Garrett Major - Mr. Trumps wild ride: the thrills, chills, screams, and occasional blackouts of an extraordinary presidency

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To Lara, with whom I find grace, peace and joy

Major. Fantastic. I watched you with President Obama two weeks ago. He was not thrilled. Im sure Ill be more thrilled.

Those were the first words Donald Trump spoke to me. And they should have told me so much more than they did.

At the time, they told me nothing. I was surprised by what sounded like informality and an odd sense that somehow my presence at an August 2015 press conference with Trump in Birch Run, Michigan, mattered.

As for the thrill, I have been a journalist in Washington since 1990 and attended thousands of press conferences in the Capitol, in the White House briefing room and in campaign venues across the country and thrill had never been part of the politico patter. Who gets thrilled or not thrilled? Angry, sure. Evasive, of course. Bored, sometimes. But thrilled? That was a circus word. Not a campaign word.

Had I taken time to analyze that sentence, I would have learned a lot about Trump. But I didnt. I foolishly thought it was silly rhetoric from a silly reality TV celebrity running a silly campaign for the presidency.

How silly I was. How silly almost all of us were.

If I had taken the time, if I had been more curious and paid Trump more respect, I would have diagrammed that sentencein literal and psychological waysand found a trove of information. Like so much with Trump, it was all out in the open. Trump at times made it hard to listenhard to fathom him, hard to take him and his movement seriously. Experienced political reporters like me have grown accustomed to being spoken to (perhaps even stroked) in certain ways by politicians and those who serve them. By that I mean our experience left us sensitized to and desensitized by the sick pseudoscience of campaign strategy, focus groups, wedge issues, bank shots, double bank shots, feints, dog whistles, doublespeak, okeydoke and flimflammery. Trump didnt play that game. He spoke beneath voters, never down to them. He bypassed political reporters entirely and scorned the process of engagement, disarmament and flattery. When I say Trump spoke beneath his supporters I mean he met them at their level and then made them feel smarteras if what they had long been thinking was now the truth of our times. This mystified traveling reporters and enthralled Trump supporters. Trump lifted his supporters up and tossed skeptical reporters on a metaphorical pyre of their own skepticism. I dont think many of us, in the moment, saw Trump for what he was or is. We never bothered to seriously study the strutting, trumpeting id that was transforming American politics before our very eyesand paving the most improbable path to the Oval Office ever.

Ever.

If we had paid closer attention to Trumpwhat he was telling us and how he was harnessing the passions of millionswe would have understood the campaign better and been less surprised. And we would have had a leg up in comprehending the chaotic maelstrom that became his first year as president.

Here is what Trump was telling meand what he was indirectly promising to bring to the presidency:

Major. Fantastic.

Of the 30 or so reporters there in Birch Run, I was the only one so regarded by Trump. I never saw him say anything like that again to another reporter. This was Trump signaling his obsession with adjectival exuberanceeven with reporters. Trumps infatuation with linguistic inflation is comically consistent. Its a window into his psychehow he craves and seeks attention, how he boasts and tries to impress and intimidate, how adjectives are frequently placeholders for thoughts. In this case, the craving revealed Trumps desperation for and delight in media affirmation. As much as he pretends to hate reporters and journalism, Trump is uncommonly addicted to publicityan affliction that followed him straight into the White House.

Whatever you think of Trump as a person or president, he is the most media-savvy political figure since Ronald Reagan. Reagan was a master of the medium of his timenetwork television. Trump is a master of the medium of hisTwitter, Facebook, Instagram and the like. The key is to use the medium to dominate the narrative and confound your opponents by forcing them to chase your story arc. Reagans stage management achieved that when network news coverage set the nations editorial and psychological tone; Trumps twitchy Twitter habits serve him much the same way now. Trump has a canny sense of the entire media universe because he has spent more than 30 years churning it. In Birch Run, Trump cared more about who was covering him than how he was being covered. As Corey Lewandowski, Trumps first of three campaign managers, told me, Trump was excited because he viewed me as a big-time network correspondent. That meant Trumps campaign was big-time now, too. Up until we saw you, we had campaign embeds [traveling producers from TV networks and cable channels] and a London correspondent from NBC [Katy Tur], Lewandowski told me. With you there that meant we were being taken seriously. Fantastic was also part of Trumps crude method of seduction. He was ladling attention on me in front of other reporters en routehe hopedto fawning coverage (we would revisit this tactic before he left Birch Run).

I watched you...

I watched. How I regret not paying more attention to I watched, the sine qua non of Trumpian interpretation. Trump watches an inordinate amount of television, or as former White House lawyer Ty Cobb told me a shitload of television. From Cobbs charitable point of view, that makes Trump a great multitasker. The first year of his presidency would be defined by the multiple tasks he set in motion and the many mistakes he committed because he watched a shitload of television. What he sees and what he watchesabout world events and himcan drive policy.

The first Syria missile strike is a classic example. The images horrified Trump. He wanted to rapidly flip the chemical weapons script inherited from President Obama. He launched Tomahawk missiles and for his first year that became a plot point illustrative of his decisive leadershipcourage in a cocoon of cable coverage. His worldview is not only shaped by TV; his judgment of and reaction to eventstrue or falseare reinforced almost entirely by TV. Trump gathers information in other ways, of course, but TV is Trump and Trump is TV. He is not as docile or as shuttered as Chance the Gardener (who becomes Chauncey Gardiner as the story continues) from the 1970 Jerzy Kosinski novel and 1979 Oscar-winning movie Being There, but there are similarities. Chance has his own simple orientation to the world and it has never evolved. Chance absorbs life largely through his relentless attention to the tube and has an oddly nimble way of cataloging its collapsed time, pulverized nuances and parade of banalities. Compared with Chauncey, Trump is louder, larger and worldly. And Trump is less kind, humble and courtly. But in terms of their inner truth and how the world is presented to themand how it mesmerizes themthe TV comparisons are valid and unnerving. Throughout, simple sentences from Chauncey, non sequiturs in most contexts, are invested with a shattering sense of common wisdom and clarity. At the end of the movie, Chauncey is whispered as a potential president and those taken in by his imagined brilliance allow themselves even to believe he can walk on water. See what I mean?