In the Oval Office. "Look around," he'd tell us."Look where we are. How incredible is this? We are standing in the Oval Office!"
I can't overstate how much moments like that meant to me. My colleagues and I would get so wrapped up in our day-to-day responsibilities, we would forget where we were and how essen-tial our work was. Incredibly, it was our boss, the president of the United States, who had to be the one to remind us.
He always appreciated how fortunate he was to be a part of history. I will never forget the first time the president rode on Marine One, the presidential helicopter .
From my office overlooking the Rose Garden, I watched him as he watched the helicopter land and then as he made his way from the Oval Office and across the South Lawn to Marine One.
He stopped in front of the marine who was standing guard by the helicopter and gave the most respectful salute. Donald Trump had been in many helicopters-and private planes, for that matter-but that look of reverence in his eyes told me this time was different.
For the August trip to Bedminster, we needed to be as persuasive as ever in order to get him to agree to it. He didn't want to go for long, certainly not ten days. In the summer of 2017, when the West Wing underwent a much needed renovation, he had gone to his club for two weeks and been destroyed by the media. They had suggested he was merely taking a vacation, and nothing could have been further from the truth. I'm not even sure the word vacation is in Donald Trump's vocabulary.
Besides, every president gets out of Washington in August for a week or longer. The city all but shuts down. Congress is out of session, and the weather is just miserable. President Barack Obama used to go to Martha's Vineyard, while George W. Bush took off for his ranch in Crawford, Texas.
When President Trump returned from those two weeks in 2017, he told us, "I'm never going away for that long again."
He wasn't kidding. Even when he went on foreign trips, he wanted the schedule to be as condensed as possible. Often he would leave late so he could fly through the night and land in the morning in time for him to start his workday. It was grueling for the staff, but the president didn't want to be gone one moment longer than necessary
"I will sleep on the plane," he used to say This time, we felt he had no choice.
"Sir, you have to go to Bedminster," we told him. "They're working on the air-conditioning system in the Oval and updating a couple of things in the residence, so you physically will not be able to work or live in the White House. Mrs. Trump will be in Bedminster. Barron [their thirteen-year-old son] will be there, and so will Ivanka, Jared [Kushner, Ivanka's husband], and their kids. We will make sure it's a productive week, that you will do as much or as little as you want. It will go by very quickly, we promise you."
Mission accomplished.
Of course, once we got him to Bedminster, there was no guarantee that he would want to stay there. It wouldn't have surprised any of us if, halfway through the ten days, he had told us, "I'm wasting my time here, and I'm getting killed by the press. Why can't we leave for DC tomorrow so I can get back to work?"
It never got to that point, thank goodness, and that was because he kept busy, catching up on calls and paperwork, while also receiving briefings from his advisors.
He also took advantage of some sorely needed time off. I worked with the club's golf pro to set up foursomes for the pres-ident with friends, members of Congress, and prominent busi-nessmen. He prefers to play with golfers at his level or better
One night, the president enjoyed a family dinner, and on the Friday before we left, he dined with Mrs. Trump and Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple. The three had a wonderful time.
By the eve of our return to the capital, slated for Sunday morning, August 18, he seemed as content as ever and more con-fident, too. I'm not suggesting that he wasn't in complete con-trol from the start. It was just that like others who had occupied that office before him, with each day that went by, each crisis he faced, for better or worse, he grew more and more into the role.
For me, it was an honor to watch up close as he further grasped the subtleties of such a formidable challenge. As he relaxed, the staff could relax. As with any job, we felt secure only when the boss was pleased.
☆
Much to be proud of happened in those ten days. Take the events we held in Pennsylvania and New Hampshire.
Unless you are in the arena and observe how excited people get to see Donald Trump in person, you can't possibly appreci-ate what a rock star he is. Television gives you a glimpse of that, but it does not come close to capturing the remarkable atmo-sphere. I've never been to a rock concert with more energy than a Trump rally.
His supporters routinely show up at the arena the night before; many stand for hours and hours, waiting for their hero to arrive. I normally watched the speech from the staff viewing area, close to the stage, and never failed to recognize how for-tunate I was.
Such a rally is most likely the only time these people will ever see the president up close. I saw him up close, day after day, for more than two and a half years.
At the podium for about ninety minutes, he isn't a phony, like countless others in public office. He relates to everybody in the building as if they were lifelong friends. He does not talk at them; he talks to them, much as President Franklin Delano Roosevelt did during those famous fireside chats on the radio in the 1930s and '40s.
It's precisely what many people are yearning for, as they struggle to get by in a country that seems to have forgotten they exist. The president doesn't forget, not for a second. He makes them feel that hey matter, and to know there is somebody in the White House fighting for them raises their spirits like noth-ing else. Other politicians have let them down, over and over. Sure, they said all the right things about increasing our wages, protecting our borders, improving our health care, and so on. But, in the end, those politicians have had more in common with one another than with the citizens they are supposed to serve. That goes for Republicans as well as Democrats
Without question, no one gets more out of the rallies than President Donald J. Trump. No wonder he feels so energized whenever he is on the road. He is reminded of all the good work he is doing for this country that the press never bothers to report on, and for which the Democrats never give him credit.
Take prison reform, something the Democrats have been talking about forever. The president got behind the issue, lead-ing to shorter sentences and job training for prisoners, and only a handful of Democrats praised him for the vital role he played. I'm not implying he did it to receive the credit, although it sure would be nice.
When he's speaking at those rallies and sees how the people react to him, he remembers: This is why I'm the president. For these people right here.
People tend to forget how much of the country voted for him. Every so often, when he hosted CEOs whose companies focused on issues that affected mostly rural areas or members of Congress from Middle America, he would call out from the Oval Office,"Madeleine, bring in the map."
The map broke down, state by state, county by county, who had voted for him and who had voted for Hillary Clinton. The East and West Coasts were mostly blue. The rest of the country was filled with red.
Like Vanna White in Wheel of Fortune, I would walk into the Oval Office proudly holding the map.
"Look at all that red,"he'd say.
At times the staff grew discouraged by the barrage of attacks from the media and also needed to be reminded of who we served. It's easy to lose sight of that while sipping a cocktail in a swanky DC hotel. Like it or not, we're also part of the elite.
The people at the Trump rallies do not care about what the New York Times or the Washington Post says they should care about: the Russia investigation, the president's income taxes-you name it. They care about feeding their families, paying their bills, and keeping their country safe.
As for the events we held in August, they were like many other events during the 2016 campaign and ever since, Donald Trump being... Donald Trump.
In Pennsylvania, at a petrochemical complex still under construction about thirty miles from Pittsburgh, he touched on so many topics that it was hard to keep track: the Paris Agreement on climate change, the Green New Deal, immigra tion, Iran, China-even the Academy Awards, which had been held way back in February.
No one, the president said, watches the Oscars anymore because of the celebrities "disrespecting the people in this room."
Amen.
Two days later, at the rally in Manchester, New Hampshire, he went off against "radical socialism" and brought up one of its chief advocates, Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren. Once Donald Trump gets rolling, it's impossible to stop him, and why would you even bother? 2020, here we come!
The rest of the August trip was just as productive, starting with two fund-raisers in the Hamptons. The first was held at the home of the real estate developer Stephen Ross, who is 95 per-cent owner of the Miami Dolphins football team; the second at a 17,000-square-foot mansion belonging to another billionaire developer and Republican donor
The program was the same for both. The president began in a photo line with guests and then conducted a roundtable with twenty or so of the major donors. It was supposed to go for roughly twenty minutes. As usual, it didn't. The man likes to talk. Which is totally fine. He is the president of the United States. He can talk as long as he wants. Each donor contributed $100,000, perhaps more. They deserved their money's worth.
Speaking of the upcoming election, we also had a political meeting at Bedminster. We held one every month or so to get came a twenty-six-year-old assistant with no experience in government-and she gets to spend as much time with the president as we do? We can't allow that to happen.
Those staff members didn't say it in so many words, but I'm certain the fact that I am a woman made them resent me even further. The people who tried over and over to hold me back-and I am not just talking about going on trips-were men. That can't be acoincidence.
Most threatening to them was how close the president and I seemed to be. He trusted me, and there aren't many people he trusts. His wife. His family. His closest friends. Maybe a hand-ful of others, such as Hope Hicks, who was then director of strategic communications, and Dan Scavino, who was director of social media, but that's about it.
Over time I became privy to information about Donald Trump and his family that other staffers were not. I never planned it that way, it just happened. I think-and I hope I'm not being presumptuous-that the president saw me almost as another daughter. I definitely saw him as a father figure. He was very kind and thoughtful and took care of me, just like my own dad.
"Where's Madeleine?" the president asked several times when he was on Air Force One or Marine One."Why isn't she with us?"
Access, it may come as no surprise, meant everything in the Trump White House, and I'm sure it was not much different in previous administrations. The closer you were to the presi-dent physically, and the more time you spent with him, the more important you were-or were perceived to be. That explains why many staffers complained on a regular basis if they weren't in the spot they thought matched their position
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