Trump’s Man in Greenwich

An oral history

Jim Campbell is a 55-year-old real estate executive and Connecticut resident. Until recently, he was the chairman of the Republican Town Committee in Greenwich, Connecticut, one of the richest towns in one of America’s richest states.

I was at a dinner back in January, early February [2016], and I already was supporting Trump. And Daniel Henninger from the Wall Street Journal was there — who wouldn’t mention Trump by name — he was highly critical of Trump. And I got up and introduced myself. First question, as chairman of the Greenwich Republican Party: Why is it so unacceptable to have a candidate who wants to protect the country, who wants to strike better trade deals? And, you know, I presented what perhaps some people would call a sort of a cleaned-up language explaining what I think was the core of his support, that he was articulating more forcefully than the other candidates. Why do I tell you this? Well, after the dinner — no one else got up to support Donald Trump or say anything nice about him — but after the dinner I immediately had four guys come up to me — Wall Street guys — “What can I do? Anything you’re doing, let us know. Whatever I can do to help, here’s my card.”

It’s him. I don’t think it was a conscious choice, I think he’s been this way for, you know, most of his career, because as you read clips from over his career from Oprah Winfrey from however many years ago, he seems to have always been pretty blunt. And it’s essential to his appeal. There were 17 candidates. It’s very hard to stand out in that field. The others could have tried to do the same thing. They would have failed at it. He’s a uniquely gifted political orator. The first time I actually listened to him conduct a rally — and I opened the rally, up in Hartford, when he first came to Connecticut [in April 2016]. I was up there on stage to start the rally — but the first time I heard him do a rally was on TV in maybe early December, late November [2015], something like that. And I turned the cable channel on and it’s OAN — One America Network — which I’m not used to watching, and his rally was on live. It was like 8:05. I was like, What? Did he buy the station? Nobody covers a candidate’s rally live. They might show sixty seconds, but they just kept playing it, and I kept watching it. Ten minutes in I started texting some of my political friends, you know, this is really good. He’s really good at the microphone. He’s really good. And I have heard a lot of political speechmaking, and I think I’m not too bad at it myself. And I thought then, This is real. At that time he was doing the, “Folks, we either have a country or we don’t.” However you feel about what is going on at the border, it’s a compelling line. He delivered it in a compelling way, and he just — no notes! Just kept going. I watched the thing for an hour. I never do that. Never. So I don’t think he would have ever gotten this far if he was not a unique political talent. I’m not sure how much credit he’s been given for that.

When I got my haircut at my regular barber in November [2015], men go to barbershops to talk politics, that’s what happens, he is an immigrant from Italy, he’s been in this country for over 30 years, he lives in the Bronx, he’s Republican. We often talk politics. All the guys in this barbershop are Republican. I’m not so sure about the women who cut your hair, and, in fact, I think they do a better job, but I like this guy because I used to live in the Italian part of Switzerland for 10 years, and I speak Italian, so I try speaking Italian. Okay. But why am I telling you this? It was just before the fourth [Republican] debate. I get my haircut on Saturday, so the fourth debate was on Sunday night. And I said, “Peter, are you watching the debate tomorrow night?” And he said, “Non.” His English is still, after all these years, it sounds Italian. And I said, “What do you mean, no? You love this stuff.” And he said, “I already found my candidate.” And, of course, this is November, so Trump’s been ahead for awhile in the polls. So I knew what that meant. I felt this sort of, Oh, I know who he’s voting for. And I said, “Don’t tell me. Trump.” Of course, we’re looking at each other through the mirror, and I said, “Why? Why Trump?” [In an Italian accent] “He says everything I think.” And that’s not profound? He said everything they were thinking that no one else would say. He probably said it just the way they wanted to hear it, too. They probably didn’t mind the language.

So, for sure, security [was the most important issue for him this election]. And someone who just spoke with conviction on it, not talking points. Conviction on security. And it’s been clear to me that the Obama administration on security didn’t really know what to do and was communicating a message of business as usual. I lived in Europe for years. I find it alarming that you can have a hundred people killed in an attack in Paris. I flew with my family the last three years for summer vacation into Milan. This summer when we went, you’re grateful to get away from the airport. I don’t want to associate too much with having to say Islamic, but you don’t just go around pretending that those who are committed to this sort of radical terror, you know, it’s not like spin the dial and pick their religion. They’re all Islamic, so it doesn’t make the religion the problem, of course, but you can’t understand them if you’re not willing to say that they’re all Islamicists, that they’re feeding off this perverted view of their religion. They just are. It’s as factual as saying the Iraq War was a mistake. So I don’t like the reaction to this ban and the ones who insist on calling it a Muslim ban. Well, it’s not. But if we can’t just call a spade a spade, I don’t know how we’re supposed to deal with the problem.

I have myself a lingering hostility to the damage George Bush did to the party. I respect him for his service, but his mistake in the Middle East was fatal. And you saw what happened to our party in ’06 and ’08. We got wiped out. And I certainly needed a Republican candidate for president who was willing to break with the past and to point out that we can’t go that way. Everyone agrees. That was a mistake. We’re not running in 2016 to resuscitate the Bush years. No, those were mistakes. We don’t want mistakes. So now we’re back to Donald Trump saying, “I like my heroes who aren’t captured,” right? That was too much, right? You shouldn’t say that. But it’s the same kind of guy who says I like my Republican party successful, not losing. I do, too.

You have to be careful. Of course there’s a global economy, but that’s not to say that money doesn’t get parked in one place or another. So BMW makes a lot of their cars now in the United States. Most of the parts come from Germany. All the profits go back to Munich. My family has two BMWs. I like BMWs. Whatever. But make no mistake, that’s helping the German economy a lot more than my American economy. I’m okay with imports, but there’s a reality to it. I want that money coming back here.

I lived in the Italian part of Switzerland in the ’80s and ’90s, on and off, for 10 years. Switzerland — it’s a Western liberal democracy, but they took the borders very seriously. There were routinely stories coming up in the newspaper about rounding up immigrants trying to get into Switzerland from Italy in the woods. Sometimes shots were fired when round-ups would take place. It was Turks, usually, at the time, who were trying to escape the authorities. [The Swiss] required registration of people trying to live in the country. It required paperwork. If you didn’t, you simply left with your family. Goodbye. Goodbye. It’s a very liberal country, actually. But they take it more seriously. So I’m used to the idea that you take borders seriously and the idea that you have to obey the law. It wouldn’t occur to me to try to go into another country without a passport. If I needed a visa, I had to have a visa. It wouldn’t occur to me that I could just go in. Lord knows it never would have occurred to me that I could just stay. It’s a foreign notion to me. It’s deeply troubling. We’re a law-based society, but everybody kind of says, “Look, have a heart. Let’s throw the law out when it comes to whether these people have a right to be here, whether they’ll become residents. Oh, I don’t know what to do. But, God, let’s not make them leave.” Okay, I get the humanitarian side of it, but that’s absurd. In terms of a legal regime, that’s crazy.

I read the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, so I get the blue bag and the clear bag in the driveway in the morning. And I’ve been reading the New York Times since sixth grade homeroom. It’s the best written daily publication in the world. It’s also had a consistent view for my entire adult life that I’ve been reading, so it’s fine. I like the paper, I think it’s a great paper. But if you picked up the paper 20 years ago and read it, and you picked it up today, there’s just a stronger spin in every story on American politics and on the White House.

And they would say that they try to keep the news division straight and separated from the opinion pages, but I tell you, it’s sure hard to see it in the headlines and in the word choice and in the issue focus. “Trump utters falsehood.” “Trump lies again.” We’re seeing that. Lie means that it’s intentional and you know what the truth is. We all know what the lie means. And that they’ve unleashed it, there’s no stopping it. It’s constant. They kind of started it a few weeks ago, and it’s now constant. It’s dangerous, I think. It’s dangerous for media. And then, of course, others are going to want to respond in kind.

Look, if you stand at a microphone and see half a million people, I don’t know how many people there were, you see half a million people, it looks like everybody in the country. It just so happens that when Obama was elected and the District of Columbia, which has over two million residents and is 90 percent African-American or 85 percent or some very high [number], maybe I’m off by 20 points, don’t quote me.* It’s enormous. I think it’s the largest majority African-American population of any city. We’re talking about the first African-American president. It’s a historic moment for our country. It’s beyond, to write the sentence is to understate its importance. It’s hugely important. We had slavery in this country until 1863, for God’s sake. Just electing an African-American president, of course, there should be an enormous — we should all be proud of that. I am today. And I hate every policy practically that the guy stood for.

So it’s crazy to be picking a fight over it, but to Trump, he measures things this way, and then, look, they’ve got a chip on their shoulder… And so from their perspective — the Trump White House — they’ve been living this for a year and a half, and they’ve about had it. And now they’ve won the biggest election upset, everyone’s saying, in American history, and they’re still getting dumped on. And I’ll tell you what annoys people, I was interviewed before the inauguration, 10 days before when I was still planning on going down, and they put my picture on the front page of the Sunday edition of the Connecticut Post, and the reporter is one I’ve known for years. He’s a very good reporter. I call him a friend. I’ve known him for years. And one of the three or four questions he asked is, how big do you think the crowd will be? And how do you think it will compare with Obama’s? So this was already the story line. How are you supposed to feel? How are you supposed to feel if you’re them? I said, Of course, it won’t be nearly the size, that was the first African-American president, and half of his supporters only have to walk 10 minutes to come out there. They all live there! I said our supporters will have to come from all over the country. I was kind of exaggerating, but you know.

* According to the most recent census, just over 48 percent of DC residents identify as black or African-American alone. The city doesn’t make the top ten on the list of cities with the highest percentage of black or African-American residents.