NARRATOR:
In a nation divided, two very different candidates facing off.
A vice president with a meteoric rise, who shattered barriers along the way.
A former president with decades in the spotlight, always determined to be the winner at any cost.
DONALD TRUMP:
And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.
NARRATOR:
Two fighters.
KAMALA HARRIS:
We do not throw up our hands when it is time to roll up our sleeves and fight for who we are!
NARRATOR:
One seeking vindication, promising a return to greatness.
DONALD TRUMP:
And we will make America great again!
NARRATOR:
The other seeking to move beyond the past, promising a greater future.
KAMALA HARRIS:
But we are not going back.
NARRATOR:
The Choice 2024.
The Rona Barrett Show, 1980
RONA BARRETT, TV host:
Tell me about the early days of Donald Trump. What kind of a family life did you have? Did you go outside and play ball? Or did you have what we call a normal life, a normal upbringing?
DONALD TRUMP:
Well, Rona, I think I was probably brought up in a very normal fashion. I have brothers and sisters. I have wonderful parents. Wonderful family, really very wonderful family.
RONA BARRETT:
Are you like your dad?
DONALD TRUMP:
Well, I hope so. I have a very wonderful father, and I would hope I'd be somewhat like my father.
RONA BARRETT:
What’s he like?
DONALD TRUMP:
Strong, dynamic gentleman.
RONA BARRETT:
Is he loving? Kind? Giving?
DONALD TRUMP:
Absolutely, absolutely. Totally.
LOUISE SUNSHINE, Fmr. VP, Trump Organization:
Fred Trump was a machine. He was a human machine. He was driven beyond whatever the description of driven could ever mean. And when you look at the picture of Fred, and you look at Donald, you see the great resemblance between the two. And when you think about Fred’s energy, you see how it is channeled through Donald.
MARY TRUMP, Niece:
If you met my grandfather, he was quite a cheerful person.
NARRATOR:
Mary Trump is a psychologist who has been publicly critical of her relatives.
MARY TRUMP:
He seemed fairly lighthearted, but he was in control of everything. Life is a zero-sum game. There’s one winner; everybody else is a loser. If you’re not winning, you’re losing. Unfortunately, he didn’t just have that philosophy in the context of his business—he ran his family that way.
TONY SCHWARTZ, Co-author, The Art of the Deal:
The way the game got played in his household was, “If you did not win, you lost.” And losing was you got crushed. Losing was you didn’t matter. Losing was you were nothing.
NARRATOR:
In the beginning, Donald wasn’t the winner in the family. He had to fight for his place behind his older brother, Freddie.
MARC FISHER, Co-author, Trump Revealed:
Donald Trump was never going to be the guy in charge of the Trump empire. Donald Trump was not groomed for that; that’s not what Fred Trump wanted. Fred Trump knew from the start that his namesake, Fred Jr., would be the one to take over.
MARY TRUMP:
My dad was the favorite initially, simply because he was the first. He mattered to my grandfather as an extension of his ambition. So my dad early on was protected in a way Donald wasn’t.
NARRATOR:
Donald acted out, getting all the wrong kinds of attention.
MARIE BRENNER, Vanity Fair:
Donald was always the kid in the family who would start throwing birthday cake at all the parties. That you would build up a tower of blocks, he would come knock your blocks down.
GWENDA BLAIR, Author, The Trumps:
I think the troublemaking level now would seem laughable. But he was not a serious student. And he liked to clown around. He liked to get attention.
NARRATOR:
Finally, a pivotal moment: His father sent him away—military school.
MICHAEL D’ANTONIO, Author, The Truth About Trump:
All of a sudden he’s the one child of five to be banished to this austere life. Goodbye luxury, goodbye Mom and Dad, brothers and sisters. Hello, drill sergeant.
TIMOTHY O’BRIEN, Author, TrumpNation:
He talks about it as almost this rite of passage. He said to me that when he arrived at the military academy, for the first time in his life someone slapped him in the face when he got out of line.
GWENDA BLAIR:
Unlike a lot of kids who get shipped off to such a place, he liked it. Apparently, he really liked it. He liked the accountability. He liked the clarity of it. And he liked that there was a medal and a prize for everything. His mother told me that he was never homesick.
MARC FISHER:
And he became a leader of the cadets. He became one of the student leaders who had a number of kids under him in the dormitories, and he ruled the dormitory life with an iron fist.
NEWT GINGRICH, Author, Understanding Trump:
There’s this great picture of him leading the cadets, marching down Fifth Avenue. Somehow he acquired a zest for life that’s very deep and very real that allows him to work his way through every challenge.
MALE RADIO REPORTER:
—from the San Francisco conclave to name a presidential nomination—
NARRATOR:
Kamala Harris grew up across the bay from San Francisco.
MALE RADIO REPORTER:
The United States continues its arms buildup in South Vietnam.
NARRATOR:
Berkeley was the liberal epicenter of America.
MALE RADIO REPORTER:
Huey Newton, the leader of the militant Black Panther Party, will go on trial July 15.
STACEY JOHNSON-BATISTE, Childhood friend:
During the '60s and the '70s, Berkeley was a very diverse community. Diversity in terms of food and art and music. You could hear the Hare Krishna marching down the streets playing their tambourines. Across the street you may hear African drummers on congas. So that kind of gives you a sense of the environment that Kamala and I grew up in.
NARRATOR:
Stacy Johnson-Batiste is Kamala Harris’ oldest friend.
STACEY JOHNSON-BATISTE:
Kamala and I first met in kindergarten, and we became friends instantly. And our mothers became really close friends. So, going back 55 years.
NARRATOR:
Kamala’s parents, Shyamala and Donald, were both immigrants.
JAMILAH KING, Mother Jones:
They met on the campus of UC Berkeley. They were these two people from opposite sides of the world. Her father grew up in Jamaica. Her mother grew up in India. And they were very united in this fight for a better future.
The Truths We Hold, by Kamala Harris
KAMALA HARRIS [reading]:
My parents often brought me in a stroller with them to civil rights marches. I have young memories of a sea of legs moving about, of the energy and the shouts and the chants.
MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.:
And I for one appreciate the support that you here at Berkeley have given to the civil rights struggle.
The Truths We Hold, by Kamala Harris
KAMALA HARRIS [reading]:
My mother would tell us, “Fight systems in a way that causes them to be fairer, and don’t be limited by what has always been.”
CAROLE PORTER, Childhood friend:
Shyamala was inspirational to all of us. She was 19 when she came from Chennai, India, by herself as a woman in the 1960s. Shyamala was a cancer research scientist, and cancer research was her passion, and raising her daughters was her passion.
NARRATOR:
By the time Kamala was 7, her parents were divorced. Shyamala would be a single mother to her daughters Kamala and Maya. Her father was increasingly distant, pursuing his career as an economist and academic.
COURTNEY SUBRAMANIAN, LA Times:
Kamala was being raised by a single Indian mother. But her mother also knew that she was raising these biracial girls in a country that viewed race through a binary lens.
CAROLE PORTER:
I’m sure she heard as many names as I heard, and lot of my teasing was from Black kids. And it was because I was mixed. I had a white mother.
JILL LOUIS, College friend:
She talked about having suffered racial slurs for both of her cultures. She had received racial slurs for being a Black person and racial slurs for being someone of South Asian descent.
STACEY JOHNSON-BATISTE:
Kamala is very clear that she is Indian and Black, but it was very important for Shyamala to make sure the girls grew up and knew about their Black heritage, because they would be viewed as Black girls.
LATEEFAH SIMON, Friend:
Ms. Shyamala relied on the safety net of the African American community to help raise those babies. A young woman of color, single mom, academic, lived in a Black neighborhood and had a community around her to support the growth and the cultural development of these children. Her mother sent her to Ms. Shelton’s day care. That tells you a lot. The Shelton family has been a neighborhood day care oasis for single moms for decades. I think they’ve closed up shop, but listen, that’s all you gotta tell me.
STACEY JOHNSON-BATISTE:
We were taught at the Shelton school about Black leaders and scientists and just understanding what it means to be Black in this country. We had a really deep understanding and teaching and appreciation for our Black community and the Black culture.
The Truths We Hold, by Kamala Harris
KAMALA HARRIS [reading]:
Mrs. Shelton would quickly become a second mother to Maya and me.
NARRATOR:
Later in life, on her political rise, she’d be sworn in with her hand on Ms. Shelton’s bible.
KAREN GIBBS, College friend:
She had wonderful examples, right in her own mother, who counter any negative impacts from being a Black child in America and being raised in the midst of racism. When you have a strong, nurturing foundation and environment, then it does build your confidence and it strengthens your inner resolve. Having a mother like Kamala’s mother, it makes you strong.
NARRATOR:
Upon leaving military school, Donald would begin to surpass his brother Freddie.
MARY TRUMP:
As my father grew older, his personality became clear. He was sensitive. He was kind and generous. He liked hanging out with his friends, who adored him. And maybe worst of all, he had interests outside of the family business. My grandfather understood none of that.
GWENDA BLAIR:
He wasn’t a killer. His father told the boys to be killers, but Freddie was never a killer. He wasn’t hyperaggressive, he wasn’t hypercompetitive.
MARY TRUMP:
My grandfather treated him so poorly, with such little respect, and made his life miserable. Donald was able to watch what my grandfather considered the mistakes that my dad made. He took that lesson to heart and became the killer, the tough guy, the person who would do anything in his power to be the winner. Could never be wrong, could never admit a mistake, and avoided being kind, because all of those things, in my grandfather’s universe, spoke to an unforgivable weakness. And my grandfather finally started to see in him the son he wanted.
NARRATOR:
Donald would become the winner, assuming Freddie’s place next to his father.
GWENDA BLAIR:
The older sister Mary Ann told me that Donald was like a wind, a hot wind at Fred Jr.’s back. He didn’t quite throw him under the bus, to mix metaphors, but he was certainly right behind him. Donald was standing right there and ready to take over.
RONA BARRETT:
Do you think you have to have a killer instinct in order to be successful?
DONALD TRUMP:
I think you have to have some, to a large extent. I think you do have to have at least a winning instinct. I think that the world is made up of people with either killer instincts or without killer instincts. And the people that seem to emerge are the people that are competitive and driven and with a certain instinct to win.
MARY TRUMP:
My grandfather shoved Donald’s success in my dad’s face a lot. And I think he found that difficult.
NARRATOR:
Fred Jr. left the family real estate business and became an airline pilot, and an alcoholic.
MARY TRUMP:
My dad had just bought in, hook, line and sinker, into the family’s assessment of my father as an alcoholic failure who had never accomplished anything, and their line about Donald as this extraordinary, self-made, brilliant businessman.
MARIE BRENNER:
Donald told me that he and his father had perhaps been way too hard on him. They used to say to him, because he was an airline pilot, “What’s the difference between what you do, Freddie, and driving a bus?”
NARRATOR:
At age 42, Fred Trump Jr. died of a heart attack.
BARBARA WALTERS:
You had a brother, Fred Jr.
DONALD TRUMP:
Right.
BARBARA WALTERS:
Who died. Your brother was open. Too vulnerable, maybe. Drank. Did this make you, I don’t know, close up? Keep it all inside?
DONALD TRUMP:
I learned a lot of things from Fred, but I did learn for myself that I don’t want to be open. I don’t want to make myself vulnerable.
NARRATOR:
When Kamala Harris was 12, her mother moved the family to Montreal, Canada.
DAN MORAIN, Author, Kamala’s Way:
Her mom got passed over for a job that she thought she deserved. And so rather than sit around and brood about it, she got a job at McGill University up in Quebec. And so she packs her two daughters off.
CAROLE PORTER:
Going to Montreal, Canada—it’s all white, predominantly, and you’re having to make all new friends and figure your way out.
TAL KOPAN, Chronicled: Who is Kamala Harris? podcast:
For her to be uprooted from her community at such a sensitive moment in anyone’s upbringing, experience her teenage years in a foreign place.
WANDA KAGAN, High school friend:
She kind of was always the type that would embrace something, take it on, take it like a challenge and battle it.
NARRATOR:
Wanda Kagan became Kamala’s new best friend.
WANDA KAGAN:
She made the best out of it, which is what she did with them coming to Quebec, which was French, and having to go to French school. And the cold weather. [Laughs]
She talked about the life she left behind a lot. That was another commonality we had; my family was in America. That’s actually what was so nice about our friendship, seeing how she and myself navigated ourselves to fit in to that world, two different worlds, and bridge the gap between them.
JAMILAH KING:
That was also a crucial part of her development, because it was important to get out of her comfort zone. It was important to be in a new space, to have to rebuild your sense of identity at that very, very pivotal age where you're still trying to understand who you are and what you believe. Now you have to figure it out. Now you have to say, "Well, what am I going to do? How am I going to operate?"
NARRATOR:
Their friendship would play a crucial role in shaping Kamala’s sense of purpose.
WANDA KAGAN:
She used to bring lunches to school for me, and I always—I’d get to have the lunches, because I would be hungry sometimes. I think it was those little kinds of things that she was able to pick up on, that there was something going on, or something wrong in my home life. I was being abused at home, both physically and sexually, and I finally—she would tell me that I—“What’s wrong?” And that I didn’t seem myself some days. And so once I was confronted with her out-and-out asking me, I decided to tell her that I was being molested and abused at home. Her first reaction was, “How long have you been going through this, Wanda?” And then once I talked about it with her, then she was like, “Well, you’re just going to have to come and stay with us.” I was, um—I was really emotional and heartfelt when they said I could come and stay with them. It wasn’t just that I went to live with her. I just felt like I saw that passion and that compassion in her of, basically she was taking a stand and fighting for my rights back then, 40 years ago, to do what I wanted. To be able to do what I wanted with my body. She was a child, too, 15, 16 years old, with such a powerful voice and fighting for what’s right.
TARINI PARTI, The Wall Street Journal:
Even back then, Harris was thinking about how she could fight for people’s rights, how she could fight for justice. Her career today goes back to this moment that she had with her very close friend in Canada.
NARRATOR:
Donald Trump was his father’s apprentice, heir to a multimillion-dollar real estate organization.
LOUISE SUNSHINE:
They had a vast empire in Queens and Brooklyn of residences and rental apartments. It was really quite an establishment.
NARRATOR:
But early on there was a crisis.
MICHAEL KRANISH, Co-author, Trump Revealed:
There came a day in 1973 when the federal government sued Donald and Fred, by name, and their company for racial bias. This was one of the greatest racial bias cases of its time.
MARIE BRENNER:
This was a particularly egregious case because the Trump Organization had allegedly put large “Cs” to connote people of color who were applying for apartments.
MICHAEL D’ANTONIO:
The government had him nailed. They had the Trump Organization nailed. There were multiple Trump employees who confessed that they had been instructed to divert Black applicants for apartments, to discourage them, to tell them that apartments had been rented when they hadn’t been.
JANE MAYER, The New Yorker:
Donald Trump's regular lawyers tell him, “Settle it. Just move on. Do the right thing. Do what you're supposed to do under the law.” And Trump's not happy with that advice.
NARRATOR:
He wanted to fight back. He went looking for a new lawyer, in Manhattan.
DAVID MARCUS, Roy Cohn's cousin:
One of the places to see and be seen in Manhattan was called LeClub. Donald Trump walked in and Roy Cohn was there holding court, as he often did. And Trump said, “I know about you. Can I ask you a question?”
GWENDA BLAIR:
Roy Cohn had 20 years of being a really aggressive, no-holds-barred, go for the jugular, fight back, anybody says something to you, throw it back at them guy. He was famous for that behavior.
MARIE BRENNER:
And as legend has it, Donald stuck out his hand and introduced himself, and said, “My father is being sued by the Justice Department over this race discrimination. What should we do?”
ROY COHN:
And he said, “Listen, I’ve spent two days with these establishment law firms about a case we have"—it was a civil rights case or something—"and they’re all telling us give up, do this, sign a decree and all of that.” He says, “I’ve followed your career and you seem—you’re a little bit crazy like I am and you stand up to the establishment. Can I come see you?" And I said, "Sure.”
DAVID MARCUS:
When they met, Roy said to him, “You might be guilty. It doesn’t matter. Go after the Justice Department. Don’t ever admit guilt.”
KEN AULETTA, The New Yorker:
“Fight it, you’ll kill them. Just deny everything and fight.” And Trump was totally taken by that, and he hired Roy Cohn as his lawyer.
DAVID MARCUS:
That was a defining moment for Donald Trump. Donald Trump was on the ropes. There was no doubt they had discriminated. There was no doubt there was wrongdoing. And yet, Roy Cohn showed him that you can turn around a situation just by ignoring the facts and going after your attacker. Trump countersued the Justice Department for $100 million.
MALE VOICE [reading Trump quote]:
I have never, nor has anyone in our organization ever, to the best of my knowledge, discriminated or shown bias in renting our apartments.
TONY SCHWARTZ:
This is a classic example of where Trump begins to demonstrate something he talks about all the time today, which is, he’s a counterpuncher. So somebody comes after him and says that he’s done something nefarious and horrible, and he just goes back at them with all guns blazing. Boom, boom, boom. And admits nothing. Never admit anything. Never say you made a mistake. Just keep coming.
DAVID MARCUS:
His countersuit didn’t work, and in fact he did end up quietly settling out of court, but Roy went on the offensive and said this is a victory—Trump was vindicated. He knew before anybody else did that the court of public opinion is often more important than a court of law. The lesson from Roy Cohn was don’t go the way the establishment does. Don’t play by the rules.
GWENDA BLAIR:
Donald Trump learned a lot of things from Roy Cohn. But I think that you could kind of sum it up by saying that bullying works really well. If you punch back, most people withdraw, and just look at what you can get away with.
NARRATOR:
For Donald Trump, Roy Cohn’s playbook would become a guide to life, business and politics.
DONALD TRUMP:
A witch hunt. A horrible, horrible, disgusting witch hunt.
I did nothing wrong. We have a system that was rigged and disgusting. I did nothing wrong.
PETER BAKER, Co-author, The Divider:
Cohn’s approach to life that he conveys to Trump is you fight. You fight back. And you fight dirty if you have to. Trump articulates this.
DONALD TRUMP:
And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore.
PETER BAKER:
If somebody attacks him, he attacks them back, he says, 10 times as hard. He’s not about diplomacy. He’s not about negotiation. He is all about the fight.
NARRATOR:
Back in the U.S., at Howard University, Kamala Harris would find a way to fight for what she believed in.
JILL LOUIS:
Howard is such an interesting place for someone who has Kamala Harris’ background. We had people during that time who were not only from all 50 states, but different countries in the world. This was an entirely diverse place. Howard probably seemed like a very familiar place to her.
CHRISTINA GREER, Author, Black Ethnics:
Howard University is in Washington, D.C. You would have not just had your cocoon and your incubator of Howard University, but you’re also looking around at the city itself and seeing the seats of power that are literally in the same exact city.
COURTNEY SUBRAMANIAN:
I think the idea of being in Washington, D.C., was intoxicating. She interned at the Federal Trade Commission. She worked at the National Archives. And she was an intern for Sen. Alan Cranston of California, whose seat she would later hold some 30 years later.
The Truths We Hold, by Kamala Harris
KAMALA HARRIS [reading]:
I loved going to the Capitol Building every day that summer for work. It felt like the epicenter of change.
JILL LOUIS:
She was always interested in justice and how would she have that impact to provide a broader justice, and I think that she found an avenue in the justice system. She wasn’t going to be this just, “I’m an activist and I just go out there and tell people about justice.” Protest alone, although important, is not what ultimately makes the difference.
NARRATOR:
At Alpha Kappa Alpha, she picked up lifelong skills for what was ahead.
JAMILAH KING:
Alpha Kappa Alpha, AKAs as they're known commonly, are known for being the most prestigious of the sororities, the Black sororities.
JILL LOUIS, Sorority sister:
Our womanhood was celebrated in Alpha Kappa Alpha. It was a celebration of women and their capability. It was enough just trying to be a Black person in America in the '80s. Women were still being boxed out of a lot of opportunity and a lot of serious jobs, and so you had to come with extra credibility. You had to come with extra preparation.
KAREN GIBBS, College friend:
Within that spirit of excellence it was to bring your best every single day. So to bring your best you get up and you get your mind right and you get all dressed up. We dressed at Howard University, every day. Even if you wore jeans, you probably were wearing a pair of heels, and you had on a very dressy blouse. And Kamala wore pearls literally almost every day. That was her trademark.
NARRATOR:
She graduated with her own playbook and a direction.
COURTNEY SUBRAMANIAN:
She wanted to be a lawyer. This idea that she could correct the system from the inside, fight the power from the inside, from having a seat at the table.
NARRATOR:
She returned home to the Bay Area for law school and shocked her mother when she took a job as a prosecutor.
JOE GAROFOLI, Chronicled: Who is Kamala Harris? podcast:
Growing up in the activist community, why would you want to be something that symbolizes oppression to our community? She wants to become a prosecutor. She wants to become “The Man.” That—her family was like, “Whoa.”
JAMILAH KING:
She’s becoming a prosecutor at a time when Black communities are literally under siege. Specifically in Oakland and Alameda County in the 1980s, it is literally ground zero for the crack cocaine epidemic. You have tremendous amounts of violence in Black communities. You have overpolicing. So it was a controversial decision in her family and her community.
The Truths We Hold, by Kamala Harris
KAMALA HARRIS [reading]:
I had to defend my choice as one would a thesis. America has a deep and dark history of people using the power of the prosecutor as an instrument of injustice. I understood my community’s wariness.
JAMILAH KING:
Ultimately I think her argument was that, “Look, in order for us to change the system, we have to have people within it who are willing to open the doors, who are willing to listen, who are willing to sit at the table.” And that’s what she did.
NARRATOR:
Initially, for Donald Trump, working with his father meant working across the river from Manhattan, in Queens.
TONY SCHWARTZ:
Queens was not the hip place to be. He was the kid who grew up as a outsider to where the real action was, and he was acutely aware of it.
TIMOTHY O’BRIEN:
And I think he’s a kid who looked across the East River from Queens into Manhattan and said, “That’s where I want to be.” I think it was like Oz to him.
NARRATOR:
He became determined to make a name for himself, to make his mark in Manhattan.
ALAN MARCUS, Fmr. PR, Trump Organization:
What drove anybody in that period of time, in the '70s, into Manhattan? It’s the bright lights.
NARRATOR:
Alan Marcus would become Trump’s longtime public relations adviser.
ALAN MARCUS:
He was from Queens. Donald had crossed the line, tried to become more into society, if you will. He wanted to be an elite. He wanted to be part of that crowd in New York. He wanted to be part of the in-crowd.
MICHAEL D’ANTONIO:
His first apartment was in a terrific building on the Upper East Side, and he had a Cadillac.
ALAN MARCUS:
He got a limo with his name, Trump, on it.
MICHAEL D’ANTONIO:
The funny thing about saying that Donald went into Manhattan to make it on his own is that he went into Manhattan funded by a father who had $200 million in net worth in 1970, so there wasn’t much struggle.
NARRATOR:
With his father’s support, he built a luxury high-rise that could be seen all the way from Queens.
BARBARA RES, Fmr. VP, Trump Organization:
Trump Tower was what put him on the map. He had arrived, without a doubt. He was the most talked about developer in New York City.
NARRATOR:
He had his father’s money—and Roy Cohn’s playbook.
GWENDA BLAIR:
When he built Trump Tower, he got a whopper tax abatement that was intended for poor areas of town. His building was built a block away from Tiffany's. That was a deteriorating area of town? I don't think so. You can get away with almost everything. And Donald took that to heart. That's the only metric that counts.
JONATHAN KARL, ABC News:
The rules don’t apply to him. Even the number of floors in Trump Tower is essentially a fraud. From the lower floors, he skips a bunch of numbers so that it has more floors than any other building of the same height. You go in the elevator, you can't go to the 7th, 8th, 9th or 10th floor, because they don't exist.
NARRATOR:
On opening night, Trump’s salesmanship seemed to pay off.
NIKKI HASKELL, Friend:
And they had the fabulous opening. The crème de la crème of New York showed up for the opening of the Trump Tower. It was an amazing event, and it looked so glamorous with the waterfalls and everything. It was really magnificent. Donald was like a kid in a candy store. He was so excited. You have dreams and aspirations, and you hope they’re going to turn out great, and then when they turn out, and they’re great, look how happy you are. And it was just a monumental day for him.
NARRATOR:
Despite it all, he couldn’t win over those he most wanted to impress.
MARIE BRENNER:
The establishment of New York thought of Trump, if they thought of him at all, as a joke, as a vulgarian, as someone who was silly, who was just a vulgar builder.
KEN AULETTA:
When you talk to real estate moguls in New York, to this day, they disdain Donald Trump. They thought he was a guy interested in self-exposure and lacked humility and modesty.
MICHAEL D’ANTONIO:
He was considered loud and obnoxious and too self-centered and not someone who fit in. There is an old money elite in Manhattan that has never accepted Donald. This is where Donald’s resentment of the elite comes from.
NARRATOR:
After more than a decade climbing the ranks as a prosecutor, Kamala Harris would make her move into politics, running for district attorney of San Francisco.
JOE GAROFOLI:
Back then, San Francisco was a boys' town. Boys run the city, and Kamala Harris was a biracial woman coming into a place where the dominant power was held by white men.
TAL KOPAN:
She’s working her way up as a prosector, and Kamala Harris is driven to rise and run things all the way to the top and make a difference—not just behind a desk, but by leading.
ANDREA DEW STEELE, DA campaign adviser:
She decided to run against an incumbent district attorney, a white man, Terrence Hallinan, whose nickname was “K.O.” He had boxed when he was young.
DEBBIE MESLOH, DA campaign adviser:
He wasn’t just the DA for one term. He was political royalty. His father had run for president. He had served many terms as a supervisor. He was rumored to run for mayor. It was a big deal.
ANDREA DEW STEELE:
We did our first poll and she was at 6%. But she worked her butt off. She loved going and talking to people.
KAMALA HARRIS:
Hi, how are you? I’m running for district attorney, I hope to have your support.
ANDREA DEW STEELE:
There was no stone unturned.
KAMALA HARRIS:
We are talking to every voter we possibly can.
JOE GAROFOLI:
The coalition she put together is a very rare one in San Francisco. She had the rich people in Pacific Heights, with folks in the Bay View, the Black neighborhood, and then the Castro, the LGBTQ neighborhood. It’s a very unusual triangle of power there. Because of who she is, how she grew up, the diversity of experiences she had, she does feel comfortable walking into any room.
NARRATOR:
She learned about politics from a powerful mentor, one she has tried not to talk about—Willie Brown.
JAMILAH KING:
Kamala Harris did have an intimate relationship with Willie Brown, former mayor of San Francisco, who was 30 years her senior and was a longtime speaker of the California Assembly.
JOE GAROFOLI:
And he's a very charismatic person. Very good sense of humor. They dated for a year, year and a half, in the mid-'90s.
FEMALE REPORTER:
Excuse me, are you his daughter?
KAMALA HARRIS:
No, I’m not.
COURTNEY SUBRAMANIAN:
Willie Brown was a political kingmaker in San Francisco. He introduced her to a lot of the donor class. He introduced her to a lot of people of power and really was a mentor to her. That relationship played a huge role in widening the aperture of her career and where she would end up.
WILLIE BROWN:
You should from now on address me as “Da Mayor.”
JAMILAH KING:
By the time she decided to run for district attorney of San Francisco, which was several years later, she describes that relationship to a reporter at the time as an albatross around her neck.
NARRATOR:
Her opponent kept accusing her of being the recipient of Willie Brown’s favoritism.
JOE GAROFOLI:
She started gaining a little ground, and her opponents start bringing up Willie.
Voice of DA Terrence Hallinan
TERRENCE HALLINAN:
I mean, we’re talking about $600,000. Why has Willie Brown gone out and help her raise this tremendous amount of money? What is his interest in controlling the district attorney’s office?
ACE SMITH, Longtime adviser:
That issue comes from something very simple: If you’re one woman running for office, the rules have been written by men for over 2,000 years, and you’ll have to work twice as hard, and you will be judged twice as harshly.
JOE GAROFOLI:
She said, “I’m not going to engage in these attacks during the campaign. Voters don’t want to hear about this stuff." She stands up behind Hallinan and says, “I’m not going to be like Terrence Hallinan and talk about the lawyers in his office having sex on the desks. I’m not going to behave in that way and bring up these type of things.” The room erupts in applause, and that kind of defanged it after that.
NARRATOR:
She won by 12%.
ANDREA DEW STEELE:
She was able to just not let it get to her. If you’re able to take in the negativity and not let it affect you, that is your superpower. That is one of the secrets of her success.
CROWD [chanting]:
Kamala! Kamala! Kamala! Kamala!
RONA BARRETT:
For some people, the ultimate goal in life has been becoming the president of the United States. If you lost your fortune today, what would you do tomorrow?
DONALD TRUMP:
Maybe I’d run for president, I don’t know. [Laughs]
NEWT GINGRICH:
Trump is actively thinking about politics by the late 1980s. Oprah actually asked him, “Are you going to run for president someday?”
OPRAH WINFREY:
I know people have talked to you about whether or not you want to run. Would you ever?
DONALD TRUMP:
Probably not, but I do get tired of seeing the country ripped off.
NEWT GINGRICH:
There’s a sense in the back of his head that if you want to prove to the Manhattanites that you made it, and they won’t let you prove inside their world, well, what if you just become president of the whole country?
FEMALE AUDIENCE MEMBER:
But you definitely are a political person, whether you run for office, by everything that you say and do points in that direction.
DONALD TRUMP:
You know what it is? I don’t like being taken advantage of. Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, they’re ripping off this country, and I don’t like seeing it, and it shouldn’t happen.
MALE TALK SHOW HOST:
And we’ll be back.
MICHAEL D’ANTONIO:
Not only does his ego get fed, he gets a nice note from Richard Nixon, who’s seen him on television.
MALE VOICE [reading Nixon letter]:
—Mrs. Nixon told me that you were great on the Donahue Show. . . . She predicts that whenever you decide to run for office you will be a winner!
MICHAEL D’ANTONIO:
This is a very interesting nexus. Donald Trump’s chief adviser throughout his political life is Roger Stone, who was a Nixon operative.
CAROL LEONNIG, The Washington Post:
Roger Stone is all about pulling dirty tricks, ever since he did so in the Nixon administration. He is like a carbon copy of Roy Cohn without the law degree.
ROGER STONE, Longtime adviser:
Trump is larger than life. There’s a certain electricity, a certain celebrity status that he has, where you say, “Wow, this guy’s really got it.”
MARC FISHER:
Roger Stone saw in Trump someone who had tremendous political possibility because Trump had this natural connection as a marketing guy, as a showman, as someone who could appeal to a blue-collar worker even though he was this reportedly super-rich guy living on Fifth Avenue.
ROGER STONE:
I think he understands that politics is show business for ugly people. In his case he makes the transition like Reagan—he’s a celebrity superstar in the business world, and the stature gap between him and all these kind of grubby career politicians is enormous.
TONY SCHWARTZ:
Roger Stone is whispering in his ear, and when you whisper, “You could do it. You could do it” to Donald Trump, you’re going to get a receptive audience.
NARRATOR:
In 1987, Stone orchestrated a dress rehearsal 250 miles north of Manhattan in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
ROGER STONE:
Trump flies in in his black helicopter—
MALE REPORTER:
The signs of power and opulence in place, Donald Trump’s personal helicopter descended onto the small airfield.
ROGER STONE:
—and of course the helicopter gets as much coverage as the speech because they’ve never seen a helicopter like this before. And it’s a sellout.
CROWD [chanting]:
We want Trump! We want Trump!
ROGER STONE:
Trump has catapulted himself into a brand. He’s a brash New York real estate guy, but he’s beginning to cultivate a national following and a national celebrity.
DONALD TRUMP:
What I want is I want extreme competence. I want strength and extreme competence. You need a combination of both, but I want strength and extreme competence at the helm of this country.
NEWT GINGRICH:
A lot of what Trump says is a combination of what you’d get at the golf club in the locker room and what you’d get hanging out with blue-collar workers. And so Trump, in a sense, represents this interesting blend of the insights of the average business executive and the intuitive insights of the average working American.
DONALD TRUMP:
We need strength. You think Gorbachev is tough, think of this character Khomeini. [Laughter] I mean, this son of a bitch is something like nobody’s ever seen.
MALE SPEAKER:
He’s outspoken. Stands for what he—expresses what he stands for. Made some sense.
DONALD TRUMP:
So long. Thanks a lot, fellas.
NARRATOR:
But before long, his name would be associated with something else: scandal.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
The unfolding saga of Trump vs. Trump.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
Trump: The War took an interesting turn—
MALE NEWSREADER:
—and the model from Georgia cast as the other woman.
NARRATOR:
He had been cheating on his first wife, Ivana.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
He wants out. There’s rumor of another woman.
MARC FISHER:
The greatest tabloid war that New York had seen in decades, complete with sexual details of relationships.
NARRATOR:
And then there were the business problems.
MALE NEWSREADER:
The swashbuckling real estate mogul is in a cash crunch.
MARC FISHER:
The businesses never really did that well. He was a failure again and again and again. Whether it was with his casino hotels in New Jersey, whether it was with the Plaza Hotel in New York, one project after another would end in failure.
MALE NEWSREADER:
Trump’s casino business will file for bankruptcy next month.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
Midas had lost his touch.
MARC FISHER:
Six bankruptcies. Stiffing contractors left and right. Vendors suing him again and again. It is a litany of failure.
MALE NEWSREADER:
Trump’s name once meant gold. Today it means trouble.
KAMALA HARRIS:
—district attorney of the city and county of San Francisco. [Laughs]
NARRATOR:
Having won the fight to become DA, Kamala Harris had big ambitions.
DEBBIE MESLOH, DA spokesperson:
It was like our second day in the DA’s office and a prosecutor was talking with her about one of his cases. And it was a sex assault case. And he was like, “Well, the victim is a teenage prostitute.” And I'll never forget Kamala just stopping him and saying, “I don't know what that—I don't know, I've never met a teenage prostitute. I've met exploited kids, but I've never met a teenage prostitute.” And one of the first things she did was change that for within our office, saying, "Every time you charge a case, it is exploited youth, not teenage prostitute." She was trying to shift the powers of the criminal justice system to say the people that should really get punishment for that are the people perpetrating on these exploited youth. The victims in these crimes shouldn’t be the ones going to jail.
NARRATOR:
But her aspirations would clash with power politics and the reality of the streets.
FEMALE REPORTER:
Two undercover San Francisco police officers asked a suspicious-looking man to take his hands of out his pockets. The man pulled out an AK-47 and fired at least 11 rounds, killing Officer Isaac Espinoza.
SCOTT SHAFER, KQED-TV:
The experience of that police officer being shot and killed less than four months into her term as district attorney was a life-changing moment.
FEMALE REPORTER:
A suspect, 21-year-old David Hill, is in custody.
HEATHER FONG, San Francisco Chief of Police:
We are in mourning over the senseless killing of Officer Isaac Espinoza.
DEBBIE MESLOH:
We had not had an officer killed in the line of duty in many, many years. You saw a lot of pain in the Halls of Justice—again, no matter if it was a police officer or a court reporter or a judge, these are very small communities, and so it was just a very difficult chapter. Kamala was really hurting, too. She’s a member of law enforcement. She had served alongside with SFPD.
NARRATOR:
The cops wanted District Attorney Harris to seek the death penalty. But Harris had made a campaign promise not to.
GIL DURAN, Fmr. political adviser:
There was a lot of pressure on her to do the politically popular and expedient thing, and to seek the death penalty against the killer, and she held her ground. She held onto her principles.
JOE GAROFOLI, San Francisco Chronicle:
Harris waits a couple of days and then announces, before Espinoza’s funeral, that she would not seek the death penalty.
KAMALA HARRIS:
I have been very clear that I am not seeking the death penalty as district attorney. It is the will, I believe, of a majority of people that the most severe crimes be met with the most severe consequences, and that life without possibility of parole is a severe consequence.
MALE REPORTER:
The DA, Kamala Harris, is determined to prosecute this as a life in prison case. Police plan to protest outside her office on Wednesday.
DAN MORAIN:
The city police chief was highly critical of this decision. The police unions and the police officers were incensed. She would go into the Hall of Justice, and if cops saw her they would turn their back on her. She was being shunned, really shunned.
JOE GAROFOLI:
The funeral comes. The church is packed. Hundreds and hundreds of uniformed San Francisco police officers. Sen. Diane Feinstein gets up to speak—and at that time Sen. Feinstein was the most powerful and influential figure in California politics. And she says, “This is definitely a case where the death penalty should have been asked for.” The entire church, filled with uniformed San Francisco police officers, stands up and roars their applause. Sitting in the church is Kamala Harris, just months into her new job. If you are a young person, new into your job, and someone who is at the top of their game comes in and basically calls you out in public, in front of all the people you have to work with, police officers—you can't imagine how gut-wrenching that would be.
NARRATOR:
Harris stood her ground, but it would shape her approach to politics going forward.
JAMILAH KING:
Ultimately David Hill is convicted and sentenced to multiple life sentences. So he’s never getting out of prison, but he’s also not on death row. That's where she's becoming known for being a little bit more cautious politically. Over the course of the next decade, you see her back up and be a lot more deliberate when it comes to making decisions that could potentially come and haunt her down the road.
SCOTT SHAFER:
That really changed her trajectory as a prosecutor. She became more unwilling to cross law enforcement, to be more defensive of law enforcement in ways that really angered some progressives in California.
NARRATOR:
She forged alliances with the police. She increased her office’s conviction rate, from around 50% to over 70%. She threatened parents with jail if their kids missed too much school.
COURTNEY SUBRAMANIAN:
Her years as district attorney are the source of a lot of criticism that she's faced, and continues to face, from progressives who saw her as too punitive with some of her actions and policies that she pursued.
NARRATOR:
Nevertheless, she was beginning to get national attention.
OPRAH WINFREY:
This next story is featured in the issue of Newsweek on women leaders, and I had to tell you about it. If you live in San Francisco, you probably already know about this—cheer on! Look at this.
With a 90% conviction rate, superstar prosecutor Kamala Harris believes it is her duty to mentor young women who dream of following in her footsteps.
KAMALA HARRIS:
My mother, who was a very strong influence in my life, always said, “Kamala, you may be the first to do many things, but make sure you’re not the last.” I’m proud of creating a child assault unit dedicated to prosecuting—
WANDA KAGAN:
My friend calls me one day and she says, “Wanda, guess who’s on Oprah?” And I was like, “Who?” And she's like, “Kamala.” And everyone was calling me, because everybody knew I had been trying to find her. And so I was like, “Oh, my God. You mean I only had to Google my friend to find her?”
So I left a message, and my daughter was like, “Mommy, telephone.” And I was like, “I’m in bed. I’m not getting out.” And she's like, “But it’s your friend from Oprah.” And I was like, “Oh, my God.” So I flew out of bed and I picked up the phone and I was like, “Oh, my God. I didn’t think you'd call back. I’m sure you got thousands of calls.” She says, “Yeah, but you're not just anyone.”
She says, “After everything I went through with you, it drove me to want to make change and do something for people like you that were out there.” And I was like, “Oh, my God. I’ve been looking for you to thank you for intervening at the most pivotal time of my life, and you’re thanking me for being a catalyst in your career.” It was very touching and moving, and ever since then we’ve rekindled friendship, like if time stood still.
The Apprentice pilot episode
DONALD TRUMP:
My name is Donald Trump, and I’m the largest real estate developer in New York. I own buildings all over the place—
MICHAEL D’ANTONIO:
Can you imagine, you're Donald Trump and you've been creating yourself as the people's billionaire for 20 or 30 years. And someone comes along and says, “I want you to play that role on TV once a week.” This was a dream come true. I think Donald would have paid to get that gig.
DONALD TRUMP:
—and who will be The Apprentice?
ROGER STONE:
For 14 seasons, he is viewed in a perfect light.
DONALD TRUMP:
OK, folks, I’m really busy today, so we’re going to go quickly.
ROGER STONE:
He’s perfectly made up. He’s perfectly coifed. He’s perfectly lit. He’s in the high-backed chair making tough decisions. What does he look like? He looks like a president.
DONALD TRUMP:
—no longer with us, you’re fired.
I have to say, you’re fired.
You’re not going to be thrown out, OK.
MALE APPRENTICE CONTESTANT:
Thank you. Thank you, sir.
ALAN MARCUS:
On a script, sure, everybody’s a genius.
DONALD TRUMP:
Jason, Jason. This is a tough one. You’re fired.
ALAN MARCUS:
People looked and said, “Wow, what a businessman. What a great manager." It’s all a fantasy. It was all fiction, but people think it’s real.
OMAROSA MANIGAULT NEWMAN, Contestant, The Apprentice:
The Apprentice allowed him to tell his own story on his own terms. “I am a big, successful, huge developer. I’m a billionaire.” He go to sell that image to America, and they bought it.
MALE VOICE:
Donald Trump is joining us!
OMAROSA MANIGAULT NEWMAN:
They loved it, and they couldn’t get enough of it.
FEMALE VOICE:
—Apprentice finale unlike any other.
JIM DOWD, PR director, The Apprentice:
His popularity was never higher, and he was literally—he could do no wrong at that stage.
DONALD TRUMP:
Are you ready?
JIM DOWD:
And I think that he realized, “Wow, if I’ve hit the high, let’s take it to the—where can you go from there? I want to be president.”
MALE NEWSREADER:
Billionaire Donald Trump has flirted with the White House before—
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
Reality TV show host—U.S. president?
BARBARA WALTERS:
Please welcome my friend, Donald Trump.
NARRATOR:
He would test the political waters again, seizing a divisive issue: a conspiracy theory about President Barack Obama.
DONALD TRUMP:
Why doesn’t he show his birth certificate? I think he probably—
WHOOPI GOLDBERG:
Why should he have to?
DONALD TRUMP:
Because I have to and everybody else has to, Whoopi. Why wouldn’t he show—excuse me.
NARRATOR:
The birther conspiracy: a racist theory that Obama was not born in America.
DONALD TRUMP:
Why—look, she’s smiling—why doesn’t he show his birth certificate? And you know what—
ALAN MARCUS:
I thought it was unhinged. I thought he was embarrassing himself. I thought that it was his way of saying, “That’s a Black man. We don’t want a Black man.”
WESLEY LOWERY, Author, They Can’t Kill Us All:
He’s remarkably shrewd in understanding that when he picks his fights, no matter how bad faith, no matter how objectively false the underlying claims are, he knows that the fight he is picking is one that is going to resonate with millions of people across the United States.
DONALD TRUMP:
But there’s something on that birth—maybe religion. Maybe it says he’s a Muslim. I don’t know, but I will tell you this: If he wasn’t born in this country, it’s one of the great scams of all time.
BILL O’REILLY:
Absolutely.
NARRATOR:
He was gaining momentum. And then an invitation to a gathering of Washington’s political elites.
MALE NEWSREADER:
We’re talking about the White House Correspondents' Dinner tonight. It’s an annual event right here in Washington.
MALE NEWSREADER:
An evening of fun together. Several Hollywood celebrities will also be in attendance.
MALE NEWSREADER:
Donald Trump has been invited as a guest of The Washington Post.
PETER BAKER, The New York Times:
For Trump, it’s a mark of respect. He’s been invited by The Washington Post. He’s there in his tuxedo. He’s arrived, in that sense. He’s being taken seriously.
TIMOTHY O’BRIEN:
President Obama takes the microphone.
BARACK OBAMA:
All right, everybody. Please have a seat. Donald Trump is here tonight!
TIMOTHY O’BRIEN:
Then proceeds to filet Donald publicly.
BARACK OBAMA:
No one is happier, no one is prouder to put this birth certificate matter to rest than the Donald. [Laughter] And that’s because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter—like, did we fake the moon landing? [Laughter]
GRAYDON CARTER, Fmr. editor, Vanity Fair:
I was sitting 20 feet from him, and just the look of discomfort on his face.
BARACK OBAMA:
What really happened in Roswell? [Laughter] And where are Biggie and Tupac? [Laughter]
CAROL LEONNIG:
That is such a painful moment for Donald Trump. At that dinner, you can feel the low-level hatred between the two men.
BARACK OBAMA:
All kidding aside. Obviously, we all know about your credentials and breadth of experience. [Laughter]
TIMOTHY O’BRIEN:
And he’s being treated like a piñata by the president of the United States. And I think he felt humiliated.
BARACK OBAMA:
Say what you will about Mr. Trump, he certainly would bring some change to the White House. Let’s see what we’ve got up there. [Laughter]
REP. NEWT GINGRICH (R-GA), Fmr. House Speaker:
Being recognized, even negatively, beats being ignored. Obama in a sense was helping create the myth of Donald Trump. What other Republican had Obama attacking him?
ROGER STONE:
I think that is the night that he resolves to run for president. I think that he is kind of motivated by it. “Maybe I’ll just run. Maybe I’ll show them all.”
MALE NEWSREADER:
Kamala Harris is already making history. She is the first female, the first African American and the first Indian American to hold the position of California attorney general.
NARRATOR:
After two terms as DA, she was elected as California’s attorney general.
BRAIN BROKAW, Attorney General Campaign Manager:
We were on the top floor of the Department of Justice in Sacramento. The aisles are lined with the portraits of the previous AGs of the state. And as you walk down, person after person, every single one of them was an old white guy. She was somebody that didn’t look like most of her predecessors. And I remember the look that she gave me. She raised her eyebrows like that.
JAMILAH KING, Mother Jones:
She’s always been the first person to integrate this little boys’ club, as a woman and as a Black woman. Being that first has to be incredibly lonely; it has to be incredibly isolating. And I think maybe the way she dealt with that was to double down on her ambition and to say, "I’m actually going to come out stronger."
NARRATOR:
Harris didn’t emphasize her race or gender. Instead, she made headlines with popular issues: fighting big banks over mortgage fraud.
MALE NEWSREADER:
Attorney General Kamala Harris says nearly 2,500 people were misled and cheated.
NARRATOR:
For-profit colleges.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
The lawsuit accuses Corinthian Colleges of lying to students.
NARRATOR:
Big oil companies.
MALE NEWSREADER:
Attorney General Kamala Harris filed a lawsuit today against BP and Arco claiming environmental violations.
NARRATOR:
But mindful of the blowback from her DA days, she also tried to avoid controversy.
SCOTT SHAFER, KQED-TV:
There were a lot of people in California in the progressive community that wanted her to take more of a leading role in a number of issues, including the decriminalization/legalization of recreational marijuana. There were also some criminal justice reforms on the ballot. And she declined to take a position. She basically punted on those questions. And I think a lot of people saw that as a lack of courage. Those kinds of decisions that she made to not get involved or not go as far as some wanted her to I’m sure are remnants of what she went through as district attorney.
NARRATOR:
But the approach was working.
MALE REPORTER:
A trailblazer with an impressive past and a promising future. A Democrat to watch.
You’ve been called the rising star of the Democratic Party. What exactly does that mean?
KAMALA HARRIS:
I don’t know, you’ll have to ask them. [Laughs]
GWEN IFILL:
Kamala Harris. She’s brilliant, she’s smart, she doesn’t look anything like anybody you ever see on Law & Order, yet she’s tough and she’s got a big future. And they call her “the female Barack Obama.”
NARRATOR:
Democrats had found a new star.
FEMALE INTERVIEWER:
What do you think—female Obama?
KAMALA HARRIS:
[Laughs] There’s only one Barack Obama, and thank God, he’s our president.
GIL DURAN, Attorney General Senior Adviser:
The term “the female Obama” was floating around out there. That the talent Kamala Harris has always had is a star power: People really believe in her and project a lot of hopes onto her. When you see a woman, and a woman of color, being able to win elections, that makes people think, “Wow, this is someone who can do it.”
MALE NEWSREADER:
Thank you for joining me tonight. And you are invited back on the program to announce your presidential campaign in 2016—
KAMALA HARRIS:
Oy! [Laughs]
MALE NEWSREADER:
—as soon as you are ready to make that announcement for 2016.
NOAH BIERMAN, LA Times:
People are just excited by her political biography. There was always this sort of inevitable sense about her, that she was moving on, probably, to the next thing.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
The 2016 presidential race is underway.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
—what’s expected to be a very crowded race for the GOP nomination.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
—more than a dozen GOP—
NARRATOR:
As Donald Trump had been preparing to run for president, he made an unexpected alliance.
PAULA WHITE:
Mr. Trump said to me, “I don’t like the way this country is going.” He said, “I’m thinking about running for president.” He said, “What do you think?”
NARRATOR:
Trump had watched televangelist pastor Paula White as she led a massive following of true believers.
PAULA WHITE:
Guess what? I’m back!
NEWT GINGRICH:
She has a very substantial following. She’s an attractive person and an articulate person. And Trump is very heavily shaped by television.
PAULA WHITE:
I’m back, devil!
NEWT GINGRICH:
He really likes television and he thinks in television terms.
NARRATOR:
Pastor Paula used television to become rich and powerful.
PAULA WHITE:
The principle I teach that find your passion in life and figure out a way to make money.
Just simply call that toll-free number. Don't delay, don't wait.
NARRATOR:
Trump wanted her help selling himself to evangelicals.
PAULA WHITE:
He called up and he said, “Paula,” he said, “I’m going for it.” I said, “Yes, sir.” He said, “I’ll be president and you’re going to be the faith director.”
MALE EVANGELICAL PASTOR:
So today we pray for Donald Trump. We pray for his family.
PAULA WHITE:
Then I begin to introduce him to people.
MALE EVANGELICAL PASTOR:
—because of your love of Donald Trump. Donald Trump, the Lord bless you and keep you.
PAULA WHITE:
He knows that I don’t play when it comes of things of God.
I secure his children. I secure his calling and his mantle in Jesus’ name, amen.
I tell him, "You wear a mantle that you don’t fully understand." He receives that and takes that in. He trusts me. He trusts my voice.
You see, I don’t believe anything is coincidence. I believe there is such a thing as destiny. And I believe that God will raise up a man for such a time as this.
NARRATOR:
Trump was embraced by the crowds, telling them what they wanted to hear.
PAULA WHITE:
Donald—
CROWD [chanting]:
—Trump! Donald! Trump! Donald! Trump!
MALE RALLY ANNOUNCER:
The next president of the United States, Donald J. Trump!
CROWD [chanting]:
Trump! Trump! Trump! Trump!
DONALD TRUMP:
This campaign is about giving a voice to those who don’t have one. I am your voice. I am your voice.
BRAD PARSCALE, Fmr. campaign strategist:
This movement’s been there, and it was looking for the right leader to say, “We matter.” The wood was out there drying and drying and drying; it was just waiting for the right person to throw the match in and then lead the fire in the right direction, and that’s what Donald Trump did.
MALE CAMPAIGN ATTENDEE:
He speaks for the people. The things he’s saying I’ve been saying for years. When he wins, we all win.
DONALD TRUMP:
I am with you. I will fight for you. And I will win for you.
ALAN MARCUS, Fmr. PR, Trump Organization:
These are people that believe in him, and they believe in him because he says, “I’m for you.” And if you don’t know him well, you believe that. You believe he cares.
DONALD TRUMP:
And we will make America great again! God bless you and goodnight. I love you!
NARRATOR:
Trump had congregated a massive base and would cement their devotion with fiery rhetoric.
DONALD TRUMP:
There’s a guy, totally disruptive, throwing punches. I love the old days. You know what they used to do to guys like that when they were in a place like this? They’d be carried out on a stretcher, folks. I’d like to punch him in the face, I’ll tell you. It's true.
ALAN MARCUS:
Donald says, “People love to hate, and so I’m going to build hatred for immigration.”
DONALD TRUMP:
Build the wall! Build the wall! Build the wall!
ALAN MARCUS:
And says, you know, "These people are rapists.”
DONALD TRUMP:
When Mexico sends its people, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists—
ALAN MARCUS:
Donald’s very comfortable with that, and his people were still there. They still followed him.
DONALD TRUMP:
They say I have the most loyal people. Did you ever see that? Where I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK? It’s like incredible. [Laughter]
MARC FISHER, Co-author, Trump Revealed:
From the Fifth Avenue comment, to the Access Hollywood moment—
DONALD TRUMP:
You can do anything.
MALE VOICE:
Whatever you want.
DONALD TRUMP:
Grab ‘em by the p----. [Laughter] You can do anything.
MARC FISHER:
—every time people try to hold him to account—
MALE NEWSREADER:
Donald Trump, caught on tape, in his own words, vulgar words, boasting about being able to grab women by their genitals.
MARC FISHER:
—every time people try to impose consequences on him—
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
In the audio you can hear Trump talk about a married woman he tried to have sex with and how he behaves with women that he’s attracted to.
MARC FISHER:
—that deepens the support that he gets from his base, because it says to the public "This guy is taking the arrows for you. And when he stands up for himself, he’s fighting for you."
NARRATOR:
In 2016, Kamala Harris was making her first run on the national stage, for the United States Senate.
SCOTT SHAFER:
She was very quick to jump into the race. It was a clear move for her. It had been many years since a Republican won a statewide election in California, so it was probably going to be a safe seat for Democrats.
NARRATOR:
And on election night, she waited for the returns with her oldest friends and family.
STACEY JOHNSON-BATISTE, Childhood friend:
Kamala had hosted a family dinner, just her close friends and family. In the room where we were eating, there were the TV monitors up. So we can also see the presidential votes coming in.
MALE NEWSREADER:
We’re closing in on our first chance to make projections in the presidential race. Americans now choosing—
DEBBIE MESLOH, Senate campaign adviser:
We were at this dinner, and I’ll never forget, The Associated Press declared her the winner at like three after eight. Then the other results started coming in, and it started to emerge that we might be dealing with a Trump presidency.
MALE NEWSREADER:
Right now he is ahead of Hillary Clinton. He has 167—
MALE NEWSREADER:
She is in profound trouble right now in the Electoral College.
SEN. LAPHONZA BUTLER (D-CA):
We were all sort of watching our phones to see which—you know, had Arizona been called? Had Texas been called? It was truly a night of two different experiences.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
Donald Trump has won the state of Wisconsin, and there goes her blue wall.
MALE NEWSREADER:
Donald Trump has won the state of Pennsylvania.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
That is the race, frankly.
MALE NEWSREADER:
President Trump may be something that everybody needs to get used to.
TAL KOPAN, San Francisco Chronicle:
In that moment it dawns on her that she is going to go to Washington for the first time to represent California under a Donald Trump White House, who stands against pretty much everything she stands for.
DEBBIE MESLOH:
We get over to the campaign, where the party was. Some people are crying. It is a despondent crowd. There was a speech that we had crafted, and she just tore it up; she just tore it up and was like, "I’m just going to go out there and talk with people."
KAMALA HARRIS:
So here’s the deal, guys. It’s going to be a long night. It’s going to be a long night.
BRIAN NELSON, Longtime adviser:
I have always perceived that in times of real crisis and hard moments, she always—that’s sort of when she is at her absolute best.
KAMALA HARRIS:
We know that we have a task in front of us. We know the stakes are high. When we have been attacked and when our ideals and fundamental values are being attacked, do we retreat, or do we fight? I say we fight!
BRIAN NELSON:
She knew the assignment, as I think the kids like to say. She knew that she was walking into a room that needed a leader.
KAMALA HARRIS:
I intend to fight. I intend to fight for Black Lives Matters! I intend to fight for truth and transparency and trust! I intend to fight! I intend to fight for a woman’s access to health care and reproductive health rights!
JOE GAROFOLI, San Francisco Chronicle:
It goes back to the words she’s hearing as she’s in the stroller: “We’re going to fight for justice. We’re going to to fight for civil rights."
KAMALA HARRIS:
I believe we’re at an inflection point. I believe we are at a place that is similar to that place and time when my parents met when they were graduate students at UC Berkeley in the '60s and active in the Civil Rights Movement.
JOE GAROFOLI:
That strain is in her ear. That’s her progressive side melding with her prosecutorial side. "We fight." And when she’s in fight mode, she’s at her best.
KAMALA HARRIS:
Do not despair. Do not be overwhelmed. Do not throw up our hands when it is time to roll up our sleeves and fight for who we are!
MALE NEWSREADER:
Donald Trump goes from being the candidate to the leader.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
A textbook case of disruption coming to Washington.
NARRATOR:
Donald Trump had won the biggest contest of them all: the presidency.
PETER BAKER, Co-author, The Divider:
He looks at the presidency as a show. Remember, he was host of a reality show for 14 years. He even says that to his aides—“Think of every day as another half-hour episode in this show. So how do we get attention?”
DONALD TRUMP:
Now arrives the hour of action.
MALE NEWSREADER:
Chaos, confusion and anger growing in the wake of President Trump’s immigration ban.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
—stops all entry from some predominately Muslim nations.
DONALD TRUMP:
We want our country to be a sanctuary for law-abiding Americans, not criminal aliens.
MALE NEWSREADER:
The growing outrage over families being separated at the border—
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
—showcasing unbelievable cruelty on the part of the U.S. government.
JOHN BOLTON, Fmr. National Security Adviser:
To me, it just felt like continuing chaos.
DONALD TRUMP:
North Korea will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.
JOHN BOLTON:
There was no effort to say, "What are the priorities here?" And I think he makes decisions quickly and can change them very quickly, too. And sometimes to be 180 degrees of what he had decided just a few hours before.
DONALD TRUMP:
I’m not concerned about anything with the Russian investigation because it’s a hoax. That’s enough, put down the mic.
MALE REPORTER:
Mr. President, are you worried about indictments coming down—
MARC FISHER:
You see the same tools that he’s always used to defend himself.
DONALD TRUMP:
Russian collusion. Give me a break.
MARC FISHER:
Which is go on the attack. Attack the investigators.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
President Trump now facing outrage after firing Comey.
DONALD TRUMP:
I did you a great favor when I fired this guy.
JANE MAYER, The New Yorker:
It is very much the Roy Cohn message, just counterpunch no matter what. And from the start he always hits as hard as he possibly can, and harder than he’s been hit, if he can.
CHARLOTTESVILLE ALT-RIGHT PROTESTERS:
Jews will not replace us!
MALE NEWSREADER:
Mayhem in Charlottesville.
DONALD TRUMP:
But you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides.
MARC FISHER:
I see Charlottesville as very much of a piece with his lunge into the birtherism nonsense about Obama.
DONALD TRUMP:
I think there’s blame on both sides, and I have no doubt about it, and you don’t have any doubt about it either.
MARC FISHER:
It’s a way of using race to cement his relationship with his base.
MALE NEWSREADER:
What he's trying to do is make America hate again.
CAROL LEONNIG, Co-author, A Very Stable Genius:
It happens over and over again where people say, “Oh, my gosh, this is it. No president can survive this.” Quite the opposite: Donald Trump will prove at this moment, and many others to come, that nothing defeats him.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
Dramatic end to a nearly five-month war with Democrats. President Trump has been acquitted in his impeachment trial.
MALE NEWSREADER:
Impeachment is finally over. President Trump acquitted by U.S. Senate.
DONALD TRUMP:
Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you.
NARRATOR:
It was a presidency marked by constant fighting: to control the Republican Party, transform the Supreme Court and hold on to power.
BRAD PARSCALE, Fmr. Campaign Manager:
By February of 2020 you see Trump’s popularity skyrocket. We come into a poll, I show him in the Oval, and he was winning in a landslide. He had a battle map that no one had seen since Reagan. That is February of 2020. And I remember going home that night and seeing the pictures coming out of China, and Italy, and other places, of COVID.
LESTER HOLT:
The growing worries and response to the deadly coronavirus.
MALE NEWSREADER:
Wuhan, China. That’s the epicenter of this—
MALE NEWSREADER:
Three cities now under lockdown in China.
BRAD PARSCALE:
And I started scratching my head, and I was like, “This thing could take all of this down.”
NARRATOR:
Trump would fight COVID the Trump way.
MARC FISHER:
He immediately turned to what he knew best, which is the rules of Trump, the way he’s always done business. So he puts himself at the center.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
President Trump taking to the White House briefing room, surrounded by—
MARC FISHER:
Daily briefings.
DONALD TRUMP:
We’re ready for it. It is what it is. We’re ready for it. You have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero.
ANTHONY SCARAMUCCI, Fmr. Communications Director:
What he learned in terms of coping with his parents, what he learned in New York real estate, what he learned from Roy Cohn is, “I can manufacture and get a very large number of people to believe my truth.”
DONALD TRUMP:
We have done an incredible job. We’re going to continue. It’s going to disappear. One day it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.
And we’re prepared, and we’re doing a great job with it, and it will go away. Just stay calm.
And again, this is going away. This is going away.
ANTHONY SCARAMUCCI:
But this is a crisis that his 45-, 50-year skill set, the Roy Cohn playbook, doesn’t work with this crisis because it’s scientific. It’s fact-based science.
MALE REPORTER:
What do you say to Americans who are upset with you over the way you downplayed this crisis over the last couple of months? What do you say to Americans that believe you got this wrong?
DONALD TRUMP:
It will go away, and I do want them to stay calm, and we are doing a great job. If you look at those individual statements, they’re all true. “Stay calm.” “It will go away.” You know it will. You know it is going away. And it will go away, and we’re going to have a great victory.
BRAD PARSCALE:
I knew it was really bad. Within a few months his polling was in the bucket. My last, throw-myself-onto-the-hot-coals was, “We’re losing, and we’re losing because of how we’re handling COVID. We were wrong on our framing of what we were doing on COVID. The onstage presentations from Trump, we're being wrong, and if the election’s held today, we lose." And he didn’t like hearing that. He got very upset with me. That was the last time I ever was in the Oval Office.
CAROL LEONNIG:
His reaction to COVID totally fits his playbook for all the other crises that he not only waged and waded through, but triumphed over. It’s just that this one is so undeniable. People are dying.
MALE REPORTER:
What do you say to Americans who are watching you right now who are scared?
DONALD TRUMP:
I say that you’re a terrible reporter, that’s what I say. Go ahead. I think that’s a very nasty question, and I think it’s a very bad signal that you’re putting out to the American people.
NARRATOR:
Trump’s playbook had become a liability.
ALAN MARCUS:
I think that his presidency ended with those briefings, frankly. Had he turned COVID fully over to experts—people were especially willing to give you the benefit of the doubt during that kind of an emergency and tragedy—that he would have been reelected.
KAMALA HARRIS:
Did you have any communication with any Russian businessmen or any Russian nationals?
JEFF SESSIONS:
I don’t believe I had any conversation with Russian businessmen or Russian nationals.
JAMILAH KING:
The Senate confirmation hearings of Donald Trump's cabinet members in 2017 is a moment where you really get to see that fight that she promised on election night in practice.
JEFF SESSIONS:
—so I need to be correct as best I can—
KAMALA HARRIS:
I do want you to be honest.
JEFF SESSIONS:
—and I'm not able to be rushed this fast. It makes me nervous.
KAMALA HARRIS:
Are you aware of any—
JAMILAH KING:
The skills of being a prosecutor come out in a way that make it a huge asset to her when she’s on the national stage and she’s grilling Jeff Sessions or she’s grilling Brett Kavanaugh.
KAMALA HARRIS:
Can you think of any laws that give government the power to make decisions about the male body?
ASHLEY ETIENNE, Fmr. political adviser:
To see her wearing out those witnesses, as a woman of color, and as someone who’s sat through a lot of hearings, it was energizing. It was encouraging.
BRETT KAVANAUGH:
And I would like to know the person you’re thinking of, because what if there’s—
KAMALA HARRIS:
I think you’re thinking of someone and you don’t want to tell us. [Laughter]
BRIAN BROKAW:
She was Kamala the prosecutor, asking the tough questions, knocking you off balance.
KAMALA HARRIS:
Did you watch Dr. Ford’s testimony?
BRETT KAVANAUGH:
I did not. I plan to—
KAMALA HARRIS:
Thank you, I have nothing else. Thank you.
BRETT KAVANAUGH:
I plan to, but I did not.
BRIAN BROKAW:
That is part of what propelled her to national recognition during her time in the Senate.
KAMALA HARRIS:
Attorney General Barr, has the president or anyone at the White House ever asked or suggested that you open an investigation of anyone?
WILLIAM BARR:
I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t, uh—
KAMALA HARRIS:
Yes or no?
WILLIAM BARR:
They have not asked me to open an investigation.
KAMALA HARRIS:
Perhaps they’ve suggested?
WILLIAM BARR:
I don't know, I wouldn’t say suggest—
KAMALA HARRIS:
Hinted? Inferred? You don’t know? OK.
ASHLEY ETIENNE:
She really hit cult status at that point, and people rallied around her, became enthusiastic about her and it really set the stage for her future run.
ELAINA PLOTT CALABRO, The Atlantic:
She became convinced that 2020 was her one window to run for president. For a junior senator who had been in Washington for all of a year and a half, that’s remarkable.
NARRATOR:
She was in a field of 20 Democratic candidates. At the first debate she went right on the attack.
KAMALA HARRIS:
I’m going to now direct this at Vice President Biden. I do not believe you are a racist, and I agree with you.
COURTNEY SUBRAMANIAN, LA Times:
Joe Biden was the heir apparent, and she went for the leading contender. And of course that’s something that she learned in San Francisco, elbowing your way to the top.
KAMALA HARRIS:
But I also believe, and it’s personal, and I was actually very—It was hurtful to hear you talk about the reputations of two United States senators who built their reputations and career on the segregation of race in this country.
NOAH BIERMAN:
It’s a political opening, and she uses it. A lot of Democrats are very upset by this. They feel like, “OK, it’s one thing to go after somebody for policy, but to go after what’s basically his integrity," that’s really upsetting to a lot of Democrats, who feel like, “No, no, no, the main target here has to be Trump. We can’t be going after each other in these kind of personal terms.”
KAMALA HARRIS:
You also worked with them to oppose busing. And, you know, there was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools and she was bused to school every day, and that little girl was me.
JOE GAROFOLI:
I was like, wow, that’s a pretty good takedown. It certainly hurt him, and it helped her in the polls briefly. And then it turns out that her position on busing wasn’t a whole hell of a lot different than his. When people find out like, "Well, OK, but you’re not all that different than he is," that’s when it kind of fell apart.
ELAINA PLOTT CALABRO:
Her campaign was kind of floundering. People started to say, “OK, well, what does she actually feel about issues? What is her actual agenda as president?” It was entirely unclear.
NOAH BIERMAN:
For all the excitement she has, it starts to fizzle because she fundamentally does have trouble defining herself. She’s not an ideological person, and in a primary campaign, people want to know what your ideology is, because your choosing among Democrats. So everybody knows Bernie Sanders stands here, Elizabeth Warren stands here, Biden stands here, Pete Buttigieg stands here. Where is she? And they don’t know, and she doesn’t do a good job of defining that, and she seems to be unsure of where she is.
NARRATOR:
The campaign collapsed even before the first caucus in Iowa.
STACEY JOHNSON-BATISTE:
It was a huge disappointment because she is not a quitter, she’s a fighter. That may have been the only race of any kind, that I know of, that she did not finish and did not win.
NARRATOR:
Then, a stunning lifeline from the most unlikely person.
JOE BIDEN:
My fellow Americans, let me introduce to you your next vice president of the United States, Kamala Harris. Kamala.
NOAH BIERMAN:
One of the themes of Biden’s campaign is that America needs to mend its wounds. America can’t be caught up in grievances. You could see that as an advantage for Harris, somebody whose biggest political moment in the campaign was a direct hit on him, and he chooses her and says, “Look, we can get over this.”
KAMALA HARRIS:
I am incredibly honored by this responsibility and I’m ready to get to work. I am ready to get to work.
FOX NEWS ANCHOR:
The Fox News Decision Desk can now project that former Vice President Joe Biden will win Pennsylvania and Nevada.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
He is President-elect Joseph Robinette Biden.
ALYSSA FARAH GRIFFIN, Fmr. Communications Director:
Losing after a first term in office is a unique thing that doesn’t happen that often. There was one moment where in this period he was watching Joe Biden on TV and says, "Can you believe I lost to this, blank, guy?
NARRATOR:
Publicly Donald Trump refused to concede the loss. He would exercise his power to fight it.
MALE VOICE [reading Trump tweet]:
I won the election.
MARC FISHER:
Donald Trump is simply being consistent.
MALE VOICE [reading Trump tweet]:
Most fraudulent election in history!
MARC FISHER:
He’s simply being what he’s always been. He’s always believed that what the rest of the world sees as a loss can be marketed as a win.
DONALD TRUMP [on phone]:
This election was a total fraud. And they did these massive dumps of votes, and all of a sudden I went from winning by a lot to losing by a little.
SUSAN GLASSER, Co-author, The Divider:
Donald Trump was personally orchestrating the actual campaign to overturn the election.
DONALD TRUMP:
You will find tens of thousands of false ballots, forged ballots. You’ll see.
SUSAN GLASSER:
He was making videos.
DONALD TRUMP:
You can press a button for Trump and the vote goes to Biden. What kind of a system is this?
SUSAN GLASSER:
But he was also literally working the phones—
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers described at least two phone calls from the former president asking—
SUSAN GLASSER:
—pressuring state election officials in Arizona—
MALE NEWSREADER:
In a series of calls after the election, Trump demanded Bowers throw out the electoral votes won by Joe Biden.
SUSAN GLASSER:
—and Georgia.
DONALD TRUMP [on phone]:
I just want to find 11,780 votes. Fellas, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break.
NARRATOR:
But Trump’s efforts would continually fail.
MALE REPORTER:
In the courts, where evidence gets scrutinized, authenticated and tested, they’re getting hammered.
NARRATOR:
More than 60 lawsuits were unsuccessful in court.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
—all but now ending the president’s attempt to reverse his election loss.
NARRATOR:
Even many of his senior staff told him the claims had no merit, including his own attorney general.
PETER BAKER:
He was told, time and time again, that he did not win the election. Not by Democrats, not by the media, but by his own people.
NARRATOR:
Unwilling to accept defeat, he made one final attempt.
KELLYANNE CONWAY, Fmr. counselor to the president:
People told him, “You’re going to have a second bite of the apple on Jan. 6.” That was a date by which the Congress is going to vote to certify what the state electors did.
CAROL LEONNIG, Co-author, I Alone Can Fix It:
Donald Trump issued a tweet saying, "All of my supporters, come to Washington for this rally on Jan. 6."
MALE VOICE [reading Trump tweet]:
Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 election. Big protest in D.C. on Jan. 6. Be there, will be wild!
CAROL LEONNIG:
“Will be wild.” He wanted a show of force to come to Washington and to try to block the certification of Congress.
CROWD [chanting]:
Fight for Trump! Fight for Trump! Fight for Trump!
DONALD TRUMP:
And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.
DAN BALZ, The Washington Post:
He wanted, in whatever way he could, to empower people to disrupt Congress, and if that resulted in violence, he obviously was prepared to let that happen.
JONATHAN KARL, Author, Betrayal:
Jan. 6 at its core is the ultimate expression of Trump’s belief that he can never acknowledge a loss. You can’t lose because you appear to be a loser and then people won’t follow you. It’s this very simplistic thing, but it’s like his—I mean, that is the motto of Trump’s life.
EUGENE ROBINSON, The Washington Post:
He watched these people sacking the U.S. Capitol, overrunning police, beating them with the American flag. To just sit there and watch it on television, it’s just inexplicable. So either he was able to delude himself that he had actually won, or he simply didn’t care that he had lost, that he wanted to keep power.
NARRATOR:
Eventually, police regained control of the Capitol.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
The Capitol grounds have been secured. The police had to use tear gas—
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
Troops are deployed around the Capitol perimeter to prevent anymore violence.
NARRATOR:
The violent insurrection hadn’t worked.
JOE BIDEN:
I, Joseph Robinette Biden Jr., do solemnly swear—
NARRATOR:
Refusing to attend Biden’s inauguration, he left Washington on Air Force One.
CAROL LEONNIG:
There’s a certain Napoleon element to Donald Trump’s evacuation from Washington to his private club in Palm Beach. It’s almost like he’s returning to nurse his wounds and continue to live in that alternate reality, where he won the election, it was unfairly taken from him and he’s still the president.
PETER BAKER:
Trump is not a defeated, vanquished president, as he sees it. Mar-a-Lago at this point is Elba. This is where he has gone to live his exile and plot his return. He’s plotting his comeback.
KAMALA HARRIS:
I, Kamala Devi Harris, do solemnly swear—
NARRATOR:
Kamala Harris entered the vice presidency with high expectations.
SUPREME COURT JUSTICE SONIA SOTOMAYOR:
—so help me God.
KAMALA HARRIS:
So help me God.
NARRATOR:
But she was still new to the ways of Washington.
BRIAN BROKAW, Senate campaign adviser:
She’s somebody who just 10 years before had been the district attorney in San Francisco. She had been in the United States Senate, of course, but she was barely there for two-plus years before the presidential campaign cycle began. So here you are assuming office as vice president where you’re not very far removed from local government in California.
NARRATOR:
She would try to learn what she could from one of Washington’s most established politicians: Joe Biden.
ASHLEY ETIENNE, Fmr. VP Communications Director:
They started to spend a lot of time together, so she was really shadowing the president. They were together every morning in the presidential briefings, was standing next to him when he would sign bills. She was almost at every decision table. Was the last one in the room. She was learning the job day one. That was the aim and the goal, is to stick with the president and learn as much as you possibly can about the job.
NARRATOR:
And soon the new vice president would receive her first major assignment: go to a key source of the border crisis—Guatemala.
TAL KOPAN:
Joe Biden tasks her with, in his mind, what he did as vice president, which is liaising with countries in Central America that sent a lot of the migrants to the U.S.
NOAH BIERMAN:
The stakes are massive, because this is her first trip abroad as the vice president. Every network is sending somebody with her. And trust me, I’ve covered other vice presidents, and sometimes they’re begging reporters to come on these foreign trips.
NARRATOR:
But even in her carefully scripted remarks, controversy.
KAMALA HARRIS:
I want to be clear to folks in this region who are thinking about making that dangerous trek to the United States-Mexico border. Do not come. Do not come. The United States will continue to enforce our laws and secure our border.
JAMILAH KING:
She was a huge advocate of immigrant rights. She is the child of two immigrants, and all of a sudden she’s on this trip to Guatemala and saying “Don’t come” to prospective migrants. The excitement that people had around her starts to shift, particularly on the left.
NARRATOR:
Then, in a high-stakes major network interview, it got worse.
LESTER HOLT:
Do you have any plans to visit the border?
KAMALA HARRIS:
I’m here in Guatemala today. At some point, you know, it—We are going to the border. We’ve been to the border. So this whole thing about the border, we’ve been to the border.
ELAINA PLOTT CALABRO:
She says that she’s been to the border when Lester Holt asks, which is not true. It escalates very quickly into something strange and defensive and just an all-around kind of catastrophic viewing experience.
KAMALA HARRIS:
We’ve been to the border.
LESTER HOLT:
You haven’t been to the border.
KAMALA HARRIS:
And I haven’t been to Europe. [Laughs] I don’t understand the point that you’re making.
NOAH BIERMAN:
She lets the prosecutor, sort of acerbic-witted version of Kamala Harris comes out and she says, “I haven’t been to Europe either, what’s the big deal?” And it just becomes this blow-up moment back home.
FOX NEWS GUEST:
Kamala Harris was never and is still not ready for prime time. She is not ready for serious governance, the serious responsibility.
NEWT GINGRICH:
She doesn’t know anything. She doesn’t know how to learn anything. She is inarticulate, and she’s not sure what the big words mean anyway.
ASHLEY ETIENNE:
It's what happens in Washington, especially when you're a woman. If you have a misstep, people hyperfocus on it. And then they hang it around your neck like an albatross.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
Selecting s VP based solely on diversity criteria, not objective merit, is not only stupid, it’s really dangerous.
JAMILAH KING:
All of the doubts that people had had about her already, about Black women, women, diversity, equity, inclusion, it kind of all came to a head in that moment.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
This is what happens when you choose your vice president based on gender and skin color rather than actual talent and expertise.
MALE NEWSREADER:
Oh, I don't agree with that.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
We’re seeing that disaster unfold right now.
MALE NEWSREADER:
That’s so mean.
ELAINA PLOTT CALABRO:
Kamala Harris’ reaction was essentially to recede from public view. For the rest of that year you see this risk-aversion coming into play pretty prominently. It was a quite expansive darkness. She was very concerned that she was going to jeopardize the success of the administration if she continued to put herself out there publicly.
NARRATOR:
Out of the spotlight, Harris fought to revive her political career.
NOAH BIERMAN:
She’s not ever going to be the kind of lofty orator that some people want her to be, but she’s learned how to find her strengths, how to gravitate toward the things where she’s really good and do more of them.
KAMALA HARRIS:
It’s good to be back in South Carolina. [Laughs]
NARRATOR:
Retail politics—small groups in small towns all over America.
KAMALA HARRIS:
Thank you for your skills—
ASHLEY ETIENNE:
I saw her getting much more comfortable on the stump. She was exactly where she needed to be—out of the Beltway and in the country.
JAMILAH KING:
You see her recalibrating, trying to learn from her mistakes. You want to be as precise and as targeted in your comeback as you can be.
NARRATOR:
And when an issue of national importance arrived, she was primed to jump back into the fray.
LESTER HOLT:
Tonight, the unprecedented leak: The Supreme Court appears poised to overturn Roe v. Wade.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
The Supreme Court has privately voted to strike down the landmark Roe v. Wade decision from 49 years ago.
ROHINI KOSOGLU, Longtime adviser:
The day the Dobbs decision leaked was a very intense day. At the same time, we had a speech that she had to give at Emily's List, which is an organization to help Democratic women get elected into office.
KAMALA HARRIS:
Good evening, please have a seat. Good evening.
LAPHONZA BUTLER:
It was another opportunity where she ripped up her planned speech, started from scratch and just spoke from her heart.
KAMALA HARRIS:
Well, we say, “How dare they! How dare they tell a woman what she can do and cannot do with her own body. How dare they! How dare they try to stop her from determining her own future. How dare they try to deny women their rights and their freedoms.”
ACE SMITH, Longtime adviser:
She completely came into her own. But more than anything she was talking about something that—and this really animates her more than anything—that has a profound effect on people across the United States, in this case women. And she’s ultimately a fighter, and when she gets in fighting mode, watch out.
KAMALA HARRIS:
So to all here I say, let us fight for our country with everything we have got. God bless you, and God bless America.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
An historic day here in Washington. A federal grand jury here has indicted former President Donald Trump—
NARRATOR:
In those years after his presidency, Donald Trump’s past seemed to be catching up to him.
MALE NEWSREADER:
He will now head to appear in federal court for the arraignment. This is not quite the return to Washington this former president had envisioned for himself.
NARRATOR:
In Georgia and Washington, D.C., charged with felonies for his attempts to overturn the election.
MALE NEWSREADER:
The former president is charged with leading a criminal organization that worked to overturn the results—
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
Trump is facing over 700 years in jail if convicted on all charges.
PETER BAKER:
He already lost multiple civil trials.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
—found Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming Carol.
PETER BAKER:
They found him liable for sexual abuse, business fraud. His business was convicted in criminal court of tax and other financial crimes.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
Trump guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying business records in the Stormy Daniels hush money case.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
Trump now faces the possibility of jail time after he was found guilty of all 34 counts.
PETER BAKER:
All of these things have happened since he left office.
FEMALE REPORTER:
President Trump!
CAROL LEONNIG:
Donald Trump is not just fighting for his long-held belief that he’s a winner. He is not just fighting to prove to his father, to the naysayers, that he is stronger than they are. He is fighting for his freedom. Winning the presidency is equal to staying out of jail. And so there is nothing more important to him.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
President Trump officially clinching the Republican nomination for president.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
Donald Trump securing the Republican nomination in commanding fashion.
EUGENE ROBINSON:
There’s an energy and an indefatigability to Donald Trump that is kind of off the scale. It is remarkable that he is so relentless in pursuing the vindication or the power that he’s seeking. He keeps going after it.
NARRATOR:
Donald Trump fought on, even in the face of a would-be assassin's bullet.
DONALD TRUMP:
—something that said, “Take a look at what happened"—
MARC FISHER:
Here he is in perhaps his single greatest moment of public vulnerability. And clearly there’s shock, and clearly there’s pain. Donald Trump, since his childhood, has taken enormous pride in his toughness. And his instincts are always to present himself as someone who people will aspire to be like. And then, there he is, standing up, and the fist goes up. And you see him mouthing the words, "Fight. Fight. Fight." Not just expressing his anger and his desire to fight, but doing it in this remarkably iconic way. Like him or hate him, it’s what makes him the figure that he’s been in our history.
MALE DEBATE MODERATOR:
Now please welcome the 46th president of the United States, Joe Biden.
NARRATOR:
Just months before the 2024 election, Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance.
JOE BIDEN:
The, uh, with the COVID—excuse me, with dealing with everything we have to do with, uh—look, if—we finally beat Medicare.
TAL KOPAN:
All of a sudden Democrats, whether or not they still believe in Joe Biden’s abilities, now fear that the American public will never again believe in Joe Biden’s abilities and the election will slip away from them. In that moment, all of a sudden, all eyes turn to Kamala Harris.
ANDERSON COOPER:
Joining us now is Vice President Kamala Harris. Madame Vice President, thanks for being with us.
NOAH BIERMAN:
She comes on to Anderson Cooper, and similar to the Guatemala interview she’s pressed and pressed—“But this was a bad debate. This was a bad debate.”
KAMALA HARRIS:
—historic, whether it be infrastructure—the former guy, the other guy on the debate stage—
ANDERSON COOPER:
But is that the man, the man who we saw on the stage tonight, is that the person you see in meetings every day?
NOAH BIERMAN:
This time she much more successfully pivots.
KAMALA HARRIS:
It was a slow start—that’s obvious to everyone, I’m not going to debate that point. I’m talking about the choice in November. I’m talking about one of the most important elections in our collective lifetime.
SCOTT SHAFER:
She defended Joe Biden in a way that I think caught a lot of people off guard, because she was so effective in standing up for him.
KAMALA HARRIS:
So I’m not going to spend all night with you talking about the last 90 minutes when I’ve been watching the last three and half years of performance.
SCOTT SHAFER:
She was also kind of surprising people and getting a second look from people who were maybe a little skeptical that she could do it.
NARRATOR:
Finally, it was Kamala Harris’ moment.
MALE NEWSREADER:
President Biden has dropped out of the presidential race.
MALE NEWSREADER:
All eyes are now on Vice President Kamala Harris, who was endorsed by President Biden.
NOAH BIERMAN:
Here's somebody with a very strong voice who can powerfully say, "I’ve got the energy and I’ve got the passion that I can summon to make the case." That just settles a lot of things for Democrats. They are already feeling like, "OK, this election that felt like a death march for the party is now alive again." They’ve got a shot.
KAMALA HARRIS:
Before I was elected as vice president I was the elected attorney general, as I’ve mentioned, of California. And before that I was a courtroom prosecutor. In those roles I took on perpetrators of all kinds. Predators who abused women. Fraudsters who ripped off consumers. Cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So hear me when I say, “I know Donald Trump’s type.”
JAMILAH KING:
She seems to be perfectly positioned for this moment. All of those disparate experiences that didn’t make any sense in her life, whether it is being this biracial kid in Berkeley, or being the new kid in Montreal, or being the new person on Howard University’s campus, or being this lone Black woman in the room in San Francisco, all of those things are coming to a head and proving themselves useful in this moment.
NARRATOR:
Now, two presidential candidates, waging their biggest fights yet.
For Donald Trump, one final chance to go out the winner he’s always sought to be, to deliver for the millions of Americans who put their faith in him.
For Kamala Harris, a sudden chance to break the ultimate barrier, to bring her sense of justice and change to American politics.
An historic choice before a deeply divided country.
