Fear: Trump in the White House

Jared and Ivanka were on entertainment mogul and Democratic donor David Geffen’s $300 million yacht—one of the largest in the world—off the coast of Croatia, on vacation with Wendi Deng, a businesswoman and former wife of Rupert Murdoch.

Manafort called Bannon. He wanted to meet.

“Why don’t you come up?” Manafort said.

Where?

“The Tower.”

Bannon had to go back to the lobby to get the elevator to the residences. On the ride up, he wondered if this was the deal that Trump cut with his campaign chief. “If he’s going to toss me some penthouse in the Trump Tower, why not?” It would be better than his small place on Bryant Park.

It turned out that Manafort owned the place.

Bannon felt sorry for Manafort. The campaign manager had been astonished at the success and power of Trump’s Twitter account, and had started one of his own. But the New York Daily News had run this item in April: “Make America kinky again,” noting that Manafort—perhaps unaware that Twitter was a public forum—had followed a Midtown bondage and swingers’ club called Decadence. “Manafort was following the swanky spank spot—which bills itself as the city’s ‘most intimate swing club.’ ”

Manafort’s place was beautiful. Kathleen Manafort, his wife, an attorney who was in her 60s but looked to Bannon like she was in her 40s, was wearing white and lounging like Joan Collins, the actress from the show Dynasty.

“I really want to thank you for trying to step in,” Manafort said. “That’s just Donald. This is the way he acts all the time.”

“I thought he took some real cheap shots at you,” Bannon said.

Manafort waved him off. “Listen, everybody tells me you really know media,” he said.

“I run a right-wing website. I know advocacy.”

“I need you to look at something for me,” Manafort said, handing him a copy of a draft story coming in from The New York Times headlined: “Secret Ledger in Ukraine Lists Cash for Donald Trump’s Campaign Chief.”

Bannon read, “Handwritten ledgers show $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments designated for Mr. Manafort” from the pro-Russian political party.

“Twelve million fucking dollars in cash out of the Ukraine!” Bannon virtually shouted.

“What?” Mrs. Manafort said, bolting upright.

“Nothing, honey,” Manafort said. “Nothing.”

“When is this coming out?” Bannon asked.

“It may go up tonight.”

“Does Trump know anything about this?”

Manafort said no.

“How long have you known about this?”

Two months, Manafort said, when the Times started investigating.

Bannon read about 10 paragraphs in. It was a kill shot. It was over for Manafort.

“My lawyer told me not to cooperate,” Manafort said. “It was just a hit piece.”

“You should fire your lawyer.”

“I’m thinking about it.”

“You’ve got to call Trump . . . go see him face-to-face. If this comes out in the paper, and he doesn’t know about it, it’s lights out for you. How do you even take $12.7 million in cash?”

“It’s all lies,” Manafort said. “I had expenses.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m just a general consultant,” he explained. “I’ve got guys.” Many others had worked for him in Ukraine. “It all was paid to the guys. I didn’t take $500,000 out of there.”

“That’s all lost. It’s not laid out in the article. It’s ‘you got $12.7 million in cash,’ okay?”

Bannon called Jared.

“You’ve got to get back here,” he said.

The Times article on Manafort ran online that night and in the paper the next morning. As Bannon predicted, Trump was apoplectic. He’d had no heads-up.

Trump called Reince Priebus to tell him that Steve Bannon was coming in as CEO. Priebus marveled that Trump would again bring in someone with little experience running anything, but he didn’t say much. He’d come around on Bannon’s Breitbart operation. After getting killed for about two years by Breitbart as part of the Republican elite, he’d developed a new strategy: It was a lot easier to work with Breitbart, and get less killed.

Polls showed only 70 percent of Republicans were for Trump. They needed 90 percent. That meant getting the party apparatus on Trump’s side.

“Look, you don’t know me,” Bannon said. He had met Priebus briefly years before. “I need to have you here this afternoon. And this girl Katie Walsh, who I just hear is a superstar.” Priebus and Walsh, the RNC chief of staff, had the Republican database on every likely voter in the country.

Bannon wanted to be sure that the RNC was not going to leave Trump. There were rumors about donors fleeing and how everyone in the party was trying to figure a way out of the Trump mess.

That’s not the case, Priebus assured him. We are not going anywhere.

“We’ve got to work as a team,” Bannon said.

“You think you can do it?”

“Look, Trump doesn’t care about details,” Bannon said. It was up to them.

As Bannon later remarked with his trademark profanity, “I reached out and sucked Reince Priebus’ dick on August 15 and told the establishment, we can’t win without you.”