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Distributed to the trade by Perseus Distribution www.perseusdistribution.com To my mother-in-law, Rhoda Kadalie, a pioneering black feminist, anti- apartheid struggle veteran, human rights activist, and writer, who predicted proudly from the very beginning that Donald Trump would win —Joel Pollak To the Deplorables —Larry Schweikart CONTENTS INTRODUCTION COLD OPEN On the Campaign Trail: Las Vegas CHAPTER ONE The Most Astounding Election in American History CHAPTER TWO On the Campaign Trail: Washington to North Carolina to New York CHAPTER THREE How We “Renegade Deplorables” Saw Trump Could Win—Back in the Summer of 2015 CHAPTER FOUR On the Campaign Trail: Ohio, New Hampshire, Nevada, Colorado, and New Mexico CHAPTER FIVE The Wild Ride: Primary Season 2015 CHAPTER SIX On the Campaign Trail: Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Florida CHAPTER SEVEN “When Did You Become a Republican?” From the Birth of the Parties to Trump’s Primary Victories CHAPTER EIGHT On the Campaign Trail: From Florida to North Carolina and New Hampshire (Again) CHAPTER NINE The Trump Revolution CHAPTER TEN On the Campaign Trail: From Seven-State Sunday to Election Day Epilogue Acknowledgments Notes Introduction When my co-author Larry Schweikart calls Trump’s victory “the most astounding election in American history,” he knows whereof he speaks. Larry is a professional historian with decades of college teaching, groundbreaking historical research, and numerous popular history bestsellers to his credit. He has written extensively on the American presidency, particularly in the nineteenth century, and so he brings a long historical perspective to the astonishing events of 2016 that culminated in the election of Donald J. Trump as president of the United States. He was also personally involved in Trump’s paradigm-busting campaign, as a member of a group of volunteer analysts who were feeding data and analysis in key states to the Trump organization up through Election Night. Larry and his fellow “Renegade Deplorables” knew weeks ahead of Election Day that Trump was on a course to win Florida, Pennsylvania, and key states in the Midwest and become the forty-fifth president of the United States. On election night, they were able to reassure my former Breitbart News boss Stephen K. Bannon—by then the CEO of the Trump campaign organization—that when early voting totals seemed to be tipping the election to Hillary Clinton, these were merely the Democrat-heavy “early” votes being posted, and that the bulk of the “red” Election Day ballots had yet to arrive. The story of where they found their hard numbers, and how they were able to analyze the data, is behind-the-scenes election news that I, as a reporter, have been fascinated to learn. When I was reporting from the Trump rallies all across the United States in the last two weeks of the campaign, I found myself thinking how Trump’s “movement” was both like and unlike the resurgent conservatism that so many of us had imagined would emerge from the Tea Party—and really, that conservatives had been hoping and working for in vain ever since the Reagan era. Larry’s analysis sheds some light on that question. He points out that Donald Trump is an updated version of an older kind of American conservatism, one that Reagan took for granted but one that we, in our post-nationalist generation, have begun to rediscover. He also has some interesting things to say about whether Trump’s victory may have inaugurated a third American “party system,” finally ousting the establishment that has been shutting down debate of critical political issues—and shutting the American people out of self- government—for decades. Maybe that’s what the tens of thousands of Trump supporters I observed, and the dozens I interviewed, in the campaign’s final push were sensing. Many of the Trump fans I spoke to conceded that their candidate wasn’t perfect. They knew all about the numerous “scandals” that the media had pushed, one after another, in the ever-renewed hope that the campaign would finally “implode.” But Trump was offering a historic opportunity for the people to take their government—and their own destiny—out of the control of a corrupt elite and into their own hands. And they took it—joyfully. —Joel Pollak Reporting for Breitbart News from the Donald Trump press plane in the last weeks of the 2016 election, my fellow author, veteran reporter Joel Pollak, had a unique ringside seat on history. Not only was he one of the few able to observe the spectacular finale of the Trump campaign as an eyewitness, but from the “inside,” as a member of the traveling press corps, he was confirming many of the things we “Deplorable” analysts were seeing from afar. As editor at one of the only media outlets—and that includes conservative media—that was not hostile to Trump, Joel may have been the only person on the press plane who was genuinely interested in what Trump was doing. It might be said that Joel was trying to get Trump, while his media cohorts were only interested in “getting” Trump. While the rest of the press corps, smugly oblivious to Trump’s appeal and obsessed with “gotcha” moments, squandered their access to the candidate and his supporters on increasingly feeble attempts to trip up the candidate (or failing that, at least to make his supporters look really stupid), Joel used his opportunities to delve into the sui generis phenomenon that was the Trump campaign. He reported on the outsider Republican candidate’s unprecedented approach to media and spectacle, his fresh message, and the reasons that it had such a broad appeal. As a matter of fact, Joel was so out of sync with the rest of the press corps that at one point he was nearly banished from the press plane. But he managed to soothe ruffled feelings among the other reporters, and stay on board. Joel had covered the campaign from the West Coast, from all angles, since the beginning: Hillary Clinton events, Bernie Sanders rallies, and the early Republican primaries. But he joined the press plane at a truly critical point for Trump’s candidacy. And the eyewitness story he tells—from Trump’s debate performance in Las Vegas after the Access Hollywood tape release, when the candidate seemed almost to be conceding the election, to the final frenetic days of the campaign, with visits to seven different states in one day—could not be more fascinating. His on-the-ground reporting, talking day in and day out over the very last leg of Trump’s groundbreaking campaign to Trump voters—men and women; white, Hispanic, and black; straight and gay—who would be responsible for the electoral upset of the century, perfectly complements my historical perspective and my inside line to the campaign and to the data that ensured Trump’s victory. We start the story of Trump’s historic campaign for the White House with a “cold open,” as the filmmakers call it: Joel’s campaign diary begins in Las Vegas with the Trump team just before the third presidential debate, as the last crucial weeks of the general election campaign were about to get under way. From there, we take a step back for a look at the bigger picture in my first chapter, as I delve into how Donald Trump won the most astounding victory in the history of the U.S. presidency. Then it’s back to the frenetic closing weeks of the campaign, as Joel reports the excitement from the press plane. Throughout the book, I offer both historical perspective and the perspective of someone with an inside line to the Trump organization. I look at the whole course of Trump’s run for the presidency, from back in the summer of 2015, when a few analysts (who eventually became the “Renegade Deplorables”) first saw that one candidate for the GOP nomination was different—that Donald Trump, by showing that he (unlike any other Republican) would fight, was offering hope to voters who had nearly given up believing their votes could ever dislodge the ensconced establishment from its death grip on power. Meanwhile, also throughout the book, the installments of Joel’s campaign diary give us all the chance to relive the wild ride of a lifetime that was the