Rick Wilson - Everything Trump Touches Dies: A Republican Strategist Gets Real About the Worst President Ever

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Copyright 2018 by Rick Wilson

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Free Press Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Free Press hardcover edition August 2018

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Interior design by Paul Dippolito

Jacket design by Oliver Munday

Jacket photograph by Saul Loeb / Getty Images

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 978-1-9821-0312-5

ISBN 978-1-9821-0315-6 (ebook)

To Molly, Nora, and Andrew, who took even the toughest of the last three years with grace, humor, encouragement, great editing, and love. Team Wilson, ride or die.

Everything Trump Touches Dies

IF YOURE LIKE ME, THE Trump presidency has turned you into a light sleeper.

Admit it. Some nights, when the world is quiet but your mind is racing, you check Twitter to see if hes started a nuclear war. Each morning, strung out from the fever dreams of Donald Trump and Steve Bannon performing a nude interpretive dance of Stephen Millers Triumph of the Wall, you wake up wondering if todays the day hes seen wandering naked on the White House lawn, screaming at clouds.

Come on. You know youve done it.

Its because youre struggling, like the vast majority of Americans, with the fact that our terrible, sloppy, shambolic president may just be insane. Not Haha, hes so crazy or Hes pretending to be crazy, but its actually 87-dimensional quantum chess crazy, but legitimately, clinically insane. Id have to look up the DSM-V category to be more precise, but the term of psychiatric art Im looking for is shithouse-rat crazy.

Is crazy too strong a term? Perhaps instead youd like to argue that a man with Donald Trumps dignity, stature, resolute self-control, deep erudition, and modesty presents as a perfectly rational national leader in every way. In that case, youd be correct if the nation in question is some third-world hellholepardon me, I meant to use the new term of art, shitholeruled by a President for Life with a penchant for elaborate military uniforms, missile parades, a high comfort level with endemic corruption, relatives installed in positions of power, and a rumored taste for human flesh.

Donald Trump, the avatar of our worst instincts and darkest desires as a nation, sits in the Oval Office. I did what I could to stop it. Ive watched the stalwarts of the Republican Party and the conservative movement slip into the sewage tank of nationalist populism with barely a ripple.

We failed to stop Trump in 2016, but that doesnt mean Im going to sit by as the Nickelback of presidents wrecks my country. Im not going to buy into But Gorsuch and But executive orders as a pale substitute for character, conservative governance, legislative accomplishments, and principle. Donald Trump is an objectively terrible president, in every sense of the word.

So how the hell did I get here?

As a rock-solid Republican Party guy stretching all the way back to the 1988 presidential campaign of George H. W. Bush, Ive worked to elect Republicans and conservatives all over the country. I helped put a lot of them in office in red, purple, and blue states and districts, in races from the presidency on down.

Im one of a handful of people your candidate or SuperPAC calls when its time to drop the big, nasty negative ads, and I have a thick enough skin to take the criticism on behalf of the candidate once those ads are hitting the target. Im the creator of some pretty famousinfamous if youre a Democrat or Roy Mooreattack ads. Youve read and heard my work in speeches under the bylines of members of Congress, governors, and CEOs. Ive run ads across the proverbial fruited plain.

After 2016, though, Ive had a kind of political midlife change. No, I didnt get a 25-year-old girlfriend, a sports car, or a hair transplant.

When Trump slithered down the golden escalator in his eponymous tower in 2015, I felt bile rising in my throat. This guy? This jackass? I was quite sure nothing had changed about his blustering ego, fever-swamp birtherism, and con-artist modus operandi. Given the ideological underpinnings of Trumpismslurry of barely coherent nationalism, third-world generalissimo swagger, and the worst economic ideas of the 19th centuryI recognized he was an existential risk to the country, win or lose.

I had met Trump a handful of times. The first time was during Rudy Giulianis 1997 reelection campaign for mayor of New York when my then-business partner and I were producing Giulianis television ads. Trump later agreed to appear in a tourism film for the City of New York we shot. The general view inside Rudy World seemed to be that Trump was a loudmouth and a jackass, but enough of a City player to throw him the occasional favor. The next time was at a wedding at Mar-a-Lago for a mutual friend. Ironically the best man at that wedding was the governor of Florida at the time, one John Ellis Bush.

The last time Id seen Trump in person was 15 years before while filming a gag bit for New York Citys Inner Circle, where Trump motorboated Giulianis fake breasts while the mayor was in his drag persona, Rudia. If you havent seen it, dont Google it. If you have, I am deeply sorry. Its scarring. If youre looking for nightmare fuel, a pompous, bloated, and bewigged Trump kissing Drag Giuliani is the high-octane version.

Contrary to what Breitbart or Fox or Rush Limbaugh will tell you, I dont oppose Trump because Im a Republican-in-Name-Only. I oppose Trump from the right, not the left, and as a constitutionalist, not as a globalist Soros neocon shill out to impose political correctness, sharia law, and full communism. Yes, I know that accusation is a roaring non sequitur, but welcome to rhetoric in the era of Trump. Their arguments are so consistently dumb, contradictory, and nonsensical that I have to believe theres a secret Word Finder App for Conservatives Who Love Donald but Arent Smart and Want to Seem Smart to Other People Who Arent Smart.