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The President has survived one impeachment, twenty-six accusations of sexual misconduct, and an estimated four thousand lawsuits. That run of good luck may well end, perhaps brutally, if Joe Biden wins.
By Jane Mayer
The President was despondent. Sensing that time was running out, he had asked his aides to draw up a list of his political options. He wasnโt especially religious, but, as daylight faded outside the rapidly emptying White House, he fell to his knees and prayed out loud, sobbing as he smashed his fist into the carpet. โWhat have I done?โ he said. โWhat has happened?โ When the President noted that the military could make it easy for him by leaving a pistol in a desk drawer, the chief of staff called the Presidentโs doctors and ordered that all sleeping pills and tranquillizers be taken away from him, to insure that he wouldnโt have the means to kill himself.
The downfall of Richard Nixon, in the summer of 1974, was, as Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein relate in โThe Final Days,โ one of the most dramatic in American history. That August, the Watergate scandal forced Nixonโwho had been cornered by self-incriminating White House tape recordings and faced impeachment and removal from officeโto resign. Twenty-nine individuals closely tied to his Administration were subsequently indicted, and several of his top aides and advisers, including his Attorney General, John Mitchell, went to prison. Nixon himself, however, escaped prosecution because his successor, Gerald Ford, granted him a pardon, in September 1974.
No American President has ever been charged with a criminal offense. But, as Donald Trump fights to hold on to the White House, he and those around him surely know that if he losesโan outcome that nobody should count onโthe presumption of immunity that attends the Presidency will vanish. Given that more than a dozen investigations and civil suits involving Trump are currently under way, he could be looking at an endgame even more perilous than the one confronted by Nixon. The Presidential historian Michael Beschloss said of Trump, โIf he loses, you have a situation thatโs not dissimilar to that of Nixon when he resigned. Nixon spoke of the cell door clanging shut.โ Trump has famously survived one impeachment, two divorces, six bankruptcies, twenty-six accusations of sexual misconduct, and an estimated four thousand lawsuits. Few people have evaded consequences more cunningly. That run of good luck may well end, perhaps brutally, if he loses to Joe Biden. Even if Trump wins, grave legal and financial threats will loom over his second term.
Two of the investigations into Trump are being led by powerful state and city law-enforcement officials in New York. Cyrus Vance, Jr., the Manhattan District Attorney, and Letitia James, New Yorkโs attorney general, are independently pursuing potential criminal charges related to Trumpโs business practices before he became President. Because their jurisdictions lie outside the federal realm, any indictments or convictions resulting from their actions would be beyond the reach of a Presidential pardon. Trumpโs legal expenses alone are likely to be daunting. (By the time Bill Clinton left the White House, heโd racked up more than ten million dollars in legal fees.) And Trumpโs finances are already under growing strain. During the next four years, according to a stunning recent Times report, Trumpโwhether reรซlected or notโmust meet payment deadlines for more than three hundred million dollars in loans that he has personally guaranteed; much of this debt is owed to such foreign creditors as Deutsche Bank. Unless he can refinance with the lenders, he will be on the hook. The Financial Times, meanwhile, estimates that, in all, about nine hundred million dollarsโ worth of Trumpโs real-estate debt will come due within the next four years. At the same time, he is locked in a dispute with the Internal Revenue Service over a deduction that he has claimed on his income-tax forms; an adverse ruling could cost him an additional hundred million dollars. To pay off such debts, the President, whose net worth is estimated by Forbes to be two and a half-billion dollars, could sell some of his most valuable real-estate assetsโor, as he has in the past, find ways to stiff his creditors. But, according to an analysis by the Washington Post, Trumpโs propertiesโespecially his hotels and resortsโhave been hit hard by the pandemic and the fallout from his divisive political career. โItโs the office of the Presidency thatโs keeping him from prison and the poorhouse,โ Timothy Snyder, a history professor at Yale who studies authoritarianism, told me.
The White House declined to answer questions for this article, and if Trump has made plans for a post-Presidential life he hasnโt shared them openly. A business friend of his from New York said, โYou canโt broach it with him. Heโd be furious at the suggestion that he could lose.โ In better times, Trump has revelled in being President. Last winter, a Cabinet secretary told me Trump had confided that he couldnโt imagine returning to his former life as a real-estate developer. As the Cabinet secretary recalled, the two men were gliding along in a motorcade, surrounded by throngs of adoring supporters, when Trump remarked, โIsnโt this incredible? After this, I could never return to ordering windows. It would be so boring.โ
Throughout the 2020 campaign, Trumpโs national poll numbers have lagged behind Bidenโs, and two sources who have spoken to the President in the past month described him as being in a foul mood. He has testily insisted that he won both Presidential debates, contrary to even his own familyโs assessment of the first one. And he has raged not just at the polls and the media but also at some people in charge of his reรซlection campaign, blaming them for squandering money and allowing Bidenโs team to have a significant financial advantage. Trumpโs bad temper was visible on October 20th, when he cut short a โ60 Minutesโ interview with Lesley Stahl. A longtime observer who spent time with him recently told me that heโd never seen Trump so angry.
The Presidentโs niece Mary Trumpโa psychologist and the author of the tell-all memoir โToo Much and Never Enoughโโtold me that his fury โspeaks to his desperation,โ adding, โHe knows that if he doesnโt manage to stay in office heโs in serious trouble. I believe heโll be prosecuted, because it seems almost undeniable how extensive and long his criminality is. If it doesnโt happen at the federal level, it has to happen at the state level.โ She described the โnarcissistic injuryโ that Trump will suffer if he is rejected at the polls. Within the Trump family, she said, โlosing was a death sentenceโliterally and figuratively.โ Her father, Fred Trump, Jr., the Presidentโs older brother, โwas essentially destroyedโ by her grandfatherโs judgment that Fred was not โa winner.โ (Fred died in 1981, of complications from alcoholism.) As the President ponders potential political defeat, she believes, he is โa terrified little boy.โ
Barbara Res, whose new book, โTower of Lies,โ draws on the eighteen years that she spent, off and on, developing and managing construction projects for Trump, also thinks that the President is not just running for a second termโhe is running from the law. โOne of the reasons heโs so crazily intent on winning is all the speculation that prosecutors will go after him,โ she said. โIt would be a very scary spectre.โ She calculated that, if Trump loses, โheโll never, ever acknowledge itโheโll leave the country.โ Res noted that, at a recent rally, Trump mused to the crowd about fleeing, ad-libbing, โCould you imagine if I lose? Iโm not going to feel so good. Maybe Iโll have to leave the countryโI donโt know.โ Itโs questionable how realistic such talk is, but Res pointed out that Trump could go โlive in one of his buildings in another country,โ adding, โHe can do business from anywhere.โ
It turns out that, in 2016, Trump in fact made plans to leave the United States right after the vote. Anthony Scaramucci, the former Trump supporter who served briefly as the White House communications director, was with him in the hours before the polls closed. Scaramucci told me that Trump and virtually everyone in his circle had expected Hillary Clinton to win. According to Scaramucci, as he and Trump milled around Trump Tower, Trump asked him, โWhat are you doing tomorrow?โ When Scaramucci said that he had no plans, Trump confided that he had ordered his private plane to be readied for takeoff at Johnย F.ย Kennedy International Airport, so that the next morning he could fly to Scotland, to play golf at his Turnberry resort. Trumpโs posture, Scaramucci told me, was to shrug off the expected defeat. โIt was, like, O.K., he did it for the publicity. And it was over. He was fine. It was a waste of time and money, but move on.โ Scaramucci said that, if 2016 is any guide, Trump would treat a loss to Biden more matter-of-factly than many people expect: โHeโll go down easier than most people think. Nothing crushes this guy.โ
Mary Trump, like Res, suspects that her uncle is considering leaving the U.S. if he loses the election (a result that she regards as far from assured). If Biden wins, she suggested, Trump will โdescribe himself as the best thing that ever happened to this country and say, โIt doesnโt deserve meโIโm going to do something really important, like build the Trump Tower in Moscow.โย โ
The notion that a former American President would go into exileโlike a disgraced king or a deposed despotโsounds almost absurd, even in this heightened moment, and many close observers of the President, including Tony Schwartz, the ghostwriter of Trumpโs first best-seller, โThe Art of the Deal,โ dismiss the idea. โIโm sure heโs terrified,โ Schwartz told me. โBut I donโt think heโll leave the country. Where the hell would he go?โ However, Snyder, the Yale professor, whose specialty is anti-democratic regimes in Eastern Europe, believes that Trump might well abscond to a foreign country that has no extradition treaty with the U.S. โUnless youโre an idiot, you have that flight plan ready,โ Snyder said. โEveryoneโs telling me heโll have a show on Fox News. I think heโll have a show on RTโโthe Russian state television network.
In Snyderโs view, such desperate manoeuvrings would not have been necessary had Trump been a more adept autocrat. Although the President has recently made various authoritarian gesturesโin June, he threatened to deploy the military against protesters, and in July he talked about delaying the electionโSnyder contends that Trumpโs predicament โis that he hasnโt ruined our system enough.โ Snyder explained, โGenerally, autocrats will distort the system as far as necessary to stay in power. Usually, it means warping democracy before they get to where Trump is now.โ For an entrenched autocrat, an election is mere theatreโbut the conclusion of the Trump-Biden race remains unpredictable, despite concerns about voter suppression, disputed ballot counts, and civil unrest.
On Election Day, the margin of victory may be crucial in determining Trumpโs future. If the winnerโs advantage in the Electoral College is decisive, neither side will be able to easily dispute the result. But several of Trumpโs former associates told me that if there is any doubt at allโno matter how questionableโthe President will insist that he has won. Michael Cohen, Trumpโs former attorney, told me, โHe will not concede. Never, ever, ever.โ He went on, โI believe heโs going to challenge the validity of the vote in each and every state he losesโclaiming ballot fraud, seeking to undermine the process and invalidate it.โ Cohen thinks that the recent rush to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court was motivated in part by Trumpโs hope that a majority of Justices would take his side in a disputed election.
Cohen, who pleaded guilty in 2018 to lying to Congress and to various financial crimes, including making an illegal contribution to Trumpโs Presidential campaign, has faced questions about his credibility. But he affirmed, โI have heard that Trump people have been speaking to lawyers all over the country, taking their temperatures on this topic.โ One of Trumpโs personal attorneys, the Supreme Court litigator William Consovoy, has initiated legal actions across the nation challenging mail-in voting, on behalf of the Republican Party, the Trump campaign, and a dark-money group that calls itself the Honest Elections Project. And a former Trump White House official, Mike Roman, who has made a career of whipping up fear about nonwhite voter fraud, has assumed the role of field general of a volunteer fleet of poll watchers who refer to themselves as the Army for Trump.
Cohen is so certain that Trump will lose that he recently placed a ten-thousand-dollar bet on it. โHeโll blame everyone except for himself,โ Cohen said. โEvery day, heโll rant and rave and yell and scream about how they stole the Presidency from him. Heโll say he won by millions and millions of ballots, and they cheated with votes from dead people and people who werenโt born yet. Heโll tell all sorts of lies and activate his militias. Itโs going to be a pathetic show. But, by stacking the Supreme Court, heโll think he can get an injunction. Trump repeats his lies over and over with the belief that the more he tells them the more people will believe them. We all wish heโd just shut up, but the problem is he wonโt.โ
Schwartz agreed that Trump โwill do anything to make the case he didnโt lose,โ and noted that one of Trumpโs strengths has been his refusal to admit failure, which means that โwhen he wins he wins, and when he loses he also wins.โ But if Trump loses by a landslide, Schwartz said, โheโll have many fewer cards to play. He wonโt be able to play the election-was-stolen-from-me cardโand thatโs a big one.โ
Itโs hard to imagine a former U.S.ย President behind bars or being forced to perform community service, as the former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was, after being convicted of tax fraud. Yet some of the legal threats aimed at Trump are serious. The case that Vanceโs office, in Manhattan, is pursuing appears to be particularly strong. According to court documents from the prosecution of Cohen, he didnโt act alone. Cohenโs case centered on his payment of hush money to the porn star Stormy Daniels, with whom the President allegedly had a sexual liaison. The government claimed that Cohenโs scheme was assisted by an unindicted co-conspirator whom federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York referred to as โIndividual-1,โ and who ran โan ultimately successful campaign for President of the United States.โ
Clearly, this was a reference to Trump. But, because in recent decades the Justice Department has held that a sitting President canโt be prosecuted, the U.S.ย Attorneyโs office wrapped up its case after Cohenโs conviction. Vance appears to have picked up where the U.S.ย Attorney left off.
The direction of Vanceโs inquiry can be gleaned from Cohenโs sentencing memo: it disclosed that, during the 2016 Presidential campaign, Cohen set up a shell company that paid a hundred and thirty thousand dollars to Daniels. The Trump Organization disguised the hush-money payment as โlegal expenses.โ But the government argued that the money, which bought her silence, was an illegal campaign contribution: it helped Trumpโs candidacy, by suppressing damaging facts, and far exceeded the federal donation limit of twenty-seven hundred dollars. Moreover, because the payment was falsely described as legal expenses, New York laws prohibiting the falsification of business records may have been violated. Such crimes are usually misdemeanors, but if they are committed in furtherance of other offenses, such as tax fraud, they can become felonies. Court documents stated that Cohen โacted in coordination with and at the direction of Individual-1โโan allegation that Trump has vehemently denied.
It has become clear that the Manhattan D.A.โs investigation involves more than the Stormy Daniels case. Secrecy surrounds Vanceโs grand-jury probe, but a well-informed source told me that it now includes a hard-hitting exploration of potentially illegal self-dealing in Trumpโs financial practices. In an August court filing, the D.A.โs office argued that it should be allowed to subpoena Trumpโs personal and corporate tax records, explaining that it is now investigating โpossibly extensive and protracted criminal conduct at the Trump Organization.โ The prosecutors didnโt specify what the grand jury was looking into, but they cited news stories detailing possible tax fraud, insurance fraud, and โschemes to defraud,โ which is how New York penal law addresses bank fraud. As the Timesโ recent reports on Trumpโs tax records show, he has long made aggressive, and potentially fraudulent, use of accounting gimmicks to all but eliminate his income-tax burden. One minor but revealing detail is that he deducted seventy thousand dollars for hair styling, which ordinarily is a personal expense. At the same time, according to congressional testimony that Cohen gave last year, Trump has provided insurance companies with inflated income statements, in effect keeping two sets of books: one stating losses, for the purpose of taxes, the other exaggerating profits, for business purposes. Trumpโs lawyers have consistently refused to disclose his tax records, fighting subpoenas in both the circuit courts and the Supreme Court. Trump has denied any financial wrongdoing, and has denounced efforts to scrutinize his tax returns as โa continuation of the worst witch hunt in American history.โ But his legal team has lost every round in the courts, and may be running out of arguments. Itโs possible that New Yorkโs legal authorities will back off. Even a Trump critic such as Scaramucci believes that โitโs too much of a strain on the system to put an American President in jail.โ But a former top official in New York suggested to me that Vance and James are unlikely to abandon their investigations if Trump loses on November 3rd, if only because it would send an unwanted message: โIf youโre Tish James or Cy Vance and you drop the case the moment heโs out of office, youโre admitting it was political.โ
To get a conviction, the government would need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump knowingly engaged in fraud. Prosecutors I spoke with said that this could be difficult. As Cohen has noted, Trump writes little down, sends no e-mails or texts, and often makes his wishes known through indirect means. There are also potential obstacles posed by statutes of limitation. But prosecutors have clearly secured Cohenโs coรถperation. Since Cohen began serving a three-year prison sentence, at the federal correctional facility in Otisville, New York, he has been interviewed by lawyers from Vanceโs Major Economic Crimes Bureau no fewer than four times. (Cohen was granted early release because of the pandemic.)
Norman Ornstein, a political scientist at the American Enterprise Institute, in Washington, D.C., and an outspoken Trump critic, said, โThe odds are 99.9999 per cent that New York State authorities have him on all kinds of tax fraud. We know these arenโt crimes that end up just with fines.โ Martin Flaherty, a founding director of the Leitner Center for International Law and Justice, at Fordham University, and an expert in transitional justice, agreed: โI have to believe Trump has committed enough ordinary crimes that you could get him.โ
The question of what would constitute appropriate accountability for Trumpโand serve to discourage other politicians from engaging in similar, or worse, transgressionsโhas already sparked debate. Flaherty, an authority on other countriesโ struggles with state crimes, believes that in America it would have โa salutary effect to have a completely corrupt guy getting thrown in jail.โ He acknowledged that Trump โmight get pardoned,โ but said, โA big problem since Watergate is that รฉlites donโt face accountability. It creates a culture of impunity that encourages the shamelessness of someone like Trump.โ
There are obvious political risks, though. Anne Milgram, a former attorney general of New Jersey and a former Justice Department lawyer, suggested that Biden, should he win, is likely to steer clear of any actions that would undermine trust in the impartiality of the justice system, or re-galvanize Trumpโs base. โThe ideal thing,โ she told me, would be for the Manhattan D.A.โs office, not the Justice Department, to handle any criminal cases. Vance, she noted, is a democratically elected local prosecutor in the city where the Trump Organization is based. Unthinkable though it may be to imagine Trump doing time on Rikers Island, she said, โthereโs also a cost to a new Administration just turning the page and doing nothing.โ Milgram continued, โTrump will declare victory, and Trumpism wonโt be over. It raises huge questions. Itโs a fairly impossible situation.โ
Though Trump doesnโt have the power to pardon or commute a New York State court conviction, he can pardon virtually anyone facing federal chargesโincluding, arguably, himself. When Nixon, a lawyer, was in the White House, he concluded that he had this power, though he felt that he would disgrace himself if he attempted to use it. Nixonโs own Justice Department disagreed with him when it was asked whether a President could, in fact, self-pardon. The acting Assistant Attorney General, Maryย C.ย Lawton, issued a memo proclaiming, in one sentence with virtually no analysis, that, โunder the fundamental rule that no one may be a judge in his own case, it would seem that the question should be answered in the negative.โ However, the memo went on to suggest that, if the President were declared temporarily unable to perform the duties of the office, the Vice-President would become the acting President, and in that capacity could pardon the President, who could then either resign or resume the duties of the office.
To date, that is the only known government opinion on the issue, according to Jack Goldsmith, who, under Georgeย W.ย Bush, headed the Justice Departmentโs Office of Legal Counsel and now teaches at Harvard Law School. Recently, Goldsmith and Bob Bauer, a White House counsel under Barack Obama, co-wrote โAfter Trump: Reconstructing the Presidency,โ in which the bipartisan pair offer a blueprint for remedying some of the structural weaknesses exposed by Trump. Among their proposals is a rule explicitly prohibiting Presidents from pardoning themselves. They also propose that bribery statutes be amended to prevent Presidents from using pardons to bribe witnesses or obstruct justice.
Such reforms would likely come too late to stop Trump, Goldsmith noted: โIf he losesโifโwe can expect that heโll roll out pardons promiscuously, including to himself.โ The President has already issued forty-four pardons, some of them extraordinarily controversial: one went to his political ally Joe Arpaio, the former Arizona sheriff who was convicted of criminal contempt in his persistent violation of immigrantsโ rights. Trump also commuted the sentence of his friend Roger Stone, the political operative who was convicted of seven felonies, including witness tampering, lying to federal investigators, and impeding a congressional inquiry. Other Presidents have also granted questionable pardons. Bill Clintonโs decision to pardon the financier Marc Rich, in 2001, not long after Richโs former wife donated more than a million dollars to Clintonโs Presidential library and to Democratic campaign war chests, was so redolent of bribery that it provoked a federal investigation. (Clinton was cleared.) But, Goldsmith said, โno President has abused the pardon power the same way that Trump has.โ Given this pattern, he added, โIโd be shocked if he didnโt pardon himself.โ Jon Meacham, a Presidential historian, agreed. As he put it, โA self-pardon would be the ultimate act of constitutional onanism for a narcissistic President.โ
Whether a self-pardon would stand up to court review is another matter. โIts validity is completely untested,โ Goldsmith said. โItโs not clear if it would work. The pardon power is very, very broad. But thereโs no way to really know. Scholars are all over the map.โ
Roberta Kaplan, a New York litigator, suggested the same scenario sketched out in Lawtonโs memo: Trump โcould quit and be pardoned by Pence.โ Kaplan represents E.ย Jean Carroll, who is suing Trump for defamation because he denied her accusation that he raped her in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman, in the nineteen-nineties. The suit, which a federal judge allowed to move forward on October 27th, is one of many civil legal threats aimed at Trump. Although Kaplan can imagine Trump trying to pardon himself, she believes that it would defy common sense. She joked, โIf thatโs O.K., I might as well just pardon myself at Yom Kippur.โ
Scholars today are far less united than they used to be about the wisdom of pardoning Presidents. Fordโs pardon of Nixon is increasingly viewed with skepticism. Though Fordโs action generated public outrage, a consensus eventually formed among Washingtonโs wise men that he had demonstrated selfless statesmanship by ending what he called โour long national nightmare.โ Ford lost the 1976 election, partly because of the backlash, but he later won the Johnย F.ย Kennedy Profile in Courage Award for his decision, and he was lauded by everyone from Bob Woodward to Senator Ted Kennedy. Beschloss, the historian, who interviewed Ford about the matter, told me, โI believe he was right to offer the pardon but wrong not to ask for a signed confession that Nixon was guilty as charged. As a result, Nixon spent the rest of his life arguing that he had done nothing worse than any other President.โ The journalist and historian Sam Tanenhaus has written that Fordโs pardon enabled Nixon and his supporters to โplant the seeds of a counter-history of Watergate,โ in which Nixon โwas not the perpetrator but the victim, hounded by the liberal media.โ This narrative allowed Nixon to reframe his impeachment and the congressional investigations of his misconduct as an illegitimate โcriminalization of politics.โ
Since then, Trump and other demagogues have echoed Nixonโs arguments in order to deflect investigations of their own misconduct. Meacham, who also spoke with Ford about the pardon, says that Ford was so haunted by criticism alleging he had given Nixon a free pass that he began carrying a typewritten card in his wallet quoting a 1915 Supreme Court decision, in Burdick v. United States, that suggested the acceptance of a pardon implies an admission of guilt. The burden of adjudicating a predecessorโs wrongdoing weighed heavily on Ford, and, Meacham said, โthatโs what Biden may have to wrestle with.โ
Several former Trump associates worry that, if Biden does win, there may be a period of tumult before any transfer of power. Schwartz, who has written a new book about Trump, โDealing with the Devil,โ fears that โthis period between November and the Inauguration in 2021 is the most dangerous period.โ Schwartz went on, โIf Biden is inaugurated President, weโll know that thereโs a new boss, a new sheriff in town. In this country, the President is No. 1. But, until then, the biggest danger is that Trump will implicitly or explicitly tell his supporters to be violent.โ (Trump has already done so implicitly, having said at the first debate that the Proud Boys, an extremist group, should โstand by.โ) Mary Trump predicted that, if Trump is defeated, he and his associates will spend the next eleven weeks โbreaking as much stuff on the way out as they canโheโll steal as much of the taxpayersโ money as he can.โ
Joe Lockhart, who served as Bill Clintonโs press secretary, suggested to me that, if Biden narrowly wins, a chaotic interregnum could provide an opportunity for a โglobal settlementโ in which Trump will concede the election and โgo awayโ in exchange for a promise that he wonโt face charges anywhere, including in New York. Lockhart argued that New Yorkโs legal authorities are not just lawyers but also politicians, and might be convinced that a deal is in the public interest. He pointed out that a global-settlement arrangement was made, โin microcosm,โ at the end of the Clinton Presidency, when the independent counsel behind the Monica Lewinsky investigation agreed to wrap things up if Clinton paid a twenty-five-thousand-dollar fine, forfeited his law license, and admitted that he had testified falsely under oath. โSo thereโs some precedent,โ Lockhart said, although he admitted that such a deal would anger many Americans.
Among them would be Bauer, Obamaโs White House counsel, who is now a professor at the N.Y.U.ย School of Law. Bauer has argued that Presidents should be subjected to the same consequences for lawbreaking as everyone else. โHow can the highest law-enforcement officer in the U.S. achieve executive immunity?โ he said. โI understand the concerns, but, given the lamentable condition of the justice system in this country, I just donโt get it.โ Ian Bassin, who also worked in the White House counselโs office under Obama, and now heads the nonprofit group Protect Democracy, said that the impetus is less to punish Trump than to discourage future would-be tyrants. โI think Trumpโs a canary in the coal mine,โ he told me. โTrump 2.0 is what terrifies meโsomeone who says, โOh, America is open to a strongman kind of government, but I can do it more competently.โย โ
Guessing what Trump might do if he loses (and isnโt in prison) has become a parlor game among his former associates. In 2016, when it seemed all but certain that Trump wouldnโt be elected, aides started preparing for what they referred to as the Trump News Networkโa media platform on which he could continue to sound off and cash in. According to a political activist with conservative ties, among the parties involved in the discussions were Steve Bannonโwho at the time was running both the Trump campaign and the alt-right Web site Breitbartโand the Sinclair Broadcast Group, which provides conservative television programming to nearly ninety markets. (Sinclair denies involvement in these discussions.) Before Trump beat Hillary Clinton, he also reportedly encouraged his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to explore mass-media business opportunities. After word of the machinations leaked to the press, Trump acknowledged that he had what he called a โtremendous fan base,โ but claimed, โNo, I have no interest in Trump TV.โ However, as Vanity Fair recently reported, Kushner, during that preรซlection period, went so far as to make an offer to acquire the Weather Channel as a vehicle that could be converted into a pro-Trump network. But, according to the magazine, Kushnerโs offerโthree hundred million dollarsโfell well short of the four hundred and fifty million dollars sought by one of the channelโs owners, the private-equity firm Blackstone. Both Kushner and Blackstone denied the story, but a source who was personally apprised of the negotiations told me that it was accurate.
Barbara Res, the former Trump Organization employee, and a number of other former Trump associates believe that, if the President is defeated, he will again try to launch some sort of media venture. A Democratic operative in New York with ties to Republican business circles told me that Bernard Marcusโthe billionaire co-founder of Home Depot and a Trump supporterโhas been mentioned recently as someone who might back a secondย iteration of a Trump-friendly media platform. Through a spokesperson, Marcus didnโt rule out the idea. He said that, to date, he has not been involved, but added, โIt may be necessary going into the future, and itโs a great idea.โ Speculation has focussed on Trumpโs joining forces with one of two existing nationwide pro-Trump mouthpieces: Sinclair and the One America News Network, an anemic cable venture notable for its promotion of such fringe figures as Jack Posobiec, who spread the Pizzagate conspiracy theory. A Trump media enterprise would likely run pointedly to the right of Fox News, which Trump hasย increasingly faulted for being insufficiently loyal. On April 26th, for instance, Trump tweeted, โThe people who are watching @FoxNews, in record numbers (thank you President Trump), are angry. They want an alternative now. So do I!โ
A former Trump associate who is in the media world speculated that Trump might instead fill the talk-radio vacuum left by Rush Limbaugh, who announced in mid-October that he has terminal lung cancer. Neither Limbaugh nor his producers could be reached for comment. But the former associate suggested that if Trump anchored such a showโperhaps from his golf club in West Palm Beach, Floridaโhe could continue to try to rally his base and remain relevant. The former associate pointed out that Trump could broadcast the show after spending the morning playing golf. Just as on โThe Apprenticeโโand in the White Houseโhe could riff, with little or no preparation. Trump has been notably solicitous of Limbaugh, giving him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and tweeting sympathetically about his health. Limbaugh has become rich from his show, and is estimated to be worth half a billion dollars; Trump has publicly commented on how lucrative Limbaughโs gig is, exclaiming in a speech last December that Limbaugh โmakes, like, they tell me, fifty million a year, and it may be on the low sideโso, if anybody wants to be a nice conservative talk-show host, itโs not a bad living”
Res, however, canโt imagine Trump settling for a mere radio show, calling the platform โtoo small.โ Tony Schwartz said of the President, โHeโs too lazy to do a three-hour daily show like that.โ Nevertheless, such a platform would offer Trump a number of advantages, including its potential to make him a political power broker in the key state of Florida. (Bannon recently forecast, to considerable skepticism, that if Trump loses the election he might run again in 2024.)
In 1997, Trump published his third book, โThe Art of the Comeback,โ which boasted of his resilience after a brush with bankruptcy. But, in a recent head-to-head matchup of televised town-hall events, Biden drew significantly higher ratings than Trumpโa sign that a television comeback might not be a guaranteed success for the President. The New York columnist Frank Richโa former theatre critic who has helped produce two hit shows for HBOโrecently published an essay titled โAmerica Is Tired of the Trump Show.โ
Signals from the New York real-estate world are also not encouraging. I recently asked a top New York banker, who has known Trump for decades, what he thought of Trumpโs prospects. He answered bluntly: โHeโs done in the real-estate business. Done! No bank would touch him.โ He argued that even Deutsche Bankโnotoriously, the one institution that continued loaning money to Trump in the two decades before he became Presidentโmight be reluctant to continue the relationship. โThey could lose every American client they have around the world,โ he said. โThe Trump name, I think, has turned into a giant liability.โ He conceded that in some parts of the country, and in other parts of the world, the Trump name might still be a draw. โMaybe on gas stations in the South and Southwest,โ he joked.
If Trump is forced to concede the election, he will, Scaramucci expects, โgo down to Florida and build up his war chest doing transactions with foreign oligarchsโI think heโs going to these guys and saying, โIโve done a lot of favors, and so send me five billion.โย โ Nixonโs disgraced Vice-President, Spiro Agnew, who was forced to resign, in 1973, amid a corruption scandal, later begged the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia for financial supportโwhile pledging to continue fighting Zionists in America. Starting with Gerald Ford, ex-Presidents have collected enormous speaking fees, sometimes from foreign hosts. After Ronald Reagan left office, he was paid two million dollars to visit Japan, and half of that amount was reportedly for one speech. White House memoirs have been another lucrative source of income for former Presidents and First Ladies. Bill and Hillary Clinton received a combined $36.5 million in advances for their books, and Barack and Michelle Obama reportedly made more than sixty-five million dollars for their joint worldwide book rights. Trump has acknowledged that heโs not a book reader, and Schwartz has noted that, during the year and a half that they worked together on โThe Art of the Deal,โ he never saw a single book in Trumpโs office or apartment. Yet Trump has taken authorial credits on more than a dozen books to date, and, given that heโs a proven marketing master, itโs inconceivable that he wonโt try to sell more.
Lawrence Douglas, a professor of law at Amherst College and the author of a recent book on the President, โWill He Go?,โ predicted that Trumpโwhether inside the White House or outโwill โcontinue to be a source of chaos and division in the nation.โ Douglas, who is co-editing a textbook on transitional justice, told me that heโs uncomfortable with the notion of an incoming Administration prosecuting an outgoing head of state. โThat really looks like a tin-pot dictatorship,โ he said. He also warned that such a move could be inflammatory because, โto tens of millions of Americans, Trump will continue to be a heroic figure.โ Whatever the future holds, Douglas doubts whether Trump could ever fade away contentedly, as many other Presidents have done: โHe craves the spotlight, both because it satisfies his narcissism and because heโs been very successful at merchandising it.โ Peaceful pursuits might have worked for Georgeย W.ย Bush, but Douglas is certain of one thing about Trumpโs future: โThis guy is not going to take up painting his feet in the bathtub.โย โฆ
