A day after the “Second Amendment people” stunt, Trump blamed Obama for creating a power vacuum by withdrawing troops from Iraq—but in less diplomatic terms. “He’s the founder of ISIS. He’s the founder of ISIS. He’s the founder. He founded ISIS,” Trump said of the president. “I would say the co-founder would be crooked Hillary Clinton.”13
As Trump flailed, his numbers spiraled sharply downward. He had consistently trailed Clinton by healthy margins, both in national polling averages and in battleground state surveys. But as Labor Day approached, signaling the final sprint of a presidential campaign, things were looking bleaker than ever. As of the middle of August, the RealClearPolitics averages showed Clinton leading Trump by 9 points in Pennsylvania; by 7 points in Michigan; and by 9 points in Wisconsin. He was closer in North Carolina and Florida, and his campaign felt good about Ohio and Iowa. But the keys were Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Without a sweep in those “Blue Wall” states in the Rust Belt, Trump’s team feared, he wouldn’t have a prayer.
Whatever nominal bounce Trump had received from the convention was long gone. The party’s fissures were fresher by the day and showing no signs of repair. His campaign was treading water, understaffed and out-organized: Some media estimates reported that the Democratic nominee had nearly three times the number of field offices as her Republican opponent.14
There were two saving graces for Trump. The first was Priebus and his infrastructure. Since taking over the Republican National Committee in early 2011, the chairman had completely revamped its operations. The party had raised record amounts of money and spent heavily to strengthen the field programs of its affiliates in the key battleground states. In the realm of technology and voter targeting, where Obama’s Democratic Party was once hopelessly ahead of its counterpart, Republicans had all but caught up. Priebus had, in the span of five years, turned the RNC from a punch line into a powerhouse.
And not a moment too soon: Trump had virtually no campaign organization to speak of. In many of the crucial nominating contests, while Cruz commanded a sprawling ground game and a data-driven turnout machine, Trump countered with small, ragtag teams of volunteers. This made his primary conquest all the more impressive, but it rendered him woefully unprepared to compete in the general election. Without a strong national party doing the blocking and tackling on behalf of his campaign, Trump’s chances might have slipped from slim to none.
The second silver lining for the Republican nominee was his opponent. Trump was the most unpopular major-party nominee in modern American history, but Clinton wasn’t far behind. Controversies had dogged her candidacy from day one: Benghazi, the Clinton Foundation, a private email server that had been wiped of potentially damning messages. Even after then-FBI director James Comey cleared Clinton in July, rebuking her use of the server but recommending no criminal charges, the allegations of her slipperiness remained, with large majorities of voters throughout the year telling pollsters that she was “untrustworthy.”15 By August, Clinton’s popularity had reached an all-time low. The ABC News/Washington Post poll showed that 59 percent of registered voters viewed her unfavorably—compared to 60 percent for Trump.16
Perhaps even more detrimental was her campaign’s strategic obliviousness. It was plainly apparent by late summer that Trump’s only path to 270 Electoral votes ran through the states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. And though Clinton poured time and resources into Pennsylvania, she had a decidedly lighter footprint in Michigan, and was completely MIA in Wisconsin. Republican officials in the latter two states sensed that she was vulnerable but feared that Trump and his amateurish campaign were incapable of capitalizing.
In mid-August, the Republican nominee announced a dramatic shakeup of his operation. Manafort was relieved of his duties as campaign manager, replaced by Conway, the messaging maestro. Priebus, having all but relocated from Washington to New York, was taking on a broader role as unofficial chief strategist. In the most newsworthy move, Trump hired Breitbart News honcho Steve Bannon as the campaign’s chief executive.
While no single person’s influence on American politics has ever been more overstated—journalists would spend parts of 2017 penning stories suggesting that Bannon was creating a shadow party to take down the GOP establishment—his hire was of enormous symbolic value.
Trump had spent the three months since clinching the nomination attempting to conform himself to the party: firing Corey Lewandowski, bringing on veteran operatives, playing nice (for the most part) with GOP leaders, dialing back (when possible) his rhetorical superfluities. The addition of Bannon, whose website had championed Trump’s “America First” policies and lashed out at his establishment critics, suggested that the Republican nominee was going to finish the campaign his way—win or lose.
The Clinton camp could barely contain its euphoria. Having long debated the timing of hitting Trump explicitly over his ties to the “alt-right,” a marginal internet movement of nationalists and Neanderthals, she saw Bannon’s hiring as the ideal opportunity. “The de facto merger between Breitbart and the Trump campaign represents a landmark achievement for this group, a fringe element that has effectively taken over the Republican Party,” Clinton announced the following week during a speech in Nevada. She warned that Trump was campaigning in concert with “the rising tide of hardline, right-wing nationalism around the world.”17
Trump, a firm believer in the “all publicity is good publicity” mantra, saw Clinton’s speech as a net positive for his campaign. So did many of his friends and advisers. Even those skeptical of the Bannon move now felt that Clinton’s attacks could help Trump bring home the base.
There was another layer of intrigue. Roger Ailes, the longtime Fox News chieftain who had recently been fired amid spiderwebbing allegations of sexual harassment, had begun advising Trump in an informal capacity. By bringing Bannon aboard the campaign, Trump was now guided by the leaders of the two most loyal media outlets on the right. It was all gravy for Ailes and Bannon. If Trump won, their kindred spirit would occupy the Oval Office. If he lost, the possibilities for a new, nationalist-branded, Trump-inspired media empire were boundless.
AS LABOR DAY APPROACHED, A NATION ALIENATED FROM ITSELF OVER issues of politics, culture, and identity found fresh ammunition for its intrasocietal cold war. It came from the unlikeliest of places: the sidelines of a football game.
Colin Kaepernick, the biological son of a black father and a white mother, was given up for adoption and raised by an affluent white family in California. A second-round pick in the 2011 NFL draft by the San Francisco 49ers, he spent his rookie season on the bench before gaining stardom a year later, replacing the team’s starter halfway through the season and leading the 49ers all the way to the Super Bowl. (In his first career playoff game, Kaepernick ran for 181 yards, setting the NFL’s single-game record for rushing yards by a quarterback.) He took the 49ers back to the conference championship game in 2013 and was rewarded with a princely $126 million contract. His next two years, however, were plagued by injuries and inconsistency, and by the start of the 2016 season, Kaepernick was the 49ers’ designated backup.
Although he didn’t see the field until the team’s sixth game, Kaepernick was the talk of the NFL. On August 26, after staying seated on the bench during a rendition of the national anthem, the quarterback told a reporter with NFL.com, “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”18