Donald Trump: Classified Documents Indictment Not as 'Rough' as 2016 Campaign
Inside Trump's shocking victory party; Witnessing 'Succession' unfold in real life; MAGA hat stock photo saga
Donald Trump said he will “never leave” the campaign despite being indicted by the Justice Department for allegedly having classified documents. “If I would have left, I would have left prior to the original race in 2016. That was a rough one. In theory that was not doable,” the former president told a Politico reporter aboard his plane.
I covered Trump’s “rough” first campaign and was at his victory party when even he seemed to be surprised he won the presidency. This is my first time revealing what it was like behind the scenes that night and how it was like the episode of “Succession” on HBO.
Trump’s rough campaign
No one thought the former host of “Celebrity Apprentice” would really be president. I wrote in this article in 2012 that Trump should be taken seriously as a political candidate, but the polls in 2016 didn’t reflect that he would win.
I interviewed Trump two weeks before the election, and he talked about how the early voting and polling in some states boded well for him (Pennsylvania, Florida.) While his words sound promising, I remember thinking his tone didn’t sound confident in winning. Watch this:
I thought the Trump surge in the polls toward the end was due to (Hillary) Clinton fatigue. I sent this email to a family member on Nov. 5, 2016:
... it's all bc of the FBI investigation. Americans just don't want to go through four more years of Clintons scandals! She will still win. I'll be in NYC tomorrow to Wednesday for this insanity.
It’s long been forgotten that Trump got a voter boost from the federal investigation into Clinton’s classified emails on her secret home server. Now he faces many of the same alleged charges for boxes of top-secret, paper documents.
Everyone should read the full 37-count indictment against Trump. You can debate in the comments whether the charges are serious crimes or political or both.
Election night 2016
I reported live for One America News (OAN) from the New York Hilton Hotel. Trump and his campaign aides were getting the results at Trump Tower, a few blocks away in midtown Manhattan.
The hotel ballroom of the victory party was not set up for a win. There were few signs or decorations. The party was subdued because there weren’t many people there to cheer. For most of the night, there were more reporters than campaign supporters in the ballroom. Look behind me in this picture from that night:
There were large screens set up on both sides of the room broadcasting Fox News. People cheered a little when they heard certain early red states get called for Trump, but then they’d leave the ballroom and go to the bars.
The cool place to be that night in New York was Hillary Clinton’s victory party at Javits Center, which was selected because it has a literal glass ceiling. There was supposed to be a big balloon drop from the ceiling when she gave her victory speech. I recall being envious of the OAN reporter reporting from Clinton’s party because I assumed he would be covering the next president.
States called for Trump
I started reporting live at 7 p.m. and did live shots every half hour or so. I started to realize the election was going in a different direction than expected when a producer said in my earpiece that Pennsylvania went to Trump.
But while I started reporting that Trump was coming in strong, the supporters in the room were mostly quiet. Even when Wisconsin went to Trump, and we knew that he most likely would win it all, the crowd was in subdued disbelief.
A Republican activist friend of mine sat on the floor to use our power to charge her phone during the night. I remember her saying to me, “Is this real? He really won?” She had tears in her eyes. I felt like crying myself because I felt validated for the four years I had been a lone voice in Washington who said Trump was a serious political force.
If you stayed up that night, you’ll remember that we waited for Clinton to give a concession speech. She infamously refused. No one was sure how the election could end without Clinton admitting defeat.
Stunned victory
Trump finally showed up to the hotel around 2 a.m. to give his victory speech. It was clearly not thought much about in advance. Unlike Hillary’s glass ceiling of balloons that never dropped, Trump and his family entered from a balcony hallway that was not well-lit for TV cameras to get a great shot. I took this video of them arriving:
The background on the stage was simple for a huge event like this. The Trump family looked a bit shell-shocked. Here’s a video I took of them on stage.
I remember thinking at the time, he didn’t expect to win. He started by saying:
Sorry to keep you waiting. Complicated business. Complicated.
When Trump said that Clinton called to congratulate him, that was the moment when the crowd in the room realized the race was won and really got excited.
The Secret Service locked down the hotel with the newly-elected president, so we were not allowed to leave until about 3 a.m. As I walked down the street, I ran into Michael Cohen— who at the time was Trump’s lawyer and one of his longtime fixer. Cohen was alone and looked confused. I congratulated him. He didn’t look happy. He looked stunned.
(Since then, the two became enemies. Cohen said of Trump’s federal indictment charges that he will “throw anyone and everyone under the bus.”)
Reuters MAGA hat photo
I’ve never posted publicly the photo of me at the top of this story in a MAGA hat because it’s out of context and makes me appear biased. The photo ran in countless newspapers and websites the day after the election as stock photo from Reuters with the caption:
A Trump supporter adjusts her hat as she waits at Republican U.S. presidential nominee Donald Trump's election night rally in Manhattan, New York, U.S., November 8, 2016. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
The real story is the campaign gave out the red “Make America Great Again” trucker hats at the election night party. I had a few minutes between live shots and picked up the hat. I tried to pull it down on the side and bend the bill like a baseball hat, but it was too stiff. I left it on the floor.
The next day, I found out that a Reuters photographer took the photograph of me because people kept sending me links of me all over the place. It’s still online to buy as stock photo here.
Succession and Calling for Trump
The shock of Trump’s “not doable” win in 2016 has been discussed recently because of how it was depicted in one of the final episodes of HBO’s “Succession.” I noted last month:
This show is loosely based on the Murdoch family and Fox News. The election comes down to an evil Republican and family that The Trump character in the show is a terrible person (of course, it’s Hollywood) who was only elected because a right-wing cable news channel called the election prematurely.
I was in a similar situation in Nov. 2016 when the election was called for Trump…