have believed this caddy. Okay? And they push it. In the 1930s, there was a gentleman by the name of Charles Lindbergh, a very famous aviator, first to traverse the Atlantic Ocean, landing in Paris.

He's an American hero. He's a Michael Jordan of his time, but he's also an American nativist. He wants to create a Nazi party in the United States. There's Father Coughlin. He has a radio show. He's a Roman Catholic priest, but he's an American nativist. There's Huey Long, the great populist from Louisiana. And so the first America First movement is get the foreigners out,

Only purebred Americans can be here, and we want to have isolationist policies away from the rest of the world. Why is this important? Up against that, there's a group of progressive oriented people that like the immigration. And we also look at the economics of the immigration, and the immigration is working. In 2012, and you and I have talked about this, we lose, Governor Romney loses to

Barack Obama. And we put together a pamphlet that says we have to be more open to immigration. But here is the last white hope. He's actually orange, but he's a white hope for white people. He comes into the race and he says, scrap that nonsense about opening the door. I'm going to be the last white hope. I'm going to be the last gasp of America first. I'm

nativism that dates back to 1620. Keep the foreigners out of here. I'm going to have an anti-foreign, anti-Muslim, laced with racism message. And I'm banging the drum. Are you white people with me? Yes or no. And astonishingly, they are. And they're moving towards him in a way from the garden variety candidates. So let's talk a little bit then about his relationship with Jeb Bush, who you had worked with beforehand because-

This is the point at the end of 2015 where

just before we get into those very first votes that are going to be cast in the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primaries, where the relationship between Jeb Bush and Donald Trump comes to a head. And Donald Trump tweets out, Jeb Bush has to like the Mexican illegals because of his wife, who is of Mexican origin. And they get into the 15th of December debate in Las Vegas, and Jeb Bush says,

tries to round on Donald Trump. He calls him unhinged. He calls him a chaos candidate.

And it doesn't work because Jeb Bush isn't like Donald Trump. And I think we see that throughout these debates when the candidates try to beat Donald Trump at his own game, they fail to do it because it's not authentic to them. I think his relationship with Jeb is interesting. You mentioned that he calls him a low energy candidate.

And Jeb had been the one we all expected to win. But Donald Trump in that debate walks all over him. He tries to push back against the Muslim ban, to push back against this nativism that you're talking about. But Donald Trump kind of turns it against him. Oh, I know you're a tough guy, Jeb. And we need to have a leader that is real tough. You're never going to be president of the United States by insulting your way to the presidency. Let's see, I'm at 42 and you're at three. So so far I'm doing better. Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter.

It kind of marked for me the beginning of the end of Jeb Bush's candidacy. But again, that style, none of those candidates can handle it. Okay. And in hindsight, had they practiced what Joe Biden did in 2020, they would have had a better chance against them. But remember about our political system here in the United States.

It's the surfer, it's the surfboard, their platform, and it's the wave coming in from the ocean. And Donald Trump is surfing an anti-immigration, a problem at the border, surfing for a change in the system. None of these other politicians have that. The voters are responding, particularly primary voters. Now, it's important for viewers and listeners outside the United States. Primary voters have a tendency to be more extreme because they have more of an interest in politics. So they show up.

And Trump is playing to those people very successfully. And a lot of people would say to you that Jeb mishandled it, but I don't think Jeb could have done any more than he did. There's an expression, you can't put into somebody what God left out. He doesn't have the bullying. You can't put it in. He left it on the field. God bless Jeb.

So we come out of that debate between Jeb and Donald Trump, and Jeb hasn't performed so well. There's one more debate. Donald Trump doesn't even bother to show up to it because he's boycotting Fox News at that point. And finally, we get to February the 1st,

and American voters at last have a chance to cast their ballots in what is the Iowa caucuses. Iowa is the first in the nation to vote in these primaries. It is cold as hell. You have to be very dedicated to turn up to the Iowa caucuses because it's a long process. You're not just casting a ballot. You actually have to stand around in a hall gym. There's snow outside. These are the diehard people.

Ted Cruz has spent an enormous amount of time trying to win Iowa. He's basically lived in Iowa. He visits all 99 counties famously, and he thinks that his brand of conservatism is going to suit this state. It's worth mentioning Iowa, not at all a diverse state, pretty Christian, religiously conservative.

It's not particularly representative of the rest of the United States. And it has this kind of, they like to say, Midwest nice. People in Iowa are very nice. I've gone up there every four years. I go there for the primaries. People could not be nicer. And the feeling is that Donald Trump is not going to fit Iowa very well. It's not his kind of character. We go to that night. It's the very first caucuses and people,

Cruz wins it with 27% of the vote, but Donald Trump is not far behind. He gets 24% of the vote. And a week later, just one week later, he goes into the New Hampshire primaries, totally different state, much more independently minded.

And he goes into that primary and somehow he turns around the Iowa loss and manages to come out on top in New Hampshire. And I imagine, Anthony, that somebody got in his ear and said, listen, you didn't really invest in Iowa. You didn't play it the way you needed to. You have to win New Hampshire at this point to keep your candidacy alive. So I got to give some backstory here, if you don't mind. He is shook up in Iowa.

He's not used to losing. Not used to losing. He shook up in Iowa. Yeah.

He gives a concession speech and then he does something that he never does. He flies directly to New Hampshire and he stays in a hotel. And this is a weird thing about Trump. So hear me out for a second. He hated that. Trump would go to Michigan. He would fly all the way back to LaGuardia and he would sleep at Trump Tower. Then we'd start the next day. We'd fly all the way back to Michigan, all the way back to Wisconsin, all the way back to Pennsylvania. He did not like sleeping in hotels there.

He's got a little bit of OCD. He's a little bit of a germaphobe, but he does something he doesn't like doing. He flies directly to New Hampshire and he stays in a hotel because he knows he's got a week to win New Hampshire. And then he drops a bomb. And it's absolute political genius and it's totally unorthodox. He's a

He gets to the microphones and people are expecting a conciliatory and a contrite Donald Trump. And he comes out on full blast and he says, and I repeat, God damn Ted Cruz, he stole the election. He stole the election in Iowa. Crooked Ted Cruz, lying Ted Cruz.

And everyone's aghast. They were expecting him to be conciliatory. And he's on the offense and he flips the script on Ted Cruz. And Ted Cruz is muttering to himself. He's saying, that son of a bitch, I'm supposed to be here regaling in my victory. And now I'm going to regale in my victory here in New Hampshire, but I'm not doing that. I'm now on the defensive.

Every journalist is putting a microphone in my face saying, Ted Cruz, did you steal the election from Donald J. Trump? And he can't articulate his messaging. He can't articulate his bullet points. He can't frame himself as the winner of Iowa. It is a ridiculous thing for Ted Cruz.

It absorbs his entire campaign. It saps all of his energy, and he gets his ass kicked by Donald Trump. And that is the first time that Donald Trump raises this idea of stolen elections. And we all know then what happens in 2020. And I...

I suspect in 2024, he is already floating the idea that if he loses, it will be because the election was stolen. And if you want to go back to the origin story of that, it's just what you were saying, Anthony, it's going back to the Iowa caucuses in 2016, 11 days after New Hampshire happened.

It's the South Carolina primary. So I want to interject this. So, so, Cady, it's important to bring up Corey Lemondowski in this story. He's back on the Trump campaign now in 2024, but he is the campaign manager in 2016. And he's a New Hampshire native. And he flies with Mr. Trump from Iowa to New Hampshire. And he tells him on the campaign plane, sir.

please listen to me. This is what we have to do. These are the people we have to meet in the state. These are the people on the Republican side that are going to bring out the votes for you, but you have to listen to me. This is my home state. I know the state like the back of my hand. And this is something about Donald Trump. He never listens to anybody.

But when he's in a corner and he's now lost an election, he's lost the primary, he listens to Corey and he goes through every single thing that Corey wants him to do on a checklist. It turns out to be very successful for him. But it's important to say something to you. I want to share this because it's bittersweet for me.

Jeb is losing. He's got one last stand in South Carolina. He brings his brother to South Carolina, who was very popular there. Remember, he won in 2000 against John McCain in South Carolina. Polls aren't moving. He brings his mother, Katty. He brings Barbara Bush, who's loved by everybody, 100% name recognition, 90% approval rating with Republicans. He brings

He brings her, doesn't move the polls, and he's got to drop out of the race after the South Carolina primary. Which really leaves Marco Rubio, the senator from Florida, as the establishment candidate. And the debates between Trump and Rubio, because the debates are continuing all the time while people are voting in these primaries, start to get pretty heated. Trump famously calls

Rubio little Marco, he's not terribly tall. He makes fun of him for sweating, for wearing makeup. He calls Rubio nervous basket case. And Rubio tries to fire back. And it's very clear to us covering this election that there is a moment where

where Rubio decides that he needs to, he's got to do something to change the dynamic. He's got to do something to attack Trump. So he decides to try and play Trump at his own game. And after the debate, he returns fire and he calls Trump a con man. But it doesn't really work because like you just said about Jeb Bush, he doesn't have that in him. You can't put into him what he doesn't have.

And trying to out-Trump Trump is not something that is going to work terribly well. We get to Super Tuesday. Super Tuesday is when there are 11 primaries. It's the 1st of March. Trump is ahead. Again, he runs away with this incredibly important contest because at this point, you're really racking up those delegates.

the people who are going to give you the nomination at the Republican National Convention in the summer. Trump is doing super well. He runs away with Super Tuesday. He wins seven out of the 11 primaries. Marco Rubio only gets one of them. Ted Cruz gets three. And two weeks later,

Rubio loses his own state in the primary in Florida. I was down there on that day and we all realized that was it. If you can't win your own state in American politics, you haven't got a chance. And in a way, the sort of tragedy of Marco Rubio, I think,

is that he so sullied himself at the end of that campaign by trying to be Donald Trump that he could have gone out with his kind of dignity and respect from a lot of people who saw him as a very talented politician who was very focused on American foreign policy. And because he kind of went low when Donald Trump went low but didn't do it particularly well, he drops out of the race on March the 15th

with his reputation kind of in tatters. And it's such an important moment because Donald Trump has now defeated the Republican establishment. Remember at the beginning of this half, we ran through the candidates. You have the Republican stalwarts who represent Republican policies, who is seen as the establishment. And now 15th of March, the Florida primary, Donald Trump, like a dragon slayer, has come in and defeated the establishment. And I think

Ted Cruz, who is left in the race.

is also in the kind of Donald Trump mode, remember? He's trying to play the populist card as well. But that's it. At this point, my feeling was Donald Trump had taken over the Republican Party. Was that a moment for you? Did you think that was what was happening? I do think that's exactly what's happening. It's very well said and well analyzed. I just want to add two quick things. The mistake Rubio makes, he's talking about his hands, his orange war paint. There's an expression, you don't fight with the pig. The farmer always gets beat up. The pig likes the mud.

Rubio goes into the mud. It's a very bad strategy for a young politician. Second thing that happens, I think is very important, is Chris Christie blows Rubio out of the water. It's January, third week in January, or the fourth week in January. It's right before Super Bowl Sunday. It's a Saturday night. I'm in San Francisco because I'm going to the Super Bowl the next day, and I'm watching Chris Christie say, there you go,

There's the robotic Rubio with the same sound bites over and over again, same talking bites, no authenticity. It really weakens Rubio. And then contemporaneous to that, right after the debate, Chris Christie says, I'm losing, I'm out of here, and I'm going to endorse Donald J. Trump. And Christie correctly sizes the moment, whether you agree with it or not, that Donald Trump is going to be the nominee.

I want to get there before everybody else. He endorses him. This puts lots of pressure on Rubio, lots of pressure on Cruz. It's unexpected. And Governor Christie is roundly criticized for it. But it was good political instincts at that time, Kat. Yeah, because he gets Rubio out of the race. And then it ends up being Donald Trump-

And Cruz and the two have had a kind of truce on the debate stage up until this point. They haven't really attacked each other. But now Cruz decides that he has to try and get the anti-Trump vote. He's the only one really left standing of any significance, and he's got to try and stand up to him. So he attacks Donald Trump. He calls him amoral.

and he says that morality doesn't exist for him. Trump returns with another nickname calling him "Lying Ted."

And at this point, Trump has criticized Ted Cruz's wife. He has said that Ted Cruz's dad was somehow tied up in the murder of JFK. And Cruz is trying to hit back, but none of it is really working. He doesn't manage to mount a kind of stop Trump moment. It's probably too late.

If Ted Cruz had done this right from the beginning and there had not been so many candidates in the field, it's possible that it might have worked, but it doesn't. And on the 3rd of May, Donald Trump wins the Indiana primary. Ted Cruz drops out of the race and Trump wins.

The most improbable candidate in modern American history is now the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party, having captured what we all understood to be the traditional Republican Party. He has ripped up the rule book, turned the party on its head, and he is now the candidate for the Republican Party. But he's already very polarizing.

He's already shown who he is in terms of policies, in terms of the way he campaigns. And the polls are suggesting that his unfavorables, although they have voted for him, although Republican primary voters have put him in the position to be the candidate, there are an awful lot of Americans who

who don't like his character and don't like the way that he is a polarizing figure. And that will play into the rest of the election campaign. And by this stage, Anthony, you have joined the race. I have made the fateful decision. So he has called me and he has said to me, hey, you said that when Bush came out of the race, you'd want to join me. It looks like I'm going to be the nominee.

He now switches up his story, says, I need help with the fundraising. And at that time, I had a pretty decent reputation as a fundraiser. And so I agree to go back to Trump Tower. And I come with a PowerPoint presentation and I bring the former senator from Massachusetts,

Scott Brown, you may remember him. He beat Martha Coakley. He replaced Ted Kennedy in the Senate and voted down the Obamacare legislation. And Scott and I were at university together, and I invite him to join me for the meeting. And it's three lunatics, Scott Brown, myself, and Donald Trump at the 26th floor of Trump Tower discussing how we're going to help then candidate Mr. Trump.

So how does this polarizing figure with his campaign team plan to win the White House? Join us next week on Monday on The Rest Is Politics US to find out that part of the story. But if you can't wait, you can sign up now to our brand new membership club on TheRestIsPoliticsUS.com to get access to all of the episodes online.

ad-free right now if you want to get more on how this extraordinary story, the most extraordinary election in American politics, how it unfolds. Okay, great. And we'll see you next time on the new episode of The Rest is Politics U.S.