Rick Gates - Wicked Game: An Insiders Story on How Trump Won, Mueller Failed, and America Lost

A POST HILL PRESS BOOK

ISBN: 978-1-64293-792-3

ISBN (eBook): 978-1-64293-793-0

Wicked Game:

An Insiders Story on How Trump Won, Mueller Failed, and America Lost

2020 by Rick Gates

All Rights Reserved

Cover art by Cody Corcoran

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

Post Hill Press

New York Nashville

posthillpress.com

Published in the United States of America

To my wife and children, whom I adore.

CONTENTS

I t was time for Donald Trump to make his exit.

He had not only won the Indiana primary that night, but more importantly, Trumps last remaining Republican rival, Senator Ted Cruz, had bowed out.

Which meant that Donald J. Trump had just become the Republican Partys presumptive nominee in the race to become the next president of the United States.

He celebrated the victory as he always did, surrounded by the comfort and loyalty of his family, behind a modest podium, not in Indiana but in front of a crowd full of press and a few hundred well-heeled supporters in the heart of Manhattanwhere the rousing chorus of The Rolling Stones Start Me Up now echoed off the pink marble walls in the cavernous lobby of Trump Tower.

Trump had shown remarkable restraint during his victory speech that night. He didnt lob any personal attacks against Cruz. He didnt disparage the rigged primary system or the Republican establishment. He didnt say anything remarkably over-the-top about how hed beaten the entire Republican field at their own game to become the last man standing.

To the contrary, he praised Cruz as one of the toughest competitors in the field. He thanked the voters, recognizing their hard work and efforts, proudly stating that [w]e won with women, we won with men, we won with Hispanics, we won with African Americans, and we won with everybody. He talked about healing our divided country and how [w]e are going to love each other and [w]e are going to cherish each other.

Instead of going negative, he relished the victory and allowed the power of the moment to speak for itself.

Paul Manafort and I were beyond elated as we accompanied our candidate and his wife, Melania, on the walk from the Trump Tower hallway to the residential elevator. He moved deliberately, waving and nodding at a few people in the back of the lobby and shaking a few hands along the rope line on the way.

As we reached the elevator bank, the four of us quickly stepped in. The door closed.

There was a long silence.

Trump put his head down slightly, staring over at Melania as we rose toward his three-story penthouse on the sixty-sixth floor.

After a few seconds, Paul looked at Trump, proud that the outcome he had predicted for him in late March had now come true. Well, Donald, he said, you are now one of only two people who will become the next president of the United States.

The weight of Pauls sentence was enormous. But Trump barely glanced up.

It was the first time ever in the history of this country that a political outsider, a businessman and celebrity who had never held a political office in his life, had become the presumptive nominee from either party. I fully expected to see and hear some elation from Trump, some gratitude, some gravitas, or maybe some joy something .

Instead, Trump just nodded his head and said, Oh.

After essentially winning the biggest upset in the history of the Republican Party, disrupting the protocols and expectations of more than two hundred years of precedent in presidential politics, achieving something almost no one in Washington (or anywhere else) imagined possible, and drawing the attention of the entire world while he did it, Donald Trumps response was Oh.

On hundreds of occasions since his campaign began, Trump had defied expectations and assumptions like no one I had ever encountered. At times when I expected he might react strongly, his reactions were often measured. When something seemed insignificant, he might treat it like the most important moment in the world. Then on other occasions, he would do exactly the opposite.

The task of figuring out what made Donald Trump tick, of trying to anticipate what he might say or do, of trying to work with him while attempting to understand why he acted and reacted in the very unique ways he did, had proven to be one of the most intense and formidable challenges I had ever faced in my entire career in politics.

Yet clearly, I still had a lot to learn.

Looking back now, knowing whats happened to our country since that turning point on the night of May 3, 2016, I sometimes wonder if Trump knew . While his detractors wound up stunned and bewildered in his wake, I sometimes wonder if he knew exactly what he was doingand just how massively he was about to upend the world of politics as we knew it.

Its staggering to think about. But I wasnt the only one who had a lot more to learn.

In order to make sense of Trumphow he wins, and how he loses; how to work with him, or what its like to work against him; in order to be able to predict how he leads, where he might take us, and just where his followers might be willing to followwe all had a lot to learn.

And we still do.

Donald Trump has forever changed the political landscape of the United States of America.

He has utilized skills learned over decades in business and transformed them into political tools that have enabled him to galvanize supporters and soundly beat establishment politicians on both sides of the political aisle. And it seems no matter how hard he punchesor how hard his opponents try to knock him downhe always winds up on top.

No matter which side you happen to be on, there is one truth we all need to grasp: Donald Trump isnt going away, and the impact of his actions, his words, and his style of winning will continue to impact this countryand the worldfor decades to come, if not more.

Whether we want to understand Trump as a means to learn to survive and thrive in the world in which he operates, whether we want to reelect him or defeat him, we first have to understand him. How he got elected, how he wins, how he challenges the media and talks directly to his base in a way that no one ever thought possible; what hes thinking, what hes not thinking, how hes influenced (or not influenced) by the voices around him; why he seemingly embraces other world leaders who are enemies to the United States; what it all means to the present and future of our complex political system, and how he exposes our long-established institutions in ways that hardly anyone ever sees comingall of it matters .

Americans have largely ignored this notion of learning about Trump. His opponents have derided him. Theyve complained about him, loudly, while his supporters have rallied around him. But during the 2016 campaign and election, the Democrats and many establishment Republicans alike refused to acknowledge Trumps strengths and instead determined that he was not going to be around politics long enough to care.

That attitude was a mistake.

The disruption that Donald Trump brought to Washington exposed and amplified everything that is wrong with our political system, in all of its divisiveness, on both sides. And that amplification has now spilled over into our justice system, and our media, and into the social and financial fabric of our everyday lives to the point where nearly everything we cherish as a nation is fraught with tension, dysfunction, division, and in some cases, outright hatred. We cant even talk about our political differences anymore without breaking into arguments at the family dinner table or tearing each other apart on social media. Or, in some cases, confronting each other right out in the streets.