Leaked Trump tape: 'You are the special people'
Leaked Trump tape: 'You are the special people'
Exclusive audio shows how Trump lets loose at his clubs — inviting guests to join him on staff interviews
By Jon Finer
President Donald Trump, living alone inside the White House, often hungers for friendly interaction as he adjusts to the difficult work of governance. At his clubs, he finds what’s missing.
That showed last November at a cocktail and dinner reception celebrating longtime members of his Bedminster, New Jersey golf club. Deep into the process of meeting potential Cabinet nominees, the president-elect invited partygoers to stop by the next day to join the excitement.
“We’re doing a lot of interviews tomorrow — generals, dictators, we have everything,” Trump told the crowd, according to an audio tape of his closed-press remarks obtained by POLITICO from a source in the room. “You may wanna come around. It’ll be fun. We’re really working tomorrow. We have meetings every 15, 20 minutes with different people that will form our government."
"We’re going to be interviewing everybody — Treasury, we’re going to be interviewing Secretary of State,” he continued. “We have everybody coming in — if you want to come around, it’s going to be unbelievable….so you might want to come along.”
As he prepares to spend the third straight weekend at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, the tape provides a window into how Trump conducts himself away from the prying press and among the loyal faces of his club.
Trump’s comfort level among his members also has raised questions about his discretion. The president last weekend turned the Mar-a-Lago patio into an open-air situation room — discussing the response to a North Korean ballistic missile test while club members snapped pictures that ricocheted around social media and put him in the crosshairs of congressional oversight from Democrats and Republicans concerned about lax security protocols. While the White House has said that Trump was not discussing classified material in public, the incident received widespread condemnation from national security experts.
The incident received widespread condemnation from national security experts. But club members dismissed it as just an example of Trump being the man he has always been with them — available.
President George W. Bush had the respite of his Crawford, Texas, ranch to get away from the pressures of the Oval Office, often mountain biking with his more athletic staffers. President Bill Clinton, unlike many of his predecessors, took a liking to the wooded Camp David. President Barack Obama often had his high school friends visit him at the White House to provide some balance to the daily pressures of being the leader of the free world.
For Trump, the “Winter White House” of Mar-a-Lago offers him more than a warm and gilded setting outside of Washington, D.C. — it puts the isolated president back in the mix with his club family, where friends said he feels most like himself.
“So, this is my real group,” Trump said at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, on November 18, according to the audio tape. “These are the people that came here in the beginning, when nobody knew what this monster was gonna turn out to be, right?”
President Donald Trump often appears to want to include his friends in the decision-making process. | AP Photo
He added: “I see all of you. I recognize, like 100 percent of you, just about.”
Trump had a packed schedule of meetings that weekend less than two weeks after the election. On the Saturday after the cocktail party, Trump met with Mitt Romney, Michelle Rhee, Betsy DeVos, Todd Ricketts, Bob Woodson, Lew Eisenberg and Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong. On Sunday, John Gray, Kris Kobach, Wilbur Ross, Chris Christie, Rudy Giuliani, Robert Johnson and David McCormick all schlepped out to Bedminster for meetings.
Trump often appears to want to include his friends in the decision-making process.
Turning to a longtime club member that night, he said: “We were just talking about who we [are] going to pick for the FCC, who [are] we going to pick for this, who we gonna accept -- boy, can you give me some recommendations?”
The supportive crowd ate it up as the relaxed Trump, in his element, gave them a close-up view of how he was setting up the government. “You are the special people,” he told the crowd of about 100 members, who mingled around a sushi station served by a waiter wearing a camouflage “Make America Great Again” cap.
Trump is so attached to his club members that he picked David Schutzenhofer, the club manager at Bedminster, to help decorate the White House. “He’s going into the Oval Office, right? And you are going to make it beautiful,” Trump said during the event.
In an interview, Schutzenhofer confirmed he did indeed go on to visit the White House storage facility to help pick out furnishings and artwork that would be part of the Trump decorations. “It was a pretty unique assignment and I was honored to help,” he said.
White House officials received a copy of the tape from POLITICO on Friday but did not comment. On Saturday morning, after this story posted, White House deputy press secretary Sarah Sanders disputed the story and said it "tries to create a narrative that just isn't true by taking snippets of conversations and events out of context." She also disputed that Trump was inviting club members to join him in meetings. Instead, she said he was "giving a description of what is happening and explaining the nature of the disruptions at the club and reassuring the members."
Trump isn’t totally cut off from his old set of contacts when he is working from the White House. He keeps the same cell phone number he had before the election, but he is more careful now -- friends leave messages for him on his cell phone, and their calls are returned from a secure line, two people who speak regularly to Trump said.
But the familiarity of Mar-a-Lago -- where Trump has long spent winter weekends -- is critical for him, longtime aides said. “I would say it’s keeping him grounded,” said Sam Nunberg, a longtime Trump aide who worked on the campaign. “As a citizen and supporter, I’m very happy to hear he’s going to Mar-a-Lago.”
Newsmax Media CEO Chris Ruddy, who spent time with Trump at Mar-a-Lago last weekend, said it was “a natural element for him. One of the club managers told me he would only be down over the Christmas and Easter holidays. I thought, ‘That’s not going to last long.’ He loves the place so much. He loves the mental break while he mixes with friends.”
The familiarity of Mar-a-Lago — where President Donald Trump has long spent winter weekends — is critical for him, longtime aides said. | AP Photo
At the 20-acre resort, nestled between the Atlantic Ocean and South Florida’s Intracoastal Waterway, Trump lives at the main house, and likes to order the Mary MacLeod Trump’s Meat Loaf, named after his mother. His kids, meanwhile, prefer the villas by the ocean.
But the biggest attraction for Trump, according to friends, is the clientele.
“He’s very friendly with members,” said Schutzenhofer, who said shaking hands and hobnobbing has long been “part of his regular routine.”
Tom Bennison, a frequent Trump golf partner from Dallas, said Trump is “most comfortable when he’s at one of his clubs. He’s very proud of the assets he owns, especially these clubs. He’s very relaxed. He goes out of his way to make everybody feel special and to make a lot of people feel much, much bigger than they really are.”
In the audio from the Bedminster soiree, Trump gives a shout-out to a club manager, whom he identifies as “Mickey,” for being “great. He’s central casting.”
The compliments of the guests, however, don’t come for free. Part of the appeal, for Trump, is that they’re all paying him. Last weekend, after delivering a joint statement on North Korea with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Trump stopped by a wedding at the club.
“They’ve been members of this club for a long time,” Trump said, referring to the bride's family. “They’ve paid me a fortune.” Since his election, Mar-a-Lago has reportedly doubled its initiation fee to $200,000.
And the fact that the club family doesn’t come for free is a running rib. At the party at Bedminster, Trump nudged his new chief of staff, Reince Priebus, to speak to the crowd. “These members are loaded, Reince,” he said. “He will work the room for campaign contributions. Don’t quote me!”
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