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Team of Vipers

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Team of Vipers Begin Reading Table of Contents About the Author Copyright Page Thank you for buying this St. Martin’s Press ebook. To receive special offers, bonus content, and info on new releases and other great reads, sign up for our newsletters. Or visit us online at us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy. For James Breland, my granddaddy: Like everything worthwhile I’ve ever done or ever will do, I wrote this book hoping that it will make you proud. AUTHOR’S NOTE Not long after he entered the White House in 2017, a study proclaiming Donald J. Trump the most famous person on the planet was passed around among those of us working in the West Wing. I’m not sure how scientific this study was, but it estimated that Trump might even be the most famous person in history, at least in terms of the total number of living people who knew who he was. When I mentioned this to the President, he smirked and raised his eyebrows quickly. But he didn’t say a word. The news didn’t seem to surprise him. Of course he was the most famous person on earth. After all, this is what he’d been working for all of his life. Unlike most human beings, his greatest fear wasn’t death or failure or loss. It was obscurity. If he was noticed, he mattered. And he didn’t much care if the attention was good or bad, as long as it wasn’t indifferent. Mentions in the press had long been his oxygen. Another “Page Six” scoop, another breath. A Time magazine cover, a shot of adrenaline. He spent his adult life keeping the brand going, whatever it took. He couldn’t just own a nice hotel, but the most beautiful hotel ever built. He couldn’t have a difficult divorce, but the most sensational ever to hit the tabloids. He couldn’t just have a popular TV show, it had to be the most highly rated in history. He couldn’t be a good president, he’d have to be as great—greater, even—than Lincoln. The most famous person in history? Of course he was. Donald J. Trump wouldn’t settle for anything less. It’s anyone’s guess whether Trump will be better known to history than Aristotle, Michael Jackson, or Napoleon, but one thing is certain: ever since he glided down the Trump Tower escalator and announced he was running for President of the United States in June 2015, he has been the most watched, most debated, most polarizing person in the country— probably the world. How and why we as a nation put him in office at this time in our country’s history will be questioned, studied, and debated for the rest of our lives, and probably well beyond. After spending a majority of my waking hours for nearly two years working alongside Donald Trump and his senior staff, I keep coming back to the same question: What was that all about? Which is why I wanted to write this book. For one of the most talked-about people on this planet, I have found almost everything written or said about President Trump—by sympathizers as well as critics—to fall woefully short. This is in part because Trump is almost always viewed through a distorted prism. Different people can witness the same events, hear the same words, and digest the same facts, and still walk away with dramatically different opinions on what it all meant. Those who know him best want to stay on his good side and spin all of his actions in the most positive light; it’s good business for them. The same holds true for his most bitter critics—there’s a big market for Trump hatred, too. Even the best reporters at the best media outlets are beholden to their sources, and the sources within the Trump White House are often self-serving or duplicitous. As for the most recent Trump biographies—some written by sycophants, others by haters, and even those by famous journalists: Each offers a glimpse of the real Donald Trump—the genius, the impulsive risk taker, the hothead, the insurrectionist, the hypocrite—because he can be all of these things. But none tells the full story. That is where I hope this book will be different. I want to show you the unvarnished Donald Trump, a man whose gifts and flaws are both larger than life, written by someone with an appreciation of both. You may love him; you may hate him. I’m not trying to change your mind either way. But in reading my firsthand account, I hope you will gain a deeper, more complete understanding of Trump and those of us who served him. The inner circle of Trump World was not always a pretty picture. Too often it was a portrait of venality, stubbornness, and selfishness. We leaked. We schemed. We backstabbed. Some of us told ourselves it was all done in the service of a higher calling—to protect the President, to deliver for the people. But usually it was for ourselves. Most of us came to Washington convinced of the justice of our cause and the righteousness of our principles, certain that our moral compasses were true. But proximity to power changes that. Donald Trump changes that. The once clear lines—between right and wrong, good and evil, light and darkness—were eroded until only a faint wrinkle remained. I suspect that posterity will look back on this bizarre time in history as if we were living in the pages of a Dickens novel. It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness. Some of us on both sides of that blurry divide were young, wide-eyed, and seeing the real world for the first time. Others were battle weary, watching with great cynicism the twisting of the American experiment. Those of us who were there were part of a unique moment in time when the greatest nation on earth wrestled with its better angels and its nagging demons. We will hold tight to the triumphs, lose sleep over the failures, and perhaps shed tears over what could have been. Some of us will be proud of what we did. Others will be ashamed and never speak of it again. Some will remember this as the best work we ever did. Others will wish it could all be deleted from the record. Lincoln famously had his Team of Rivals. Trump had his Team of Vipers. We served. We fought. We brought our egos. We brought our personal agendas and vendettas. We were ruthless. And some of us, I assume, were good people. I was there. This is what I saw. And, unlike the many leakers in the White House, I have put my name on it. —Cliff Sims Washington, D.C. October 2018 INTRODUCTION: ELECTION NIGHT “The peso is plummeting!” Trump exclaimed at 10:16 P.M. on Election Night, a broad smile creasing his ever-tanned face. “That’s the best news I’ve heard all day.” As we stood in the campaign war room on Trump Tower’s fourteenth floor, the global markets were reacting to a reality that the top reporters in the country and political figures on both sides of the aisle could not yet absorb: Donald J. Trump was going to be President of the United States. All the prognosticators and bloviators who’d predicted his doom were being humiliated, and he was loving every minute of it. Going into Election Day, The New York Times had given Trump a 15 percent chance of winning. If he was honest about it, Trump probably had a similar view as the night began. We all did. Those of us working on the campaign knew the momentum was with us, but it was hard to tell if the surge of support came too late. The war room, typically the campaign’s central hub of activity, was sparsely populated for most of the early evening. Then, to everyone’s surprise, Mr. Trump walked in, flanked by campaign manager Kellyanne Conway. His first comments, predictably, were about his favorite medium. “Nowhere else on earth has this many TVs where I can watch it all at once,” he smiled, pointing to the wall full of televisions with both hands like a conductor overseeing a symphony. And it was a symphony—a symphony of Trump. His face was on every screen. Election Night was one of the rare moments when I was cognizant in real time of the fact that I was witnessing a significant historical moment firsthand. With that realization, I planted myself beside Mr. Trump and refused to move the entire night, even as dozens of people crammed into the room in the coming hours, trying to get in his orbit—campaign staff, volunteers, various surrogates, the mega-rich Mercer family, Mike Pence, Ben Carson, and, of course, Omarosa, beaming with pride. Ever the TV critic, the candidate was engaged throughout the night in a running commentary on the quality of the programming. He addressed no one in particular, and he didn’t care who was listening. Trump talked like other people breathed.
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