‘I don’t know if they’re robbing me’: Report chronicles Trump campaign’s frantic call

Donald Trump made a frantic call to a political adviser shortly after his son Don Jr. claimed a top job in the former president’s second attempt to recapture the White House, a new book reveals.

Trump called conservative consultant Susie Wiles in March 2022 as he and his son mounted a furious revenge campaign against Republicans such as former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) who spoke out against the January 6, 2021, Capitol riots, political correspondent Meredith McGraw writes.

“This is a fucking disaster,” Trump reportedly told Wiles. “I don’t know who’s in charge. I don’t know how much money I have. I don’t know if they’re stealing from me. I don’t know who’s who. I need you to fix this.”

The anecdote appears in McGraw’s new book, “Trump in Exile,” an excerpt of which was published Monday morning in Vanity Fair.

The book reveals a campaign in chaos as Trump’s daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner moved away from Trump’s global politics and toward a jet-setting life in New York.

It was a “strange and empty time” for Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, which had fallen in social ranks following an attempted White House takeover and amid an ongoing global pandemic, McGraw reports.

A meeting of political advisers in February to discuss political endorsements, targeting Republicans on whom Trump was “determined” to seek revenge, was brutal, McGraw writes.

“Being associated with someone who inspired a bloody attack on the Capitol did not carry the same social weight as being associated with a president,” McGraw writes.

“The meeting was held in Mar-a-Lago’s empty tea room, a dining room just off the main lounge… There was no set agenda. No one was in charge.”

But Trump advisers came away with the distinct impression that Trump Jr. would play a larger role, McGraw said.

“Trump Jr. was eager to disappear into the Pennsylvania wilderness to hunt deer and was eager to leave his own mark on the MAGA movement,” she writes.

A target for Trump’s wrath has also emerged.

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“Over the coming year, every effort would be made to identify and promote a competitive candidate capable of defeating Cheney, the only Republican who dared to stand up to Trump and challenge the former president on January 6 and his lies about the 2020 election,” McGraw writes. “Trump’s political fate, they believed, depended on defeating Cheney.”

Cheney would eventually lose the Republican primary to Trump-backed challenger Harriet Hageman in August 2022, but it would take Wiles’ help to get started, McGraw reports.

Wiles has worked for Trump twice before, but didn’t consider herself a Trump insider, so she was surprised when Trump asked for only “a few weeks of his time,” according to McGraw.

“Except setting up Trump’s current operation, from fundraising to staff, took not two weeks, but about two months,” McGraw writes.

“Wiles – much to the relief of Trump’s family, who viewed her as trustworthy, and his longtime aides, who were happy to see an adult in the room – was now in charge.”