White House and former Trump campaign officials are pushing back hard Friday on a claim in a salacious new book that President Donald Trump and his team expected, or maybe even wanted, to lose the 2016 election.
The claim is made in Michael Wolff’s new tome, “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House.”
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“Even though the numbers in a few key states had appeared to be changing to Trump’s advantage, neither Kellyanne Conway nor Trump himself nor his son-in-law, Jared Kushner — the effective head of the campaign — wavered in their certainty: Their unexpected adventure would soon be over,” Wolff writes.
“As the campaign came to an end, Trump himself was sanguine. His ultimate goal, after all, had never been to win,” Wolff continues.
It’s a recycled claim and always an odd one: Trump had talked of running for president for decades. He then won a grueling Republican primary in 2016. Why would he want to lose?
And the dubious claim is hardly a bombshell. After the mainstream media’s humiliating predictions of a victory for Democrat Hillary Clinton evaporated on Nov. 8, 2016, the media narrative soon changed.
Well, Trump won, and that is unexpected, but he expected to lose and even wanted to, went the media refrain. He wanted to start his own cable news network. Melania Trump wanted to go back to her Manhattan socialite life. And on and on went the continually changing explanations for one of the most unexpected presidential victories in American history.
While it’s likely true the Trump campaign often had its doubts, the record also shows that Trump, Conway, and others predicted a Trump win, well before Election Day.
Conway would not comment on the record to LifeZette about Wolff’s claims. But Brad Parscale, the Trump campaign’s digital consultant, ridiculed Wolff’s claims.
“Not only did I know we would win. I put my money where my mouth was,” Parscale tweeted. “Everyone but a few ‘selfish personalities’ knew we were either leading or close. Those worried about their own brand couldn’t see the forest through the trees. Those people had zero control anyways!”
Related: New Wolff Book Is the ‘National Enquirer on Steroids’: Former Trump Aide
Wolff is a longtime author and media figure from New York City. His methods and claims have long been subject to criticism. But his suggestion that Trump did not at all think he would win is sloppy.
As it turns out, there are plenty of claims from the Trump campaign — and fairly detailed projections — in the media record. This list of three was compiled with the help of Republican officials in the White House orbit. It is by no means an exhaustive list.
1.) Conway on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” (October 31). Conway sounded awfully confident on this date in 2016.
“We are going to win the election. We know that, if you are an undecided voter, you are very decided about Hillary Clinton, there is really nothing else you are going to learn about her in these last 8-10 days that are going to change your mind.”
“We now have six different routes to 270.”
“And I predict that we will win,” said Conway. “We feel really good — for all the articles last week about the path is gone, the path is narrow, the path is nonexistent. We have a couple different paths to 270.”
2.) Conway on “Morning Joe” (November 7). “We are going into her 248 ‘blue wall’ … We are talking about flipping blue states. We now have six different routes to 270.”
The “248” refers to the solid electoral votes Hillary Clinton expected to get from Democratic-leaning states, or “blue states.” Pundits often said Clinton had a “blue wall” that Trump could not crack.
Conway even told NBC News in this appearance that polling showed women would help Trump win Pennsylvania, a state that last voted for a Republican presidential candidate in 1988.
Come Election Day, Trump would win a number of “blue” states: Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan. Conway often said the Trump campaign had “six” routes to victory. She repeated the strategy to “The Circus” crew after Trump won.
3.) Conway to ABC News (Election Night). Before the results came in that night, Conway seemed to hedge, but noted that Trump would, in the end, likely win states that Republicans John McCain and Mitt Romney lost in 2008 and 2012, respectively. Those extra states would help them break the “blue wall,” even though mainstream Republican officials did not help out much.
“We don’t have all the senators, governors, former presidents,” Conway told George Stephanopolous. “The irony, George, is tonight we are poised to win states that neither Romney nor McCain won and we’re winning those states without Romney and McCain’s support.”
PoliZette White House writer Jim Stinson can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter.
(photo credit, homepage image: Kellyanne Conway, CC BY-SA 3.0, by Gage Skidmore; photo credit, article image: Kellyanne Conway, CC BY-SA 4.0, by Michael Vadon)
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