All the president’s ‘Guys’
By
November 19, 2020 at 5:00 a.m. CST
Remember
Rob Goldstone? He was the portly British publicist who took selfies wearing
wacky hats, and who sent Donald Trump Jr. an email offering documents from the
Russians that would “incriminate” Hillary Clinton.
“If
it’s what you say I love it,” Don Jr. wrote back in 2016, before setting up a
meeting.
Rob
Goldstone is a Trump Guy, a member of a fraternity of oddballs, attention
hounds and hapless bagmen who never would have come within 100 yards of
presidential affairs under normal circumstances — but who now, thanks to Trump,
will remain part of history long after we forget their names. Scaramucci.
Lewandowski. Omarosa. Seb Gorka. Carter Page. Mike Lindell and his company, My
Pillow. Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas and his old company, Fraud
Guarantee.
It can
be hard to keep track of all the bit players in the Trump show, and
the next administration seems more likely to mark a return to a
relatively dull parade of experts and bureaucrats. So, while we still can,
let’s remember some Trump Guys.
Trump
Guys are largely responsible for our current reality. The general election of
2016 began with a Guy, Goldstone, peddling info on Clinton, and the 2020
campaign ended with another Guy, Tony Bobulinski, offering the same on Joe
Biden. Over the past four years, Trump Guys have played key roles in a
special counsel investigation, an impeachment and, most recently, an
election-fraud scavenger hunt behind Four Seasons Total Landscaping in
Philadelphia.
Their
experiences also offer a prophecy of what life might be like for all of us once
Trump is out of our lives: You can never really get back to the way things were
before he shook up your world.
“Whatever
I do, and wherever I end up in life, I see myself a little like Monica
Lewinsky,” Goldstone said in a recent interview. “I will always be the person
who wrote that email. Jeff Toobin said to me recently, whatever you do in your
life, you wrote the most famous email, perhaps of the entire century.” (Toobin,
the now-former New Yorker writer who lost his job at the magazine in the
aftermath of the most famous Zoom call of the century, confirmed this account.)
“Laura,
I’m trying to speak to somebody!” yelled Michael Cohen, Trump’s
former fixer who later went to jail and is now under house arrest, when reached
by phone. “My God,” he said. “It’s unbelievable, it’s like my wife is 2 years
old. That’s the problem with being locked up at home, you can’t escape.”
Carter
Page’s exact whereabouts remain unknown. “That’s sort of the nature of being an
international fugitive,” said Page, who is not an international fugitive, when
reached by phone the day before the election. (A Google news search for Page,
an energy consultant whose brief role as a foreign-policy adviser to Trump’s
2016 campaign helped spur the FBI’s Russia investigation, turned up a local item about a talk he was scheduled to give to
the Republican club of Flower Mound, Tex.)
Anthony
Scaramucci, the New York finance guy who lasted less than two weeks as a senior
administration official before he was fired after being too candid about his machinations with a reporter, has
embraced his Trump White House alumnus status, fashioning himself as a
dial-a-quote for reporters looking for insight on the president’s behavior. Former
“Apprentice” contestant and White House adviser Omarosa Manigault-Newman, too,
has gone the route of Trump apologist-turned-Trumpologist.
Sean
Spicer, a longtime Republican hand who launched his brief tenure as press
secretary by yelling at journalists for accurately reporting on the modest
crowd size at Trump’s inauguration, had a cameo at the 2017 Emmys and competed on “Dancing With the Stars,” doing
salsa to the Spice Girls in a shirt that resembled a gigantic piece of neon
kelp.
Are the
Guys all right? It’s hard to say.
“It has
done nothing for me,” Goldstone asked about the experience of being a Trump Guy
“Which is strange, because usually knowing a president isn’t a bad thing. But
there was something about even getting close to Donald Trump that seems to have
forever marked you.”
How
does a guy become a Trump Guy, anyway?
“Barack
Obama and every other president had a circle around them,” said Parnas, a Trump
Guy who was dispatched to Ukraine on a quixotic quest to find dirt on Biden.
“If I could have broken into the circle, I think Obama and I would have been
friends. But I would never have even gotten that opportunity, because his
circle is his defense.”
“Trump
doesn’t have that circle,” he continued. “He doesn’t have a defense
circle because everyone around him is out for themselves.”
When
President Obama came to Washington, he arrived with a “no new friends” mantra,
choosing instead to surround himself with a close group of friends and
advisers, your Valerie Jarretts and David Axelrods.
Parnas
was a failed businessman with a string of bad debts and a company he’d named
Fraud Guarantee after having personally spent time cleaning up Google search results
for his name that turned up fraud accusations levied against him. With a
perfectly round head and thinning hair slicked down, he even looked a little
like he’d been picked up at the secondhand henchman store.
In
other words, he fit right in.
“I would
walk into the Trump hotel and it was like the movie ‘Trading Places,’ ” he said. “Everyone
would say, ‘Hello, Mr. Parnas.’ And people from the
Trump circle would be there and welcome me like it was my other home.”
All it
took to break in was to spend some money at a few Trump fundraisers and
dinners, ingratiate himself to the crowd. Soon he was part of Giuliani’s
shadow-diplomacy efforts in Ukraine; Parnas lived there until he was 4 and had
connections. His work with the former New York mayor, which included a
haphazard attempt to find
damaging information on Joe Biden and his son Hunter, and a slightly more
successful effort to oust the Ukrainian ambassador, Marie Yovanovitch (for the
sin of not being a Trump Guy), eventually became fodder during Trump’s
impeachment.
Parnas
and his partner, Igor Fruman, were detained at Dulles Airport while holding
one-way tickets to Germany, and charged with planning to direct funds from a
Russian citizen to U.S. politicians. Today Parnas is under house arrest, only
allowed out to go to the store or walk the dog. He’s got three children at
home, the youngest still in diapers, which he is changing for the first time in
his parenthood. And with plenty of time to think about it, he’s come to regret
his time as a Trump Guy.
When
Biden was declared the winner of the 2020 campaign, Parnas said he cried for
joy.
“I got
emotional watching Hunter up there, and I felt so bad that I participated in
helping them,” he said, referring to his work with Trump’s allies. “But it was
a cult, and I was in a war.”
It was
a bumbling war, waged by a team of swaggering novices. “It wasn’t
funny then,” Parnas said. “But, it’s hilarious.”
So it
often goes with Trump Guys, whose capers might be
charming if they were, say, trying to steal the rival football team's mascot
rather than running the government or trying to usher the country through a
deadly pandemic.
When
Ben Carson, Trump’s secretary of housing and urban development, came down with
covid-19 last week, the former surgeon wasn’t worried. He had a Guy for that.
“I
heard about the oleander extract from Mike,” Carson said in an interview.
“Mike”
is Mike Lindell, the pillow magnate who served as a Trump campaign chairman in
Minnesota; oleander extract is an unproven therapeutic remedy for the coronavirus that Lindell has been pushing.
Carson
said he took the extract, which has not been approved for such purposes by the
FDA and which experts say may be dangerous, and within hours his symptoms
disappeared — to the delight of Lindell, who has a financial
stake in the company that makes the extract.
“Anybody
who has ever gotten covid and taken it, they are fine in five hours, and the
next day are running around playing floor hockey in the hallway,” said Lindell,
who has pitched the Trump administration on its effectiveness (which, again,
has not been proved).
Trump
is not only a Guy magnet. He is also an alchemist, able to turn anyone into a
Guy.
Rex
Tillerson, the former Secretary of State, was a highly successful businessman,
before Trump turned him into the Guy who was reportedly fired
while on the toilet.
Spicer
was a political hack with the Republican National Committee before Trump turned
him into the angry Guy in a too-large suit lying about a too-small crowd.
Giuliani
completed his transformation from America’s Mayor to Trump’s Guy-in-chief — a
kind of a Guyfather, really, presiding over the work of lesser Guys like Parnas
and Fruman.
It’s
almost impossible to spend time around this president without becoming some
kind of Guy.
“And
then, when the president is done,” Parnas said. “He discards them and pretends
he never knew them.”
Michael
Cohen is, in many ways, the O.G. (Original Guy) of
the Trump universe. He began working for the Trump Organization in 2006, and
for years served as a attack-dog attorney in the mold of Trump's old
consigliere, Roy Cohn. He facilitated hush money payments to porn stars. He
threatened journalists ("So I'm warning you, tread very f---ing lightly
because what I'm going to do to you is going to be f---ing disgusting," he
told a reporter looking into reports of Trump's spousal abuse). After Trump
successfully took over the GOP, Cohen served as the deputy finance chairman of
the Republican National Committee.
Then
federal agents raided his home and office. Then he was arrested for campaign
finance violations and tax evasion, and admitted in court that the president
had personally directed him to help cover up a potential sex scandal.
Cohen
spent over a year in federal prison, emerging with chilling stories about what
it’s like inside for a Trump turncoat. Once, he said, after coming down with a
cold, he borrowed a friend’s turtleneck sweater (“When I have a cold, I like to
have my neck covered”), and a Trump-loving guard made him take it off because
it didn’t comply to the dress code.
Wait,
that’s it?
“It was
actually incredibly obnoxious of him,” Cohen said.
When
the pandemic hit, he was moved to house arrest, where the horrors of lockup now
include getting irritated with his wife. Cohen said he’s sorry about all he did
in his Trump Guy days. His penance includes starting a podcast called “Mea
Culpa” and writing a best-selling book, “Disloyal,” which he’s trying to turn into a movie.
Would a
Trump Guy even be a Trump Guy if he weren’t selling something?
Books, fish
oil supplements, access? In that way, Trump Guys aren’t
altogether different from other government guys who try to cash in on their
Washington stories.
Well,
except that a bunch of them seem to be doing so under monitoring by law
enforcement.
“While
I was going through it, I went back and read a lot about Watergate,” said Rick
Gates, a former deputy campaign manager for Trump who is under house arrest for
conspiracy against the United States and making false statements. “I think like
most of those people we are going to be a footnote in history, but a footnote
to a president who will clearly be remembered for decades to come. My goal is
to get away from that kind of footnote.”
Other
footnotes: Paul Manafort, the former campaign chairman; Roger Stone, the longtime
adviser; George Papadopoulos, the foreign policy adviser; and Michael Flynn,
the former national security adviser. They were all convicted of crimes, too.
Arrested
or not,being a Trump Guy can feel like something of a life sentence.
This is
obviously very high level and sensitive information
but is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr Trump. . . .
Before
he sent that infamous message to Don Jr., Goldstone was just a publicist
living in New York City. His clients included the Madison Square Boys and Girls
Club, the Russian Tea Room and the Azerbaijani pop star Emin Agalarov. He first
met Donald Trump and his clan while helping bring the 2013 Miss Universe
Pageant to Moscow with Agalarov’s father, Aras Agalarov, as the host. That
sealed his fate: Goldstone was baptized into the brotherhood of Trump Guys when
his offer to help Russia help the Trump campaign made him a geopolitical person of interest.
Also,
an object of ridicule. Because Goldstone was a ridiculous character.
He’d
told Trump’s eldest that he had information from the “Crown prosecutor of
Russia,” even though such a person does not exist. On the day of the meeting he
brokered between a Russian lawyer and Trump campaign officials, Goldstone
checked into Trump Tower on Facebook.
The
meeting itself was a bust; Goldstone’s contact had a lot more information on
Russian adoptions than opposition research on the Clintons. But the fact that
the meeting happened at all was a scandal. Russiagate obsessives looking for
info on who exactly this Rob Goldstone guy was soon found photos on social
media of the publicist exhibiting a penchant for zany headgear: a
pirate hat, a Carmen Miranda-style fruit basket, a crown . . . .
“I have
a serious question,” “Daily Show” host Trevor Noah said in a segment about
Goldstone.”Does the Trump family know anybody normal? Because everyone around
them is a cartoon.”
Goldstone
said he still gets recognized, and often hassled, in public. Public-relations
jobs have dried up as quickly as potential clients can Google his name.
(Where’s Fraud Guarantee when you need it?) Still, it’s not been all bad.
He finally had material to write that book he’s always wanted (about how one
email “Trumped” his life), and while he’s never been a particularly political
person — he said his political views are more Bernie Sanders than Trump — he
gets booked regularly on British radio as an expert on American politics.
He
regrets the email to Don Jr., he said. And, like many of us, he’s just trying
to hold on to the person he was before he got wrapped up in the Trump Show.
“I
still wear silly hats,” he said. “I was so imprisoned in my own life for a few
years. It gives me a sense of freedom to say I don’t care what you say about
me, I’m going to wear this laurel leaf, or this crown of jewels, or this
witch’s hat. It was always supposed to be just for my friends. It was never
supposed to be for millions of people.”
Manuel
Roig-Franzia contributed reporting.
