{"id":159651,"date":"2025-03-14T13:03:27","date_gmt":"2025-03-14T21:03:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=159651"},"modified":"2025-03-14T13:23:27","modified_gmt":"2025-03-14T21:23:27","slug":"all-or-nothing-how-trump-recaptured-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=159651","title":{"rendered":"All or Nothing: How Trump Recaptured America"},"content":{"rendered":"

Michael Wolff writes in this 2025 book<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n* [In 2021] Mar – a – Lago, as one Trump intimate put it, was less Camelot than Jonestown.<\/p>\n

* the man on the tightrope without a net. Who can take their eyes off him? As Trump\u2019s third presidential campaign came to life \u2014 or, unaccountably, did not die \u2014 and as the stakes for him became crystal clear, his proposition as a candidate playing both hero and martyr became utterly straightforward: Elect me or destroy me. <\/p>\n

* Wiles and LaCivita were the professional leadership team tasked with handling the mercurial former president. The press had noticed this \u2014 the two had cordial and professional relationships throughout the political media, even as Trump made it his favorite enemy \u2014 and had begun to see this as the reason for Trump\u2019s buoyancy and better and better numbers.<\/p>\n

* All Trump\u2019s relationships with family, wives, staff, friends, are\u2026unusual, everybody serving him in roles that he has more or less concocted from his own imagination. Of all these relationships, the strangest and unhappiest is probably with his lawyers, a revolving door of hundreds over the years. At the heart of this relationship is a profound contradiction: He wants his lawyers to be savvy, canny, astute, and aggressive, pulling him from every pickle he gets himself into, but at the same time, he wants them to be abject suck – ups to his every whim and desire \u2014 and to reassure him at every turn that he will prevail. In this, he elevated Roy Cohn into a myth of defense lawyer \u2013 fixer omnipotence to whom no one might ever measure up (and who, too, he ultimately found fault with and spurned). Also, in seeing lawyers as essentially dramatis personae rather than technicians, he often chose for his ideal models characters of the type that populated 1960s win – every – trial television shows.
\n Almost every major Washington and New York firm had refused or deflected an inquiry to represent him during Trump\u2019s White House years. Being a lawyer who was actually willing (professional reputation and accomplishments not particularly relevant) to represent him was a way into Trumpworld, and being a lawyer who could be utterly abject was a way into the inner circle.<\/p>\n

* The worst thing that might befall a candidate for office, a criminal indictment, had now happened. In any understanding of the nature of U.S. politics, this was a disqualifying event. But immediately, the campaign put out an online fundraising appeal, which almost instantly began to reflect a wholly different reality: the fastest minute – to – minute fundraising hours of the campaign so far.
\n The campaign, grasping to explain this reality, not least of all to itself, started at that moment to talk about the \u201csplit screen.\u201d On one side, what you saw could not be worse: an inescapable legal quagmire, threatening and perhaps mortal \u2014 yes, likely to be mortal. But here on the other side, an entirely positive political outlook: overwhelming support in his party, ever – rising polling numbers, lackluster opposition. In the first twenty – four hours after the indictment, they\u2019d raised four million dollars, with a remarkable 25 percent representing new donors.
\n \u2022 \u2022 \u2022
\n Behind his desk, Trump\u2019s mood is buoyant. He yells, \u201cBring me the poison.\u201d His basket of Starbursts, Hershey\u2019s Miniatures, Laffy Taffy, and Tootsie Rolls instantly appears. \u201cOkay, get the poison out of here,\u201d he says, taking two handfuls.
\n \u201cThis is big. This is very big,\u201d he now analyzes \u2014 he\u2019s simultaneously on the phone and talking to people in and out of his office. \u201cThey\u2019re only doing this because they\u2019re afraid of us. This puts us in front of every camera in the world.\u201d
\n His lawyers are suggesting an incremental and procedural response, which Trump waves away. As he has told his staff, repeatedly, he now instructs his lawyers: \u201cOur legal strategy is our media strategy; our media strategy is our legal strategy.\u201d This is the premise uttered so often that no one can remember the first time they heard this foundational belief.<\/p>\n

* Trump\u2019s people, many of them, anyway, don\u2019t think of him all that differently from how the rest of the world does: He\u2019s mercurial, capricious, lazy, ill – informed, inattentive\u2026The difference is, having been around him, having seen him survive what other mortal politicians never could, they\u2019ve come to believe he knows something, sees something, gets to the heart of something \u2014 some new reality \u2014 that the rest of us don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

* Jason Miller is one of the few staffers who\u2019s been with Trump for all three campaigns, and, taking one for the team (or, in versions of this story, thrown under the bus), he\u2019s sent in to talk to Melania. In December 2016, slated to be the communications director in the new administration, Miller got another Trump staffer pregnant, simultaneously with his wife\u2019s pregnancy. He lost his prospective White House job in the ensuing mini – scandal, but he remained a Trump favorite, coming back to help manage the 2020 campaign. His conversation with the former First Lady prior to the first court appearance will become an oft – shared cautionary tale of managing the Trumps\u2019 relationship. \u201cNice try,\u201d she says, after Miller makes his stand – by – your – man pitch.
\n It\u2019s Justin Caporale who takes over the physical management of the indictment. Caporale, a Florida political op whom Wiles recruited into the campaign, is the logistics guy \u2014 by which is meant not just making the trains run on time, but staging the entire look and feel of Trump\u2019s movement, presence, and message. Caporale\u2019s central mandate is to make the former president continue to look like he is still president \u2014 and running for re – election. He isn\u2019t a private citizen being hauled into court. He\u2019s President Trump.<\/p>\n

* Alina Habba furiously resents the suggestion by various of the other Trump lawyers that she got her job as a Trump defender by hanging out in a bikini by the pool at Trump\u2019s Bedminster club, which she and her husband, a parking garage owner, joined in 2019, threatening to sue anyone, if she knew who they were, who says as much. But she does hang out by the pool and, proudly so, in a bikini. The 2010 graduate of Widener University Commonwealth Law School practicing with a small firm in New Jersey did actually get her job representing \u201cthe President\u201d because of her membership at Bedminster, and getting recommended, she takes pains to explain, by other Bedminster members and thereby offering her services to the Trump family. Trump, in 2021, had her file several more or less frivolous lawsuits on his behalf, including against his niece Mary Trump, who had written a negative book about him; that suit, like others, would be dismissed. As his legal troubles mounted, he kept suggesting bringing Alina in. Although she had little experience germane to the issues he was facing, he seemed satisfied, pleased to be able to show her picture on his phone \u2014 along with that of Lindsey Halligan, another comely lawyer he had hired in Palm Beach \u2014 whenever the subject of his legal talent came up, which it did often. \u201cI may not have the best legal team,\u201d he took to saying with pride, \u201cbut I have the hottest.\u201d<\/p>\n

* Along with Boris in the top tier of the Trump bubble \u2014 ever reinforcing the bubble \u2014 was thirty – year – old Natalie Harp.
\n She was a Fox News \u2013 type blonde, although not on Fox. She had been a \u201chost\u201d on OAN, the distant – third conservative news channel behind Fox and well behind even the lagging Newsmax. Trump had seen her on television at the same time that she was lobbying almost anyone in his circle whose email she could get. Natalie Harp, the 2012 Point Loma Nazarene University graduate and 2015 Liberty University MBA, had a story: She had recovered from bone cancer because of Trump\u2019s \u201cRight to Try\u201d law, which, she said, allowed her to get the experimental medication she needed. While there were holes in this tale, she nevertheless earned herself a speaking role at the 2020 Republican convention: President Donald Trump had saved her life. In 2022, she came into the nascent campaign as a fetch – it girl, hovering around Trump in anticipation of whatever needs or desires could be instantly satisfied. This settled into a more specific function: She would accompany Trump during his three to four hours a day on the golf course and, riding in her own golf cart, keep him abreast of events by printing out emails and news stories on the wireless mini printer in her charge.
\n In doing this, she became a significant gatekeeper. Trump was frequently seen with a cache of papers. He would often demand time in his schedule to go over \u201cmy papers.\u201d (In the past, he had militantly eschewed papers.) His workload \u2014 \u201cmy papers\u201d \u2014 was almost entirely what Natalie had printed out. The curation was largely her own. Hers was solely a good – news printer \u2014 and she, a worshipful acolyte.
\n This was one of Trump\u2019s set pieces: always to be surrounded by attractive women who worked for him. It was an inverted feminist credential: In another outdated culture pin, he referred to them as \u201cCharlie\u2019s Angels.\u201d His relationship with them was avuncular and flirtatious. Alina Habba and Lindsey Halligan and Natalie Harp were part of the great entourage that accompanied him to the spring NCAA wrestling championship. Trump\u2019s subject of discourse at the NCAA event was which wrestlers the \u201cladies\u201d found most attractive. Everyone seemed happy to play along, critiquing the various bodies, rating them as their type or not. But Natalie couldn\u2019t be moved. Trump kept pressing her, trying to make her obvious point even more obvious to everyone listening in with disbelief and embarrassment: \u201cOh, none of them, none of them, sir. I didn\u2019t find any of them attractive or anything worth looking at\u201d \u2014 which was to say, I only have eyes for you.
\n \u201cI mean, this is how it is. He just likes people who are, you know, entirely in the sycophant territory,\u201d one entourage member explained.
\n Every effort by the staff to create distance between Natalie and the boss was met by redoubled efforts on her part to remain close, her doggedness amusing and impressing Trump. The weirdness of it all only belied the comfort Trump felt around her \u2014 not least because she was literally there all the time, at his beck and call, utterly attentive, hovering and interrupting when others sought his attention \u2014 and her growing importance.<\/p>\n

* Letters had started to surface from Natalie to Trump, passed around by his political and legal teams with bewilderment and concern\u2026and incredulity, portraying a relationship of an imagined alarming intimacy or one of genuinely strange submissiveness. She slipped them into the stack of papers with which she was constantly supplying him.
\n \u2026I want things always to be right between us. I also know I\u2019ve been distracted all week (forgetting to eat through the days, and even forgetting to sleep, and only catching a couple of hours at a time). I haven\u2019t been myself, dwelling on the Past, and the pain of losing my Dad, and I started letting the remarks of people who haven\u2019t bothered me before, get to me \u2014 not because I care what others think, but because I see myself being lowered in your eyes and good opinion. That is the fear you see, because I never want to bring you anything but joy. I\u2019m sorry I lost my focus. You are all that matters to me. I don\u2019t want to ever let you down. Thank you for being my Guardian and Protector in this life\u2026
\n With all my heart, Natalie
\n Now this is the Note I wanted to write (But the apology needed to come first.)\u2026After going through all this self – analysis, my conclusion? I need to reunite my past self with my current into a better version who will make you proud. And please, when I fail, will you tell me? You have the absolute right to cuss me out, if need be, when I deserve it, because no one knows or cares about me more. Thank you for always being there for me \u2014 I\u2019ll never forget when you made that promise to me after losing my Dad, and I know how happy he is right now that I did get to go to Scotland and Ireland, as he always wanted for me. To modify a classic, \u201cI could not have parted with you, to anyone less worthy\u201d \u2014 and, I will add, it is I who is unworthy. Always, Natalie.
\n P.S. My hands looked worse in Scotland and Ireland because the Cold turns the old \u201cscars\u201d purple. Still on the road to recovery!<\/p>\n

Since the start of his presidency, Trump had nearly always had a young woman to buffer and boost him and act as his aide – de – camp, body girl, gatekeeper, and, often, interpreter (\u201cwhat he means\u2026\u201d). This included Hope Hicks, his most senior body girl; Madeleine Westerhout, who would be fired for gossiping about the Trump family; and Margo Martin, his current assistant. All looked the part: thin, tall, with long straight hair, short skirts (in winter, high boots). The fact that these women without political backgrounds, relevant educations, or even long histories with Trump \u2014 and each with a clear devotion to or infatuation with him \u2014 came to assume outsize influence at the highest levels of government was written off as just one more Trump characteristic. But Natalie Harp now pushed this to a further extreme.
\n Her fixation was an open secret. This was schoolgirlish and eye – rolling \u2014 and discomfiting for all. But it existed side by side with her better – than – anyone proximity to Trump, the deference and authority he accorded her, and her remarkable persistence in overcoming every effort to short – circuit her access.
\n Her golf cart had become the literal mechanism for shadowing him. In his three or four hours on the golf course every morning, Natalie \u2014 close behind in her designated cart with her printer, and holding his phone \u2014 was his connection to the world. At every hole, she supplied him with what she thought he might need or want to know. Equally, he told her whom to call for him, and what to post, with her composing many of his outbursts. Political teams often need to deftly and tactically deal with a candidate\u2019s bad habits. Natalie\u2019s golf cart became conveniently unavailable. Undaunted, and with a thirty – pound printer on her back, she yet pursued, running madly after Trump\u2019s golf cart on his spring golfing trip to Scotland.
\n The summer move to Bedminster became another opportunity to deal with what was now deemed officially \u201cthe Natalie situation.\u201d In Bedminster, she needed housing \u2014 so none was allotted. Out of sight, for Trump, was out of mind. And even Natalie would not presume to speak to Trump about her accommodation. (Who got what room at what Trump property was hard – fought politics, largely unbeknownst to Trump.) And yet, in Bedminster, suddenly there she was. She had reached out to the grounds staff at the country club and gotten herself a maid\u2019s room. And when that proved too far from the main house to respond quickly enough to Trump\u2019s calls, she relocated herself to the much closer women\u2019s locker room, where, with undiminished proximity to Trump, she would spend the summer.
\n The earlier joking about Natalie being the true chief of staff took on a darker meaning. The more peculiar she seemed to be, the more obvious her obsession with Trump and her lovestruck adulation, the more integral she became. She was taking over the social media accounts; she was communicating, sometimes on a daily basis, with Trump\u2019s coteries in Congress \u2014 a daily texting relationship with as many as two hundred members of the House and Senate, most more and more confused: Why were they hearing from this person, and why were they hearing so often? The body girl was, in effect, a chief spokesperson.
\n Trump\u2019s girls had always existed in relative harmony with his principal body man, Dan Scavino.<\/p>\n

* Natalie was now foremost among those unexploded bombs that a candidate\u2019s staff needs to keep aware of: More and more of Trump\u2019s moods and outbursts seemed directly connected to the clippings and reports she brought him; and more and more reliably, she was there to interpose herself in meetings with the political team, using her printer to re – direct or override their concerns. The aggressiveness of her attention, and her fury when she was denied bestowing that attention on Trump, was also of increasing concern to the security team. The Secret Service, with her letters in their possession, was now noting the strangeness of her behavior.
\n Nonsense, declared Trump. \u201cShe just loves her president.\u201d<\/p>\n

* Steve Bannon, whose life\u2019s work had become getting the attention or even the fleeting favor of the man who fired him six years before \u2014 a rarely successful effort…<\/p>\n

* As the team returned to New Jersey, Alina Habba, going through the Twitter (X) commentary, noted her place in the sun: \u201cThe only thing anyone is talking about is my tits. It\u2019s all about my tits. Oh my God. I guess I should have worn something else. My mom is going to kill me.\u201d<\/p>\n

* A Trump staffer would not presume, other than by specific invitation, to have privileges to the buffet. But when Natalie was in Palm Beach \u2014 that is, when Trump and his entourage were in Palm Beach \u2014 she and her mother, under the attentive eye of club members, reliably showed up for their Sunday meal, and put it on the Trump tab.
\n Curiously, there was little supposition that Natalie might be the \u201cbit on the side.\u201d That issue, for a man who had spent most of his adult years in open, proud, undaunted, and, in repeated accusations, predatory pursuit of women, had been largely expunged as a possibility. Since the first year in the White House, when Trump\u2019s sex life was a persistent mystery or puzzle, it had drifted off or flatlined. No one said it. No one would ever say it \u2014 of all things, you did not tread into personal territory with Donald Trump. But he was, if you had to draw the obvious conclusion, post – sex. \u201cHe replaced it with politics. There\u2019s a liberal dilemma: Would they rather he preyed on women or on the country?\u201d remarked an amused Steve Bannon in the waning years of the Trump presidency.
\n Natalie being the bit on the side would have been a reasonable explanation. Beyond that, she fell into the context of the Sun King\u2019s court: Insofar as she amused him, or her efficiency with respect to his desires was useful to him, or the way her irritation of everyone else reaffirmed his dominance, she was welcome at the buffet. Her mother, too.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michael Wolff writes in this 2025 book: * [In 2021] Mar – a – Lago, as one Trump intimate put it, was less Camelot than Jonestown. * the man on the tightrope without a net. Who can take their eyes … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21791],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-159651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-america"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=159651"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159651\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":159667,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159651\/revisions\/159667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=159651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=159651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=159651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}