45.) Donald Trump part 1 2017-2021

"This American carnage stops right here and stops right now." - Donald Trump, inauguration speech, Jan. 20, 2017.

The American presidency had long fascinated Donald Trump. Ever since attending the 1988 GOP National Convention, Trump had wanted a piece of it - he'd even called Bush that year to ask to be on the ticket. But the idea that a twice divorced, six-times bankrupted Democratic donor could become the Republican president of the United States - that was laughable. Until it happened.

Follow along as Donald Trump develops a personal brand for luxury, rides that brand to the White House, and then spends four years contending with investigations, impeachments, and a global pandemic. When he's voted out of office at the end of those four years, he won't accept it, and his supporters will storm the U.S. capital to try and take the presidency back for him.

Sources

1. Confidence Man - Maggie Haberman
2. CDC - for COVID stats and timelines
3. WHO - for COVID stats and timelines
4. Jan. 6 Committee - for Jan. 6 details and timelines
5. Washington Post & New York Times - for miscellaneous other details on Trump's presidency. 

Transcript

In December, 2020, as Donald Trump was holed up in the white house, refusing to admit he’d lost the recent election to Joe Biden, an old friend dropped in to urge him to concede.

Why don’t you invite Biden to the white house, take him by the hand, and show him around? The friend asked. It would be the elegant solution, they told Trump.

Trump’s response was short and final, “You’re elegant, and I’m president of the United States, so get out of my office.”

And that kind of sums up who Donald Trump is, and how he became president of the United States.

Folks have asked me, what’s my plan for Trump, with his non-consecutive terms? I’ll tell ya, it’ll be the same as when I covered Grover Cleveland, the only other president to serve non-consecutive terms. Today’s episode will cover from Donald Trump’s early life to the end of his first term. We’ll then get episodes on Biden. And after that, somewhere down the road, we’ll get a final episode on Trump that will start right after he left office in 2021.
There will definitely be moments from Trump’s first term that you remember that don’t get covered here - The whole conceit is to do this in an hour or less, which means a lot won’t make it. I would love to hear from you in the comments, though. What do you think should have been in this episode, what do you think would make a great deeper dive episode down the line.

Usually, I mention my sources at the end of the episode, but because I know there are some very strong and divergent views of Trump’s presidency, sometimes different interpretations of the same facts and sometimes folks operating from totally different facts - what was the term, alternate facts - I’ll share deeper notes on my sourcing for today’s episode up front. The primary biography was Confidence Man, by Maggie Haberman, which was especially helpful for Trump’s pre-presidential years. I referred back to old articles from the New York Times and the Washington post for details across Trump’s presidency. The CDC and World Health Organization had helpful timelines and statistics for discussing COVID. And the bipartisan January 6th commission was my go-to source for timelines and details around January 6th.

And now, we will start where we often do, in the beginning. New York City. 1946.

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Donald John Trump was born on June 14, 1946, to Mary Ann, a stay-at-home mother, and Fred Trump, a real estate developer father. And let me tell ya, Donald took after the father.

Fred Trump liked to build middle class housing on government contracts. He liked to build middle class housing on government contracts because if he told the government it would cost one thing, and actual construction cost less than that, he could pocket the difference. Actually, this is illegal. But he did it.

Fred Trump also liked to rent to white families. If a black or latino family tried to rent from him, they were told nothing was available. This is also illegal. But he did it.

To make sure he got the best rates from contractors, Fred often assumed an alias when he called them - hey, I’m Harry Green, how much would it cost for yadda yadda yadda. 

His son would emulate the tactic, but for different purposes. New York media would one day know the voice of John Barron, a publicist nobody had ever met in person, but who sounded a whole lot like Donald Trump, and who loved to tell journalists what an amazing, handsome, smart guy Donald Trump was.

Donald grew up in a nice home, but not a mansion. The glitz and the glamour, that would come later.

When Young Donald was 13, his father sent him to a military academy that had a record of abuse. From there, he went to college at Fordham, then business school at Wharton, and then into the family business. I’m honestly not sure if he’s ever interviewed for a job in his life.

In 1973, when Donald was 27 years old, the family business was sued by the Justice Department for housing discrimination against Black Tenants, because they totally were discriminating against black tenants. The Trump’s needed a lawyer. They found Roy Cohn.

Remember Senator Joseph McCarthy from episodes 34 through 37, Eisenhower through Nixon? McCarthy was the senator who claimed to have secret lists of communists in the government. He didn’t. They were all made up. But that didn’t stop him from pointing the finger at anyone who drew his ire, accusing them of being a communist, and ruining their life. His name is now synonymous with government witch hunts. 

Roy Cohn had been one of his investigators. Cohn focused on purging homosexual out of the government, despite being a closet homosexual himself. Cohn’s core belief was that the dog who barks louder wins. He loved to intimidate his enemies into submission, or at least into getting out of his way.

Donald Trump hired Cohn to help with the housing discrimination case against his family, and guess what Cohn’s advice was? Don’t settle. Sue the feds.

Now, Trump did eventually settle and pay a penalty because, yeah, his family totally was discriminating against black tenants. But this feisty ‘if someone comes for you, punch back’ mentality would become Trump’s hallmark.

If city officials didn’t grant Trump permits he needed, which wasn’t often, because his family always greased the wheels with political donations, he’d threaten or bully the official standing in his way, telling them he was rich and powerful and he wouldn’t forget what they’d done. If that didn’t work, he’d try to hire them - you can’t stop me if I’m paying you. When invoices to contractors came due, Trump often found some flaw, some reason to only pay part of the bill, and he’d argue that the contractor should practically be paying Trump because just saying they’d worked on a Trump property would help them get other business.

Over several decades, Donald Trump gradually inherited the family business, rebranding it Trump Corporation and placing his own personal brand at the center of corporate strategy. Trump wanted to be seen as wealthy. He wanted to be seen as successful. He wanted to become synonymous with glamour. He became a regular presence at New York’s ritziest clubs and strove to have a new bombshell on his shoulder every week. He expanded the family business into casinos. He expanded into airlines. He bought football teams and skyscrapers. He expanded into anything that would build his personal brand for extravagance, and he borrowed a lot of money to do it.

And then he almost went bust.

The football team he’d bought? It’s league folded. The airline? Total failure. The casinos? They were struggling, too.

In 1990, Trump reported owed $3.2 billion dollars to banks and $69.5 million to subcontractors for his casinos.

But there’s a funny thing about debt.

When you have a little debt, like say a credit card payment, if you are late on that, oh they will hit with ever growing fees until the cows come home.

But if you have a LOT of debt. Millions or billions of dollars of it. Well. Then the banks actually start to worry you might not pay them back. And while it’s nothing off their back if you don’t pay them the $300 in credit card debt, it’s a major issue if you don’t pay the $3.2 billion you owe them.

So banks often get flexible in helping debtors restructure their debt so they can repay it later, sometimes even loaning more money in the hopes that if they just give you a few million more, you’ll be able to turn things around and save their whole investment!

The banks gave Trump the latter treatment. Some restrictions were placed on him - he had to turn a mansion he’d bought at mar-a-lago into a club and sell memberships so he could afford to keep it, for example. He declared four bankruptcies to get other debt off his books. He then got to write the debt off his taxes and has paid basically no taxes since. But that was the extent of his punishment for having gone so deeply in debt.

Most importantly, this was largely settled in private

In public, Trump was the man who wrote The Art of the Deal.

Trump did not write the art of the deal. He paid Tony Schwartz $250,000 dollars and half of all royalties to write it for him - you can find Tony’s name on the cover. And yet, Trump gained the fame. Trump couldn’t sell airlines, casinos, or football teams, but he could sell his brand. And he was really good at it.

Which was important, because Trump was starting to become interested in politics.

In 1988, Trump attended the GOP National Convention where George H.W. Bush accepted the Republican presidential nomination and Trump was blown away by the attention, the affection, the worship that a presidential candidate gets when they become their party’s nominee.

He began to crave it.

And he knew a man who said he could give it to him.

Roger stone.

Roger Stone was a Republican operative who had been trying to turn Trump into a donor or a client for nearly a decade. He even commissioned polls that said Trump had a shot at the presidency if he ran on his business acumen.

Even before Trump’s experience at the 1988 GOP National Convention, he had contacted presumptive Republican presidential nominee George HW Bush to offer his services as Vice President, which Bush politely declined. 

In 2000, Trump made a more aggressive pursuit of the presidency, briefly running for the Reform Party’s presidential nomination, but that ended when he failed to generate any momentum.

By 2002, Trump wasn’t developing much property anymore, but he had put out 5 books with his name on the cover and was charging other developers to put his name on their goods or properties - they carried all the risk, Trump just cashed the checks. There was. Trump deodorant, Trump underwear, Trump furniture. I kid you not, trump urine tests. He did not own any of these businesses. They just paid him a cut to use his name.

Building his personal brand was paying off. But that brand was about to jolt into the stratosphere as a new opportunity came along - a tv producer wanted Trump to host season 1 of a new reality tv show, which he described as “Survivor, but on concrete.” Trump said ok. 

The tv show was The Apprentice and it became huuuuge.

But it was also a mirage.

In real life, Trump worked from a dingy and worn office/

On the Apprentice, everything Trump touched turned to gold.

And then Trump discovered Twitter.

And birtherism.

In 2012, Trump became the face of the birther conspiracy, which claimed President Barack Obama had not been born in the United States, was not a citizen, and thus was constitutionally barred from the presidency.

There was and is zero evidence to support this conspiracy. But far-right conservatives loved Trump for fanning it, especially since traditional republicans refused to engage in it. The farthest right members of the party - the types most likely to vote in primaries - began to love Trump’s willingness to “stick it to the libs.” 

On June 16, 2015, 69-year-old Donald Trump rode a golden escalator down into the lobby of Trump tower in New York City and announced he would pursue the GOP nomination for the presidency of the United States.

Many thought it was a joke - one publication covered his campaign in its entertainment section. The guy who had told radio shock jocks that STD’s were his vietnam? The man on his third wife? The fella who had donated more money to democrats than republicans?

He couldn’t win.

Until he did.

TV and radio stations gave Trump more time than other candidates because he was so good for their ratings - they got the ad revenue, he got their platforms, and he used their platforms to dominate the narrative. Everyone else running for president was constantly reacting to whatever Trump had said that morning.

Undecided voters started to think that maybe Trump could use his reputed golden touch to make government better - ‘drain the swamp.’

Conservative voters heard Trump vowing to ban Muslims, repeal Obamacare, tariff China, or promising to build a wall along the 1,954-mile US-Mexico border, and they loved it. While every 2016 republican was running on repealing Obamacare and lowering taxes, nobody else was running on banning muslims or building a wall on the Mexico border. 

And with 17 other major candidates splitting the GOP vote, Trump’s willingness to outflank all of them to the right, well, that was a winning strategy.

One by one, Trump’s rivals dropped from the race. When the final 2, Firebrand Texas Senator Ted Cruz and moderate Ohio Governor John Kasich, tried to ally together to stop Trump down the stretch, it was too little, too late. To the shock of the GOP establishment, Trump won the republican presidential nomination on the first ballot of the party’s national convention.

In the general election, Trump faced Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, a former senator, secretary of state, and first lady who had a lot of experience, and a lot of baggage. But Trump’s campaign appeared toast when, roughly one month before election day, an Access Hollywood tape was released that captured Trump saying, 

ACCESS HOLLYWOOD AUDIO

Clinton’s staffers cackled. They lolled. Surely Trump could never win, not now.

Little did they know another October surprise was on its way.

On October 28 - 11 days before the election - FBI director James Comey disregarded department of justice protocol to publicly reopen a closed investigation into an email server Clinton had maintained in her home when she was secretary of state. The FBI is not supposed to publicly comment on investigations, yet Comey did here. The FBI is not supposed to influence elections, yet, whether he intended to or not, Comey did here. He closed the investigation 9 days later - less than 48 hours before voting was to begin - but the damage was done. The final story on voters’ minds going into election day was whether Clinton had broken the law or violated national security with her email server.

But still, when Trump entered election night, he had no victory speech prepared, he didn’t expect to win. He told people around him he merely hoped to keep it close. When the first exit polls were reported, they suggested a Clinton victory was on its way.

But then Florida started counting its votes. And Trump was pulling ahead.

And then he won North Carolina.

And then he won Wisconsin.

And that’s when he won the presidency.

In one sense, the polls were right - Donald Trump lost the popular vote, 63 million to 66 million. But the popular vote doesn’t elect presidents. While clinton was racking up votes in democratic strongholds, Trump was eking out victories in battleground states, earning a 304 to 227 win in the electoral college

After 30 years of dreaming, Donald Trump had been elected 45th president of the United States.

And so, on January 20, 2017, Donald J Trump, the property developer-turned-reality tv star who one cameo’d in Home Alone 2 and who had long dreamed of becoming president, was sworn in as the 45th president of the United States. At 70 years old, he set a new record for oldest person to ever become president - a record that has been broken twice in the 8 years since, first by Joe Biden and then again by Trump himself. But what did the world, and the country, look like when Trump became president? Let’s look around.

Internationally, the Islamic State of Syria, which had surged across the middle east and across international headlines in the final years of the Obama administration, was losing ground against a coalition of American air power and Arab ground power. Without having to lift a finger, Trump inherited an imminent victory. Nice.

Ukraine was dealing with the aftermath of a 2014 Russian invasion of its eastern provinces, where a low-grade war against russian-backed separatists continued to simmer. The first year of the war, Russian forces accidentally shot down a commercial airliner from Malaysia, killing all 298 people aboard. 

On the other side of Europe, English voters passed a referendum to leave the European Union, which nearly crashed their economy. The British economy is still roughly 5% smaller than it used to be as a result. Can you imagine another country so recklessly damaging its own economy? Thank goodness we’d never do that! Ha ha ha. 

2016 was also the year of Pokemon Go. Gotta catch ‘em all.

Domestically, the United States was doing great when Trump became president. 8 years removed from the 08 financial crisis, the GDP was growing and interest rates were near historical lows, Trump had lucked into a fantastic time to become president.

The protests began immediately.

Many Americans were unhappy that Trump had won the white house despite losing the popular vote, especially women who were offended by the Access Hollywood tape and Trump’s treatment of women during the campaign. The day after Trump was sworn in, an estimated 470,000 people participated in a women’s march in DC, joined by maybe 4 million more Americans participating in marches across the country. 

Six days after that, Trump signed executive order 13769, aka ‘the muslim ban.’ In an attempt to fulfil a campaign promise to ban muslims from visiting the United States, Trump banned travel from 7 muslim-majority countries: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. This prompted more national protests at airports, where anyone just landing from one of those countries was forced to get back on planes and leave.

But the biggest story on Trump’s mind wasn’t the women’s march, the muslim ban, or the size of his inauguration crowd - although he was very upset when folks noted Obama’s was bigger - the biggest story on his mind was Russia.

It’s time to fill in some details of the 2016 campaign I had left out.

On June 9, 2016, Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort, met at Trump Tower with a Kremlin-linked lawyer who had promised dirt on Hillary Clinton.

48 days later, Trump referenced the Clinton email investigation at a press conference when he said, “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing, I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press”

Within 24 hours, Russia attempted to hack that Clinton email server.

That hacking attempt failed, but phishing attempt aimed at a senior Clinton aide succeeded and Russia stole a slew of emails that it handed to Wiki-leaks for a constant drip of negative stories about Clinton and the Democratic party - a drip that would increase to a stream whenever the news cycle turned negative for Trump. For example, thousands of emails were published in the days after the Access Hollywood tape dropped.

12 Russians working out of a St. Petersburg office spent a year trying to influence Americans on social media, creating thousands of fake social media accounts and at one point organizing pro and anti black lives matter protests at the same place at the same time to try and provoke a conflict.

FBI director James Comey, who had publicly reopened and closed that investigation into Clinton’s email server 11 days before the election, refused to publicly comment on Russia’s attempts to influence the election.

But after election day over, Comey and other intelligence agency leaders met with president-Elect Trump in New York to tell him what they knew.

The Russians had interfered in the election. And they’d done it to help Trump.

Trump fumed after the meeting. He said he felt like American Intelligence was trying to blackmail him. ‘We’ve got this on you.’

Two weeks later, Trump, now president, invited Comey to the white house to ask if Comey wanted to stay on as FBI director. Comey said yes. Trump said, “I need loyalty,” and asked Comey to drop an investigation into Mike Flynn, who had lied about contacts with Russian agents and who would soon be fired after just 22 days on the job. Comey thought that was a weird request, so he wrote detailed notes on what was said after leaving the white house. He also refused to close the investigation into Flynn, infuriating Trump. Trump’s son-in-law and advisor, Jared Kusher, convinced Trump that Democrats were so angry with Comey for how he’d handled the investigation into Clinton’s emails that they would applaud Trump if he fired Comey, so Trump did just that, firing Comey 3 months after their 1:1 at the white house.

And, for a second, Democrats did cheer. Until they realized, hey wait, wasn’t Comey the guy investigating Trump’s connections to Russia? Who will do that now?

The answer was Robert Mueller.

Months before Comey had even been fired, Trump’s attorney general, Jeff Sessions, had recused himself from anything related to Russia because he, too, had taken some untimely calls from the Russians. This meant his Deputy, Rod Rosenstein, was in charge of anything related to Russia. After Comey was fired, Rosenstein appointed a special counsel to investigate Trump’s 2017 campaign. The man he chose to lead that investigation was former FBI director and registered republican Robert Mueller.

Who Trump spent the next 2 years accusing of being a Democrat.

From Mueller’s May, 2017 appointment, through the March, 2019, publication of his final report, Trump tried his best to kill the Mueller investigation. He ordered white house counsel Don McGahn to fire Mueller, but McGahn refused to do it and said he’d resign if Trump pressed the matter. Trump tried to get AG Jeff Sessions to un-recuse himself and do it, but Sessions refused. The longer the investigation went, the more of Trump’s allies who either flipped or went to jail for crimes like money laundering, tax fraud, campaign finance violations, lying to congress, and obstruction of justice. One of Trump’s consultants, Konstantin Kilimnik, was found to have been a russian intelligence asset. When Mueller asked to interview Trump, Trump initially agreed, until his lawyers forbade him from doing so, afraid he would perjure himself if interviewed.

On March 22, 2019, the investigation finally reached its end. Mueller submitted a 448-page report to the department of justice and later testified to Congress, but the end result of his 2-year investigation was largely a nothing-burger. He made clear that, because the Department of Justice policy says you cannot indict a sitting president, he avoided the question of whether Trump should be indicted, writing “This report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.” Some Democrats saw this as Mueller encouraging Congress to impeach Trump, arguing that Mueller had handed them a 448-page case for impeachment, but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi refused to open impeachment hearings, saying she would only go there if, quote “there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan,” - this wasn’t it.

Trump celebrated the end of the Mueller investigation.

The very next day, he basically opened a new one.

The day after Mueller testified to Congress, Trump had a phone call with Ukraine’s newly elected president, Volodymyr Zelensky.

Zelensky asked Trump for weapons systems that Congress had authorized for Ukraine, but that Trump had held up - remember, Ukraine had been at war with Russian-backed separatists ever since Russia invaded eastern Ukraine 5 years earlier..

Instead of responding to Zelensky’s request, Trump said “I would like you to do us a favor.” He then asked Zelensky to open a Ukrainian investigation into potential democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and Biden’s son Hunter.

One day later, an intelligence community inspector general was told by a whistleblower, quote, “The President used the call to persuade Ukrainian authorities to investigate his political rivals” and “there was already a conversation underway with White House lawyers about how to handle the discussion because, in the official's view, the President had clearly committed a criminal act by urging a foreign power to investigate a U.S. person for the purposes of advancing his own reelection bid in 2020.”

When the memo reached Nancy Pelosi, she decided this was the compelling, overwhelming, and bipartisan case for impeachment she had been waiting for. 

After 3 months of mostly televised hearings, 2 articles of impeachment were revealed December 10th - abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. 8 days later, Congress voted to impeach Trump on both counts largely along party lines.

The impeachment then moved to the Senate - the first senate impeachment trial since Bill Clinton’s in 1999 and only the third senate impeachment trial ever. And here the process took a turn. The impeachment inquiry had happened in the house, which was controlled by democrats. They got to set the pace, the rules, and invite any witnesses they liked.

The senate was controlled by Republicans. GOP majority leader Mitch McConnell got to set the rules for the trial. The pace would be fast and there would be no witnesses - even after it came out that Trump’s recent National Security Advisor, John Bolton, was about to publish a book that would verify much of what the Democrats were alleging. Republicans accused Bolton of being a disgruntled employee out for revenge. 

A pew research poll showed a quarter of Americans thought Trump had done nothing wrong, a quarter weren’t sure, and 48 percent thought he should have been impeached. But With McConnell running the show, the outcome was almost preordained. 

The largely party-line vote was 52 to 48 against the abuse of power charge and 53 to 47 against the obstruction of Congress charge - Utah Senator Mitt Romney was the lone republican to vote for impeachment on abuse of power.

It was February 5, 2020. After 3 years of being hounded by Russia-related investigations or impeachment hearings, Trump was finally free to enjoy the presidency.

34 days later, a global pandemic was declared.

The exact origin of Covid-19 is still a mystery, but the first reported cases date to mid-December, 2019, when patients in the Chinese city of Wuhan began experiencing a pneumonia-like illness that didn’t respond to the standard treatments.

Chinese authorities traced these initial cases back to a seafood Market and ordered it closed on January 1, but cases continued to pop up. On January 11, China reported its first death from the novel virus. Days later, cases were confirmed in Thailand and Japan.

On January 20, the first case was reported in the United States.

China placed Wuhan, population 11 million, on lockdown to try to contain the virus, but it was already out there. The global infection count was doubling every 2 days.

On January 23, Trump received his first security briefing on the virus. He was told it was the biggest national security threat to his presidency. He placed a partial ban on travel from China, exempting only American citizens.

Globally, death tolls were rising. On February 10 - 1 month after the first reported death - the number of global dead eclipsed 1,000.

On February 11, the disease was officially given a name - COVID 19. Aka, coronavirus disease 2019.

As the virus spread, Trump created a presidential task force to better control what information was shared. He didn’t want panic over the virus to damage the economy and his reelection chances. He kept telling people that one day it would just disappear.

On March 11, with 118,000 cases and 4,291 deaths reported across 114 countries, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic. Major League Baseball and the NHL suspended their seasons. College athletics tournaments were cancelled. Trump banned travel from Europe. A national emergency was declared.

Days later, states followed with shutdowns. Schools closed their doors. Work went remote. Travelers raced home, and then airports, train stations, and city streets became eerily quiet.

Except for the sirens.

New York City, population 8 million, became an epicenter of the pandemic. Hospitals were overwhelmed with COVID patients, which had a negative knock-on effect for every other New Yorker who needed medical care. Got Pneumonia? Good luck getting into the hospital, the halls were full of COVID victims on respirators. At its height, a new yorker was dying every two minutes. Morgues ran out of room for the bodies, which piled up in trucks and chapels. The healthcare system was being overwhelmed. 

To try and allay panic, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo began giving daily press briefings on the spread and response to the virus. These were picked up by every major news network and Trump became jealous of the favorable ratings and reviews Cuomo was getting. Vice President Mike Pence and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease director Anthony Fauci were giving similar daily briefings from the White House podium. 

Trump wanted to get more involved.

He took over the daily white house COVID briefing. On March 31, he said it was going to be a very tough 2 weeks. More than 2 weeks later, he suggested sick Americans shine bright lights on their skin or self-inject disinfectant to kill the virus - never do this. This will kill you. 

Behind closed doors, Trump told his team to prioritize aid to states based on how vocally their governors were praising his performance. 

On May 15, Trump ordered the resources of the U.S. government go all-in on developing a vaccine. Operation warp speed developed multiple versions of a potential COVID vaccine, including some using new mRNA technology. The idea was that most of these vaccine attempts would fail, but hopefully some would work. Sure enough, some did work, and the first doses of a successful vaccine were available 7 months later, in December of 2020.

But it wasn’t COVID that caused the most jarring death of the summer of 2020. That May, police were called on a black man accused of using a counterfeit $20 bill. The officers forced the man onto the ground and then knelt on his neck and back for over eight minutes. Bystander video captured the gasping “I can’t breath,” and then he died. His name was Goerge Floyd and his death sparked a national protest movement against police mistreatment of minorities, especially of black communities. Hundreds of Thousands took to the streets, and Trump was annoyed - 2020 was an election year. He’d been told he couldn’t hold rallies, but black lives Matters protesters were allowed to mass in the streets? It wasn’t fair! Trump took the side of the police against the protestors. He became especially furious when it leaked to the press that a protest near the White House had prompted the secret service to rush Trump into a secure bunker. Trump thought it made him look weak. He didn’t want to look weak. He wanted to look strong. He wanted troops in the streets. He asked his defense secretary if the army could shoot protestors in the legs.

On June 1, police used tear gas and concussion grenades to clear protesters from around the white house so Trump could walk to a nearby church for a photo op with a bible. He’d grabbed several aides for the walk, including the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and the defense secretary, but both bailed early in the walk and became furious, saying they felt they’d been used as props. A press conference was quickly organized where they provided statements that troops should not be used against Americans. Trump chewed them out.

And then all the drama of 2020 - the pandemic, the protests - it began to swirl with the presidential campaign. Disregarding the advice of his health officials, Trump organized a kickoff rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma - site of a 1921 race massacre where 800 african americans were killed - for June 20. Trump was told that more than a million people had registered for tickets online. An external seating area was built for the anticipated overflow crowd. But when Trump arrived, he discovered he’d been tricked. Most of the free tickets had been reserved by internet pranksters. The rally didn’t spill outside. It didn’t even fill the arena. The stands were mostly empty. Trump felt he looked like a fool.

Trump’s personal inclination was to be a germaphobe. His hands were often red and raw from overuse of disinfectant wipes. An aide carrying hand sanitizer was always close on hand - and that was well before COVID began. So you’d think he’d be all about masking, but his chief of staff told him early on that his political base would never support masking, so he swore off mask mandates and largely refused to wear them.

He later contracted COVID and nearly died.

On October 2, 2020, Trump tweeted that he and Melania had COVID. That was 3 days after a presidential debate with Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and 6 days after Trump had actually first tested positive. By the time his illness was revealed on Twitter, it was serious. He was put on oxygen due to low oxygen blood levels. Experimental monoclonal antibody treatments were ordered to save his life. When he was flown to Walter Reed Medical Hospital for more extensive treatment, he was told he could die. He was given a heavy-duty steroid that was known to cause mood swings to help stabilize him, but still he refused to let Vice President Mike Pence temporarily assume the powers of the presidency for even a moment. After 3 nights at Walter Reed, Trump emerged into the clear. Doctors came to believe the experimental antibodies had saved his life.

When Trump left Walter Reed, the presidential election was less than a month away and Biden was up 10-points in the polls. Trump kept telling his supporters that the polls were wrong - fake news - and that he was going to win, that ‘the only way we lose is if they cheat.’

But they didn’t cheat.

And Trump still lost.

81 million Americans voted for Joe Biden in 2020. 74 million voted for Trump. In the electoral college, Trump lost 306 to 232.

He had been defeated.

But he refused to say so.

Instead of giving a concession speech, Trump said ‘frankly, we did win this election.’

Privately, he sang a different tune, saying ‘we did our best,’ and ‘i thought we had it.’

But while some advisors encouraged him to concede, others were telling him to fight. When he asked one group what they thought, he was told there was a 5% chance he could turn the election around through legal challenges. Have you ever seen the end of Dumb and Dumber? When Lloyd asks Mary “What are the chances of a guy like you and a girl like me ending up together?” “not good.” “like one out of a hundred? “More like… one out of a million.” “So you’re telling me there’s a chance! Yeah!”

Trump heard 5%, and then he said “I think it’s more like 40 or 50 percent.”

I’m getting strong Lloyd energy from this moment.

But you can’t have Lloyd without Harry, and Rudy Giuliani was right there to be Harry. Giuliani said the election had been stolen by Italian space satellites! No, wait, a dead Venezuelan dictator had hacked the machines! No conspiracy theory was too outlandish. On November 7, 4 days after the election had been held, Giuliani, with sweaty makeup pouring down his face, held a press conference at four seasons — Not four seasons hotel, four seasons landscaping. He was roasted by the press.

But the movement didn’t melt. It grew stronger. “Stop the steal” became the ironic rallying cry of people trying to steal the election from Joe Biden. Trump pressured GOP legislatures to submit Trump electors from states Trump had lost, without any luck. When Trump called Georgia, which he had lost to Biden by 11,779 votes, he told Georgia’s secretary of state, “I just want to find 11,780 votes,” - Georgia officials recorded the call and leaked it to the press.

Trump raised money off the fraud claims - lots of money, more than $200 million dollars - but he wasn’t winning his legal challenges. As November turned to December turned to January, he was running out of time.

And then a new memo began circulating the white house. A lawyer named John Eastman had speculated that, when the election was certified by Congress on January 6, Vice president Mike Pence could refuse to certify electors from states where electors were being disputed. Disputed by who? It didn’t matter. Anybody. No evidence was needed. If enough states were rejected this way, the election would be thrown to the House of Representatives. Where the outcome would be determined by the number of states each candidate could carry, with each state delegation being worth one collective vote. The chamber had more Democrats, but Republicans controlled more state delegations. Trump could win.

There was just one problem. Pence thought the whole idea was blatantly unconstitutional. 

On January 4, Trump summoned Pence and Eastman to his office. Eastman made his pitch. Pence pushed back. Eastman conceded that, yeah, maybe Pence didn’t have the power to refuse to certify the election. Pence turned to Trump, “Did you hear that, Mr. President?” It would seem he did not.

On January 5, Pence’s chief of staff told the vice president’s secret service detail that Trump’s feud with Pence could become a security threat to the VP.

Yup.

When the sun rose on January 6, two crowds of Trump supporters began to form - one at the capitol building, and one near the white house. Trump had been promoting the white house rally for weeks, tweeting things like “Big protest in DC on January 6. Be there. Will be wild!”  But when the day arrived, Trump’s crowd appeared smaller than he had expected. To get more supporters into the rally space, he ordered metal detectors be removed - weapons would now be allowed into the crowd.

At 11:20 am, Trump had a final phone call with Pence, telling him ‘Mike, you can do this. I’m counting on you to do it. If you don’t do it, I picked the wrong man 4 years ago.” When Pence said he would not block the election’s certification, Trump called him a pussy. He then left the white house to address his supporters. 

A line of speakers had warmed his crowd up - Giuliani had called for “Trial by combat.”

Trump took the rostrum.

“We are going to have to fight much harder,” Trump said. “Mike Pence is going to have to come through for us and if he doesn’t, that will be a sad day for our country because you’re sworn to uphold the constitution.”

And then Trump told his supporters to go to the capital.

When Trump tried to go with them, his secret service detail refused to allow it - it wasn’t safe. Trump lunged forward to try and grab the steering wheel and had to be held back. 

His supporters marched to the capital without him.

When they encountered barriers, they moved past them.

When police told them to stop their advance, they advanced.

They climbed scaffoldings and walls.

They broke doors and windows.

When police stood in their way, they assaulted the officers.

Trump was alerted that police lines had collapsed.

He did nothing.

A pipe bomb was found at the Republican National Committee. Another would be found at the Democratic National Committee. 

Trump did nothing.

Inside the capital building, oblivious senators friendly to Trump had been raising objections to the electoral counts of Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Georgia. They offered no evidence. This was to be the setup for Pence to reject the election’s outcome.

But before Pence’s moment even arrived, loud noises halted proceedings. Thousands of Trump supporters had breached the building and were looking for the senate. Some were armed. Some carried zip ties. When house Republican leader Kevin McCarthy told Trump directly that rioters were breaking into his office, Trump said the rioters were more upset about the election results than McCarthy was. The doors to the house chamber were barricaded and guns were pointed at them in case the crowd broke in.

The senate chamber was evacuated and occupied by the protestors, who stole papers and documents off the desks and from the senate and house offices.

Trump did nothing.

Pence was evacuated seconds ahead of the advancing mob. Trump wrote on Twitter, “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our country.”

A scaffold was built outside the capital. A noose was hung. Trump’s supporters chanted “Hang Mike Pence.”

Watching events on TV, Trump told his aides that maybe Pence should be hanged.

Two hours and 20 minutes after his supporters first pushed past capital barricades, Trump wrote a tweet requesting ‘everyone at the capital to remain peaceful.’

It was not peaceful. But gradually, law enforcement and reinforcements corralled Trump’s supporters back out of the building.

Hours later, law enforcement secured the capital and restored order. 

At 6 pm, Trump tweeted, ”These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots.”

At 7 pm, the Senate resumed the certification process. It worked into the night. At 3:40 am the following morning, Congress certified Biden’s electoral victory over Trump.

More than 2,000 people entered the capital on January 6. Five people died in connection to the riot. 1,270 were convicted. Spoiler alert - earlier this year, Trump pardoned all of them.

The immediate reaction to January 6 was a bipartisan backlash against Trump, blaming him for what was quickly called an insurrection. 

The final two weeks of Trump’s presidency were another impeachment inquiry and trial, this time at warp speed. But the result was not much different from the first. 232 congressmen and women voted to impeach - all democrats plus 10 republicans - and 57 senators found trump guilty of inciting insurrection, all 48 democrats, both independents, plus 7 republicans, but this was still shy of the 67 senators needed to convict.

On January 20, 2021, inauguration day, Trump’s presidency ended. And nobody ever heard from him again.

Ok that’s obviously not true. But Trump’s post presidency and second presidency will have to wait for a future episode. And when we get there, it will pick up right here.

So how had America changed during the 4 years of the Trump administration?

Well, 450,000 Americans had been killed by COVID and the COVID-19 mortality rate was 40% higher in the United States than it was in other wealthy Group of 7 nations.

Trump had successfully passed a $1.9 trillion dollar tax cut, which he partially offset by cutting food and housing assistance for the needy. 

Trump had tried to undo anything Barack Obama had accomplished. Trump abandoned the iran nuclear deal, the paris climate agreement, the diplomatic opening with Cuba, and a free trade deal with 12 asian countries. He tried to repeal the affordable care act - Obamacare - but he was defeated by 3 Republican defections and a dramatic last-minute vote from Senator John McCain.

Trump had promised to build a wall along the 1,954-mile border with Mexico and to make Mexico pay for it. He built 80 new miles of wall, replaced another 372 miles of pre-existing wall, and Mexico did not pay for it. Trump implemented a policy of separating children from parents when apprehended crossing the border.

It had been four years of cultural protest and upheaval, headlined by the Me Too movement and Black Lives Matter.

Oh, and Fyre Fest happened in 2017. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, look it up.

Internationally, An estimated 3 million people had died from COVID globally.

And the Trump administration helped negotiate a normalization of relations between Israel, the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco in 2020

On the technology front, Nintendo released the Switch in 2017, and I discovered I’m still good at MarioKart.

If you’re going to remember 3 things from the first trump term, I’d suggest:

• He was the first president to be impeached twice in the house, and acquitted twice in the senate.
• The COVID outbreak began and, on his watch, American deaths rates were higher than in comparable nations.
• After Trump refused to accept the outcome of the 2020 election, his supporters attacked the U.S. capital in an attempt to disrupt the certification of the presidential election results.

What lessons in leadership can we learn from Trump?

No matter how many experts tell you that you don’t have a chance in whatever pursuit you undertake, there’s always a chance you might prove them wrong.

Thank you for listening to today’s episode of Abridged Presidential Histories.

If you enjoyed it, please subscribe and leave a 5-star review on your podcast-listening platform of choice.

If you’d like to support the show, you can look it up on Patreon, or go directly to www.patreon.com/abridgedpresidentialhistories. It helps me buy books and pay to host the show.

The music in today’s podcast is a public domain recording of the United States Army Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps. 

The primary biography for today’s episode was Confidence Man: The making of Donald Trump, by Maggie Haberman

In our next episode - well, there won’t be a next episode for a while. It is April, 2025. Joe Biden left office 3 months ago. We need to let time pass so biographies can be written, I can read them, and a script can be written. When that time comes, I’ll be back.

In the meantime, I’ve got another project on my mind - stay tuned to this podcast feed for details down the line - and I’ll likely continue to interview the periodic historian as new books are released on past presidents.

So, for now, So long from abridged presidential histories. Good luck out there.