No one on Donald Trump’s presidential campaign team thought Trump would actually become president—and they didn’t really want him to either, according to excerpts from Michael Wolff’s book published Wednesday in New York magazine, Newsweek reports.
Now-President Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, Donald Trump Jr., campaign manager Kellyanne Conway and first lady Melania Trump were all reportedly left dumbfounded and afraid on the night of the election in 2016, the book claims. Shortly after 8 on election night, it became clear that Trump had a real shot of becoming president. Wolff wrote that Don Jr. said his father “looked as if he had seen a ghost. Melania was in tears—and not of joy.” Steve Bannon, who helped run the Trump campaign and helped Trump’s team through the transition, said he saw Trump morph from “a disbelieving Trump and then into a horrified Trump.”
Trump’s longtime friend and former head of Fox News Roger Ailes used to say “if you want a career in television, first run for president.” And that’s just what Trump did, with plans to start a news network and become “the most famous man in the world.”
A week before the election, Trump was sure he would lose the presidency. But still, according to Wolff’s book, he told Ailes that it was “bigger than I ever dreamed of. I don’t think about losing, because it isn’t losing. We’ve totally won.”
