But it was hard to hear over the boos. Chanting the nominee’s name, Trump’s supporters in the audience heckled Ryan throughout his speech. “Shame on you!” they shouted.
THE WOMEN FLANKED TRUMP, TWO OF THEM ON EACH SIDE, SEATED BEHIND rectangular folding tables draped in olive fabric. The small conference room, on the campus of Washington University in St. Louis, was barren save for the tables, some black coffee mugs, bottles of water, and an American flag. Reporters rushed into the room. Cameras started rolling. Jaws hit the floor.
It was less than two hours until the start of the October 9 presidential debate, a spectacle that would draw tens of millions of eyeballs, and the GOP nominee was putting on a surprise pregame show. Without advance warning, Trump held an impromptu press conference alongside a group of women who had publicly accused Bill Clinton of sexual misconduct.
There had been speculation for months that he could invite one of the former president’s accusers to a debate, perhaps having them sit in the front row to unnerve Clinton’s wife. Trump’s campaign always dismissed the rumors. Priebus, who joined Trump on the flight to St. Louis to help with last-minute debate prep, had heard nothing about the planned stunt; the only gossip from the plane ride was Trump railing against Giuliani’s performance on the Sunday shows, yelling repeatedly through the cabin, “What the fuck is Rudy doing? Get this guy off the television!”
Inside the debate hall, when co-moderators Anderson Cooper and Martha Raddatz introduced them, Trump and Clinton entered from opposite wings of the auditorium looking steeled for a street fight. They approached one another, only to stop abruptly and stand several feet apart. There would be no handshake—a first, it was believed, in the annals of presidential debating.
After a schoolteacher in attendance asked the opening question, about whether the candidates felt they were modeling good behavior for the nation’s children, Cooper sensed a natural segue to ask about Trump’s remarks. The Republican nominee offered an answer rehearsed again and again on the plane ride from New York: “I’m not proud of it,” he said, “but this is locker room talk.” Pressed on what his comments meant, Trump replied, “I have great respect for women. Nobody has more respect for women than I do.” There were audible groans from the audience.
When the moderators turned to Clinton, she, like Trump, commenced with a clearly practiced soliloquy. “With prior Republican nominees for president, I disagreed with them . . . but I never questioned their fitness to serve,” Clinton said. “Donald Trump is different.”
Trump attacked and counterattacked throughout, bringing up Bill Clinton’s history of being “abusive to women” and aggressively prosecuting Clinton’s use of a private email server while secretary of state, an issue he had failed to raise during the first debate. “If I win,” Trump declared, “I am going to instruct my attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation. Because there have never been so many lies, so much deception.”
“Everything he just said was absolutely false,” Clinton responded when given the floor, adding, “It’s just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country.”
“Because you’d be in jail,” Trump shot back. Some audience members gasped. Others cheered.
When the moderators asked Clinton to explain, given her statements about some Trump supporters being “deplorables” who are “irredeemable,” how she could unite the country, she expressed some remorse. “My argument is not with his supporters,” Clinton said of her opponent, “it’s with him.”
“She has tremendous hate in her heart,” Trump replied.
It was, without question, the ugliest and most vitriolic presidential debate in the mass-communication era. And it was exactly what Trump needed. Facing pressure unlike any White House hopeful in memory, the Republican nominee didn’t just get off the mat; he came up swinging. “What were the odds? Like fifty-fifty, will he show up?” Trump says. “That debate won me the election.”
RYAN FELT VALIDATED BY THE ACCESS HOLLYWOOD TAPE, EVEN AS HIS worst fears were being realized.
It was nearing the one-year anniversary of his swearing-in as Speaker of the House, and he’d spent much of that time sounding the alarms about Trump. He worried about an opposition research attack that could cripple the nominee and do serious collateral damage to the party. In fact, it almost seemed inevitable. Trump had been in the public eye for decades and rarely missed an opportunity to raise eyebrows. He was a regular guest on shock jock Howard Stern’s radio show, often to discuss the female anatomy. He had been “roasted” in the crudest of terms on Comedy Central. And there had long been talk that Trump, between owning the Miss Universe pageant and starring in NBC’s The Apprentice, had left a documented trail of raunchy talk and devious behavior.
The Access Hollywood tape didn’t just present a crisis for Trump’s candidacy. It threatened to torpedo Republicans down the ballot in contests across the country. All throughout the weekend, McConnell lobbied Priebus to redirect the RNC’s cash earmarked for the presidential race toward his Senate campaigns. His argument: If they didn’t maintain their majority in the Senate, President Hillary Clinton would remake the federal courts for a generation.
Ryan wanted to take more dramatic action. On an emergency leadership conference call, the day of the St. Louis debate, Ryan floated the idea of withdrawing his endorsement of Trump. He would kill their majority, the Speaker said; cutting him off might be their best hope of saving the House. It was Kevin McCarthy, the majority leader and Trump’s favored member of the GOP leadership, who talked Ryan down. Withdrawing their support, McCarthy argued, would backfire by depressing turnout in Trump-friendly districts and states.
Ryan found himself agreeing. He would not go so far as to renounce his endorsement of Trump. He would, however, tell members that he planned to do nothing to help the nominee over the final month of the campaign, focusing solely on protecting their House majority. And he would advise them to do what they felt was best to survive in their districts, whether that meant defending Trump or running away from him.
On Monday morning, October 10, Ryan convened a conference call with all 246 House Republicans. According to audio that was later leaked to Breitbart.com—a sign of how Ryan’s far-right members reacted—the Speaker said of Trump, “His comments are not anywhere in keeping with our party’s principles and values. There are basically two things that I want to make really clear, as for myself as your Speaker. I am not going to defend Donald Trump—not now, not in the future.”6
Ryan added, “Look, you guys know I have real concerns with our nominee. I hope you appreciate that I’m doing what I think is best for you, the members, not what’s best for me. . . . I talked to a bunch of you over the last seventy-two hours and here is basically my takeaway. To everyone on this call, this is going to be a turbulent month. Many of you on this call are facing tough reelections. Some of you are not. But with respect to Donald Trump, I would encourage you to do what you think is best and do what you feel you need to do.”
As the Speaker finished, stepping back to let his members weigh in, he felt uneasy. Ryan had wanted to unendorse Trump; McCarthy had convinced him not to. Now Ryan worried that he hadn’t gone far enough, that his members would be upset about his merely saying he would no longer defend Trump.