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How a Convention Whet Trump's Appetite for the Presidency
PoliticoFor all his norm-breaking, Trump adores old-fashioned pageantry. He has waxed enthusiastic about military parades and reveled in royal red-carpet treatment overseas. And little has captivated him as much as the lively quadrennial jamborees when a political party chooses its presidential candidate. Indeed, according to GOP operatives I spoke to who were with him 32 years ago at their party’s convention in New Orleans, the four-day crescendo of public affirmation is what piqued his interest in the presidency in the first place.
Roger Stone, Trump’s earliest and longest-running political adviser, had spearheaded that trip, ferrying the 42-year-old real estate developer and casino owner from event to event, setting up interviews with reporters, all in an attempt to stoke his interest in a prospective electoral bid. And on the last night of the extravaganza, August 18, 1988, Stone asked an associate to take Trump down to the floor of the Superdome to watch George H.W. Bush accept the nomination.
“My friend Laury—Laurance Gay—Laury got a call from Roger: ‘Hey, there’s a young business guy who wants to be on the floor,’” Republican strategist Alex Castellanos told me in 2018. “‘He wants to be there when the balloons drop, the confetti falls, the band strikes up. He wants to see all that.’”
“Roger was the lead on Trump,” said Gay, a lobbyist and longtime pal of Paul Manafort, referring to Trump’s relationship with the lobbying firm Black, Manafort & Stone, for which Gay was working. He had gotten to know Stone on Ronald Reagan’s campaign in 1980 in the Northeast before going on to work in the Department of Housing and Urban Development in the Reagan administration. This story has never been shared publicly.
“So we went down there, and the speeches were made,” Gay recalled, and Bush capped his remarks by placing his hand on his heart and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, and then Barbara Bush joined him on the podium, and the rest of his family, and their families, and Dan Quayle, his pick for vice president, and his family, “and there’s 25 people out there, and with that, the band strikes up, the confetti starts to fall, the balloons are rising and falling,” 150,000 of them, red, white and blue, and there were 15-plus minutes of sustained, ecstatic sound.
And in the middle of this scene, Trump said something, not quite to Gay, who was immediately to his left, but loud enough for him to hear.
“This is what I want.”
Roger Stone, Trump’s earliest and longest-running political adviser, had spearheaded that trip, ferrying the 42-year-old real estate developer and casino owner from event to event, setting up interviews with reporters, all in an attempt to stoke his interest in a prospective electoral bid. And on the last night of the extravaganza, August 18, 1988, Stone asked an associate to take Trump down to the floor of the Superdome to watch George H.W. Bush accept the nomination.
“My friend Laury—Laurance Gay—Laury got a call from Roger: ‘Hey, there’s a young business guy who wants to be on the floor,’” Republican strategist Alex Castellanos told me in 2018. “‘He wants to be there when the balloons drop, the confetti falls, the band strikes up. He wants to see all that.’”
“Roger was the lead on Trump,” said Gay, a lobbyist and longtime pal of Paul Manafort, referring to Trump’s relationship with the lobbying firm Black, Manafort & Stone, for which Gay was working. He had gotten to know Stone on Ronald Reagan’s campaign in 1980 in the Northeast before going on to work in the Department of Housing and Urban Development in the Reagan administration. This story has never been shared publicly.
“So we went down there, and the speeches were made,” Gay recalled, and Bush capped his remarks by placing his hand on his heart and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, and then Barbara Bush joined him on the podium, and the rest of his family, and their families, and Dan Quayle, his pick for vice president, and his family, “and there’s 25 people out there, and with that, the band strikes up, the confetti starts to fall, the balloons are rising and falling,” 150,000 of them, red, white and blue, and there were 15-plus minutes of sustained, ecstatic sound.
And in the middle of this scene, Trump said something, not quite to Gay, who was immediately to his left, but loud enough for him to hear.
“This is what I want.”
Translation: it's not the desire for public service; it's not even the desire for power. It's the desire for adoration.
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