JD Vance is only the latest in a parade of personnel misfires launched by Donald Trump. The junior senator from Ohio turned unpopular vice-presidential pick follows other bad staffing ideas like Omarosa Manigault Newman, Anthony Scaramucci and Rob Porter.
In Trump in Exile, her new book on the former president’s time out of power, Meridith McGraw of Politico reminds us of Trump’s limited vetting skills, as well as his antipathy toward Florida’s Ron DeSantis, and his cravings for cash. Oh – and his fetish for being tanned.
“Trump was still getting bronzed and ready for the day when a group of reporters joined him aboard his private jet,” McGraw writes.
Most politicians start their day with a shower, a jog, maybe a haircut. Trump? Note “bronzed” as a verb.
Trump in Exile is well-paced and well-sourced. McGraw leaves the reader smirking, scowling and shaking his head. An ABC producer turned reporter, she captures Trump’s moods, moments and those around him.
Susie Wiles, a former DeSantis operative who fell from the governor’s grace, and Chris LaCivita, a seasoned Republican and a key player in scrutinizing the military records of John Kerry and Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’s running mate, receive attention for – mostly – seamless competence.
McGraw travels back to 2021, when Trump’s future looked murky. Out of power, after defeat by Joe Biden and the January 6 attack on Congress, he seethed, yearning for vengeance and relevance. Most of all, he needed to be needed. In a storm, any port will do – Trump seized onto Kevin McCarthy, then the House speaker.
Like Napoleon, Trump dared to return. McCarthy’s craven acceptance meant it wasn’t impossible, but it wouldn’t be easy. The insurrection filled the canvas. Trump’s instincts remained imperfect, his appetites bottomless.
In September 2021, Trump backed Sean Parnell, a former army ranger, for senator in Pennsylvania. Trump expected Parnell to “fight for Election Integrity, Strong Borders, our Second Amendment, Energy Jobs, and so much more.” It never happened.
Right before Thanksgiving, Parnell dropped out. A state court granted his wife primary custody of their three children. Allegedly, he was abusive. Trump felt blindsided. Predictably, the buck stopped elsewhere. He “blamed his son for encouraging him to make the endorsement”, McGraw writes.
As with Vance, all roads led to Don Jr. But Trump wasn’t the only one harboring doubts. GOP elders felt the same about him as he felt about Donnie.
“Parnell’s ugly custody battle laid bare the concerns from top Republican officials about the vigor of Trump’s vetting process and whether he was backing people who might not be able to win in a general election.” In the end, Trump’s missteps paved the way for the election of Josh Shapiro as Pennsylvania’s governor.
Fast forward to August 2024. Trump’s chosen running mate once compared him to Hitler. Vance once said he “hated” police. He held a six-figure investment in Rumble, an online video platform that hosts Russian propaganda and Nazi images.
On the other hand, Vance has a Yale law degree and looks vice-presidential. In Trumpworld, aesthetics atone for multiple sins.
“You are one handsome son of a bitch”, McGraw reports Trump telling Vance in 2022.
“One criterion with outsized importance to Trump was physical looks and being telegenic, two things he would frequently tell people he liked in Vance.”
Trump’s lack of vetting skills were again on display. Even he seems to have realized it. Last week, as Vance flailed, Trump said: “This is well-documented, historically, the vice-president in terms of the election does not have any impact, virtually no impact.”
Translated: if he had to do it again, it wouldn’t be Vance.
By contrast, Trump’s takedown of DeSantis, Florida’s martinet-lite governor, was masterful. After grudgingly endorsing DeSantis for re-election in 2022, Trump prepared his evisceration. Trump minions branded the socially awkward and self-righteous DeSantis as strange, a misfit.
“Ron DeSanctimonious” would also come to be remembered as governor “pudding fingers”, after an ad depicting him snarfing chocolate pudding, sans spoon.
“Ron DeSantis loves sticking his fingers where they don’t belong,” the ad began. It helped suck the life out of his campaign. The governor never denied the pudding incident, reportedly on a flight with a donor. Think Senator Amy Klobuchar eating salad with a comb – a real story from the 2020 primary. That worked too.
“The incident – gross and funny and strange – was gossiped about … and quickly became part of Tallahassee lore,” McGraw writes, of DeSantis’s decision to prod the pudding.
It was all about ridicule.
“When discussing their strategy, one Trump adviser referred to Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals,” an influential 1971 book. Trump’s staffers focused on “Rule number five: Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. There is no defense. It is almost impossible to counter-attack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage.”
The pudding ad was both “disgusting and clever”, its goal “to get under DeSantis’s skin and start signaling to the public that he was, well, strange”.
McGraw also examines the birth of Trump Media & Technology Group, a publicly traded company. Suffice to say, Trump got the best of the deal. After a meeting in January 2021, the parties agreed that “Trump would own a 90% stake”, McGraw recalls. “The only capital he’d be investing would be his name.”
“Like so many before them who had done business with Trump, it wouldn’t take his new partners long to discover that in deals with the devil, the benefits all go one way.”
Fewer than 90 days from election day, Trump and Harris are locked in a footrace. He is no longer a clear favorite or the younger candidate. The polls and prediction markets signal a toss-up. Pennsylvania is again a political battleground. Even Kyle Rittenhouse, the acquitted killer, wavers in his support for Trump.
Regardless, since he landed in Palm Beach on 20 January 2021, ejected from Washington, seemingly for good, Trump has traveled far. He could yet be back.
Trump in Exile was published in the US on 6 August 2024 by Penguin Random House
