As Hugh Hewitt, the radio host and constitutional law professor who’d butted heads with Trump, had written in the Washington Examiner that summer, “It’s the Supreme Court, stupid!”9
To the credit of the political newcomer, Trump possessed an innate understanding of this constituency’s control over his destiny. If white Christian turned out to vote en masse, he had a chance to upset Clinton; if they didn’t, he would be roadkill. This explains the speech at Liberty University, the summit in New York City, the release of two lists of Supreme Court candidates, the formation of a faith-based advisory board, and the selection of Pence as his running mate.
There was one final thing they needed: to hear Trump speak their language. The nominee’s Christian-ese was stiff and rehearsed, often laughably so. For as horrified as they were of a Clinton-controlled Supreme Court ruling on everything from abortion to guns to religious liberties, conservatives still harbored justified skepticism of Trump’s conversion. If they were going to turn a blind eye to his odious behavior in the name of Supreme Court appointments, they at least wanted assurance—real, heartfelt, unscripted assurance—that he would deliver.
They got it in Sin City, of all places.
During the third and final presidential debate in Las Vegas, on October 19, Trump hammered the significance of the high court. After praising the Heller decision, which protected the individual’s right to keep and bear arms, Trump pledged to appoint justices who would overturn the landmark ruling in Roe v. Wade that had legalized abortion.
Then, he went even further. After Clinton defended her Senate vote protecting the practice of partial-birth abortion, Trump pounced. “If you go with what Hillary is saying, in the ninth month, you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb of the mother just prior to the birth of the baby,” he said.10 “Now, you can say that that’s okay. And Hillary can say that that’s okay. But it’s not okay with me.”
It was a seminal moment in his candidacy. Ralph Reed, the longtime Christian conservative honcho and president of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, was effusive afterward. “Trump just sealed the deal with evangelicals,” he predicted.
It was the consummating feat Trump needed, especially as it distracted from his otherwise lackluster debate performance, which included continued allegations of a “rigged election” and a sinister veiled threat not to accept the results of November 8.
He was still the underdog. But two weeks after Access Hollywood threatened to kill his candidacy, Trump had life.
Chapter Seventeen
October 2016
“Thank God.”
WE SMACKED INTO THE RUNWAY AND FELT THE WHEELS CLAWING for traction on the rain-slicked tarmac. The Boeing 737 finally lurched to an ungraceful standstill, at which point we laughed and exchanged jokes. Mike Pence was grinning a minute later as he approached from the front of the plane. “Everybody okay?” he asked me and six other reporters.
Yes, we replied, no big deal. Except that it was: The plane had slid off the runway altogether and sliced through a collapsible concrete track designed to stop us from spilling into the East River. Rescue vehicles were now screaming across LaGuardia’s tarmac, sirens blaring in the brisk October night; first responders would soon climb the back stairs and shout for us to evacuate immediately. “I didn’t realize it,” Pence told us of the accident, “until I saw mud on the front windows.”
Alas, it was impossible to survey the wreckage from inside the plane.
Such was the story of his final four weeks as Donald Trump’s running mate. The release of the Access Hollywood tape was a traumatic event for the VP nominee. He was initially inconsolable, retreating to Indiana, signaling to some friends that he might not stay with the campaign. Convinced by advisers that his only real option was to run through the tape—no pun intended—Pence dutifully resumed his role as Trump’s wing man.
Soon, however, he went into a different sort of shell. Having emerged from hiding after forty-eight hours and spoken candidly with Trump, the VP nominee began to feel certain that his running mate—a man he’d prayed with, golfed with, become friends with—was genuinely contrite, was truly a different person than the one on the decade-old recording, yet was being victimized by a bloodthirsty liberal media.
This conclusion afforded Pence the luxury of becoming willfully oblivious to perception. He ignored Trump’s critics and retreated deeper into the safe confines of the campaign’s echo chamber, blocking out the antagonism and gloom. After returning to the trail, he rarely interacted with the embedded reporters who traveled with him. In sporadic interviews, he responded to questions highlighting Trump’s behaviors and inaccuracies with a foreign gaze. Pence had insulated himself—from the possibility that Trump may have committed sexual assault; from the harshest critiques of his decision to join the GOP ticket; and from the reality that its defeat was likely.
At a rally in Fort Dodge, Iowa, he began by saluting his “great, great friend,” the brazen race-baiter Congressman Steve King, who “does you proud every single day.” He closed as he always did, by alluding to Scripture: “I truly believe what’s been true for thousands of years is still true today,” Pence said. “As the ancient words say, if His people who are called by His name will humble themselves and pray . . . He will hear from heaven and He will heal this land.”
Problem was, none of Pence’s traveling posse, a tight-knit group of loyalists, thought the GOP ticket had a prayer on November 8. It was nakedly apparent during my five days with them, on a swing through seven states in late October, that the VP nominee’s team had shifted its focus from winning the election to protecting the image and preserving the future ambitions of Pence.
This was not especially surprising given that some of his top aides had been vehemently opposed to Trump in the first place. Marc Short, Pence’s longtime consigliere, was the Koch brothers’ lieutenant who quit after failing to convince them to finance an eight-figure assault on Trump; Nick Ayers, another trusted adviser, had warned Pence and his other clients throughout the primary season that Trump could bring down the entire party.
As we idled on the runway in Fort Dodge, awaiting clearance for takeoff during a lengthy delay, Pence’s team ordered us off the plane, announcing that the VP nominee would quarterback an impromptu football game below. Pence led us away from the tarmac, positioning himself in front of a breathtaking backdrop of golden cornfields. As he cocked his arm to throw—sleeves rolled up, top of his shirt unbuttoned, tie loosened—you could smell his team salivating. This was a made-for-Iowa campaign commercial. Pence would be back, likely as the GOP front-runner, in a few short years.
The one man on the plane with other plans, the one who believed Trump was going to be the next president of the United States, was Pence himself.
The Indiana governor knew all too well the story of Dan Coats, his friend and fellow Hoosier. Back in 1992, Coats, a congressman, had joined then-Vice President Dan Quayle for a fly-around spanning the forty-eight hours before Election Day. When Coats climbed aboard the plane, Quayle told him, “It’s done. We’re going to lose. Bill Clinton is going to win. The next few days are going to be tough, and I just wanted someone here with me. I’m really glad you’re here.”