oppose Trump in the general election: Evan McMullin. The former CIA undercover agent and congressional staffer succumbed to recruitment efforts by Kristol and Rick Wilson, a self-proclaimed Republican campaign strategist, to take on Trump as an independent. The single, childless Mormon with a laughably thin political resume would act as the moral foil to Trump, they predicted. Conservatives would have no justification for choosing an amoral business mogul from New York City over a goody-goody from Utah.
Even the Washington Post touted McMullin’s clean-as-a-whistle image, offering glowing admiration for his courage to take on the evil magnate: “To understand that optimism, you have to understand Evan McMullin,” cooed Josh Rogin in September 2016. “Unlike his backers, he’s not trying to save the Republican Party or the conservative movement. He’s doing what he has always done, volunteering for service to play whatever role he can to fight what he views as a threat to America. In this case, that threat is Trump.”38
McMullin’s candidacy started to pick up some endorsements from anti-Trump conservatives, but his long-shot effort appeared to be in vain. That is, until NeverTrump received a gift that even Bill Kristol couldn’t screw up: the infamous Access Hollywood tape.
THE OCTOBER SURPRISE
On October 7, 2016, the Washington Post posted a recording of a private conversation from 2005 between Trump and Access Hollywood host Billy Bush.39 The exchange included lewd comments about women; Trump bragged that, because of his fame and wealth, women “let you do” anything, such as “grab them by the pussy.” (The tape, perhaps not coincidentally, dropped shortly before WikiLeaks released hacked emails of Clinton campaign manager John Podesta.)
Trump apologized for the language he had used, but the damage to his campaign appeared to be fatal. House Speaker Paul Ryan, who had been hostile to Trump’s candidacy from the start, disinvited the candidate to an event and said he would no longer campaign for Trump. The move reignited the feud between the two: Responding on Twitter, Trump advised Ryan to “spend more time on balancing the budget, jobs and illegal immigration and not waste his time on fighting Republican nominee.”40
Republicans who had endorsed Trump started to demand that Trump abandon his candidacy and defer to Mike Pence, the Indiana governor and Trump’s ticket mate. “It would be wise for him to step aside and allow Mike Pence to serve as our party’s nominee,” Sen. Deb Fischer (R-NE), a Trump supporter, tweeted the day after the tape went public.41 Other high-profile Republican women, including Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina (who exited the 2016 Republican primary early) and Rep. Barbara Comstock (R-VA), joined Fischer’s plea.42
Gov. John Kasich (R-OH) bragged that he was right all along about Trump’s temperament and character—Kasich is on his second marriage to a younger woman and has a reputation as a hothead43—and promised to help rebuild the Republican Party after Trump lost.44 David French, the self-appointed religious scold of NeverTrump, blasted Trump voters on National Review’s website for blaming the media’s last-minute hit job: “If you’re a Trump fan, this one’s on you. Your eyes were open: You were warned, and you took the plunge anyway. You should be furious at two people today: Donald Trump and yourself. It’s time for some soul-searching,” he preached.45
Hundreds of Republican candidates and lawmakers withdrew their endorsements. A stable of National Review writers, including Jonah Goldberg and Dan McLaughlin, committed to McMullin.46 Others promised to write in a candidate or vote for Hillary Clinton.
But the tide of outrage from the Republican establishment played right into Trump’s hands: Just as with the “Against Trump” missive, voters viewed the rebuke as another way for party elders to thwart their choice. It would not stand.
In fact, some Republicans were forced to promptly reverse themselves after facing backlash from their constituents for abandoning Trump. Less than three days after tweeting her demand that Trump exit the race, Fischer backtracked and restated her support for the Republican ticket.47 “The quick reversals back to Mr. Trump’s camp vividly illustrated Republicans’ predicament as they grapple with a nominee whom some of their core supporters adore, a Democratic candidate their base loathes—and a host of voters who believe that Mr. Trump is self-evidently unsuited for high office,” wrote Jonathan Martin in the New York Times on October 11, 2016.48
It would be a harbinger of which side Republican voters would take when faced with a choice between Trump and old-line party leadership. The Access Hollywood matter also served up another opportunity for Trump to remind Americans, especially younger voters, exactly who the Clintons were.
In a gutsy piece of stagecraft, Trump hosted a pre-debate press conference on October 10 with four women, including Paula Jones and Juanita Broaddrick, who had accused Bill Clinton of sexual assault and rape. (Broaddrick also claimed that Hillary Clinton had threatened her.) The stunt was a display of Hillary Clinton’s immense political baggage and her own husband’s predatory sexual behavior; it also served as a stark visual that, had Trump been running against anyone besides Hillary Clinton, his prospects might not have been so bright.
To twist the optics knife even deeper, Trump attempted to seat the victims in his box for the debate, which would have placed the women near the former president; the debate commission prevented the move.49
And it was during that debate in St. Louis that Trump, unbowed by the scandal besieging his campaign, murmured his most memorable comment of the general election. When Clinton remarked that she was relieved Trump was “not in charge of the law in our country,” Trump, not missing a beat, responded, “because you’d be in jail.”50
That moment stood in sharp contrast to the debate between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama four years earlier when Romney fumbled his face-to-face encounter with Obama over the president’s lies about the Benghazi terror attacks. Confronted by debate moderator Candy Crowley, who sided with Obama’s misleading version of events by insisting he did call the deadly assault an act of terror (he had not), Romney stammered to condemn the Obama administration for its egregious excuse that a YouTube video sparked the spontaneous attack.51 Romney’s stumble on the debate stage a month before Election Day deflated Republican voters and contributed to his losing a very winnable race in 2012.
Trump, on the other hand, managed to survive a blow that would have tanked the campaign of any other candidate—a feat not unnoticed by Republican voters weary of Romney-esqe timidity. By the beginning of November, Trump had as much support among likely Republican voters as Clinton had among Democrats.52 Further, according to an ABC News/ Washington Post poll taken just days before Election Day, 97 percent of Trump voters had an unfavorable view of Clinton, the exact percentage of Clinton voters who felt the same about Trump. “This depth of animosity is unprecedented in available data from previous elections,” the pollsters observed.53
No kidding.
But hundreds of Republican and conservative leaders remained opposed to Trump.54 Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) announced he would vote for McMullin, an act of pure silliness. French threatened to shame believers to do the same. “I’ll be calling on Christians to support a candidate who possesses real integrity,” French said of McMullin.55
Dozens of one-time party heroes, including former secretary of state Colin Powell and former national security advisor Brent Scowcroft, pledged to vote for Clinton. Some news outlets reported that former president George H.W. Bush and his wife also would pull the lever for Hillary Clinton.56 (The Bushes and Clintons had developed a chummy relationship, something that Republicans, especially conservatives, viewed as a betrayal.)
ELECTION DAY: STORM THE COCKPIT OR DIE
