Bombshell Report: Trump Didn’t Want to Be President, Was Shocked When He Won, Melania Cried

‘Melania Was in Tears—and Not of Joy’

Excerpts from journalist Michael Wolff’s new book are exposing Donald Trump, his family, and his administration at levels never before publicly revealed. In New York Magazine‘s just-published story, “Donald Trump Didn’t Want to Be President,” Wolff says there was a plan not to win but “to lose.”

Wolff says he had unprecedented access inside the Trump team, including taking “something like a semi-permanent seat on a couch in the West Wing,” which Trump supported. There were no agreements on what he could or could not publish, he reports, saying his new book, “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” is the sum of more than 200 interviews.

Trump’s “ultimate goal,” Wolff says, “had never been to win.”

“I can be the most famous man in the world,” he had told his aide Sam Nunberg at the outset of the race. His longtime friend Roger Ailes, the former head of Fox News, liked to say that if you want a career in television, first run for president. Now Trump, encouraged by Ailes, was floating rumors about a Trump network. It was a great future. He would come out of this campaign, Trump assured Ailes, with a far more powerful brand and untold opportunities.

…

“This is bigger than I ever dreamed of,” he told Ailes a week before the election. “I don’t think about losing, because it isn’t losing. We’ve totally won.”

On Election night, when it became clear Trump would likely win, “Don Jr. told a friend that his father, or DJT, as he calls him, looked as if he had seen a ghost. Melania was in tears—and not of joy.”

Trump went from being “befuddled” to “disbelieving” to “horrified.”

Trump’s “calculation” was that he would lose.

The candidate and his top lieutenants believed they could get all the benefits of almost becoming president without having to change their behavior or their worldview one whit. Almost everybody on the Trump team, in fact, came with the kind of messy conflicts bound to bite a president once he was in office. Michael Flynn, the retired general who served as Trump’s opening act at campaign rallies, had been told by his friends that it had not been a good idea to take $45,000 from the Russians for a speech. “Well, it would only be a problem if we won,” ­Flynn assured them.

…

Once he lost, Trump would be both insanely famous and a martyr to Crooked Hillary. His daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared would be international celebrities. Steve Bannon would become the de facto head of the tea-party movement. Kellyanne Conway would be a cable-news star. Melania Trump, who had been assured by her husband that he wouldn’t become president, could return to inconspicuously lunching. Losing would work out for everybody. Losing was winning.

On Election Day, Kellyanne Conway was certain Trump would lose, Wolff writes, but had a plan to slough off the blame.

She had spent a good part of the day calling friends and allies in the political world and blaming Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee. Now she briefed some of the television producers and anchors whom she had been carefully courting since joining the Trump campaign — and with whom she had been actively interviewing in the last few weeks, hoping to land a permanent on-air job after the election.

Earlier today The Guardian also published an excerpt of Wolff’s book, in which Steve Bannon calls Donald Trump Jr’s meeting with a Russian lawyer “treasonous.” Bannon also says special counsel Robert Mueller will “crack Don Jr like an egg.”

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