Double Down: Game Change 2012 Read Online Free PDF Page A

speechwriter here, so this must be a big deal,” Obama cracked.
    By coincidence, Trump, as part of his dalliance with a presidential bid, was traveling to New Hampshire that day. As if to affirm Obama’s belief that the media required a slap upside the head, a number of TV networks carried the two events—the Donald touching down in his branded helicopter in Portsmouth, the POTUS taking the podium at the White House—using a split screen.
    “Normally I would not comment on something like this, because obviously there’s a lot of stuff swirling in the press at any given day and I’ve got other things to do,” Obama said. He noted that, in a week in which he and House Republicans put out competing budgets, “the dominant news story wasn’t about these huge, monumental choices that we’re going to have to make as a nation. It was about my birth certificate. And that was true on most of the news outlets that were represented here.” Then Obama deliveredthe Trump de grâce: “We’re not going to be able to solve our problems if we get distracted by sideshows and carnival barkers . . . We do not have time for this kind of silliness.”
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    T HE BARKER IN QUESTION , up in the Granite State, gave no indication that he realized the joke had been on him. “Today, I’m very proud of myself,” Trump declared. “I’ve accomplished something that nobody else has been able to accomplish . . . I am really honored, frankly, to have played such a big role in hopefully, hopefully getting rid of this issue.”
    Favreau had no intention of allowing Trump to miss the point the next time—and oh, yes, there would be a next time, just four days later, when The Donald attended the annual White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, at which Obama would, by custom, deliver a presidential stand-up routine.
    The morning of the dinner, Axelrod, Favreau, and another speechwriter, Jon Lovett, tromped into the Oval Office to run through the president’s script with him. Favreau and Lovett wanted to do more than torment Trump; they wanted to torpedo his putative White House run. They recruited Hollywood comedy kingpin Judd Apatow, of Bridesmaids and Knocked Up fame, to help out with Obama’s script. And Apatow, riffing over the phone, had contributed a cutting gibe that referred to an episode of Trump’s reality TV show, Celebrity Apprentice .
    Axelrod, Daley, and Plouffe all wondered whether Obama would find the Apatow joke too barbed. But the president pronounced it one of his favorite set pieces in the script. There was only one joke, in fact, to which Obama objected, and it didn’t involve Trump. It was about another GOP presidential prospect, the former governor of Minnesota, Tim Pawlenty. “He seems all-American,” the script said, “but have you heard his real middle name? Tim Osama bin Pawlenty.”
    “Osama is the middle name? I think we could do something a little more original than that,” Obama said.
    Favreau was perplexed. “What about Hosni?” he asked.
    “That’s great,” said Obama. “Let’s just go with Hosni.”
    That night, Obama took to the stage in the basement ballroom of theWashington Hilton, in front of twenty-five hundred bejeweled women and black-tied men—celebrities, congresspeople, presidential wannabes, even some reporters. With impeccable comic timing, the president lit into Trump: “No one is happier, no one is prouder, to put this birth certificate matter to rest than the Donald. And that’s because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter. Like, did we fake the moon landing? What really happened in Roswell? And where are Biggie and Tupac?” The crowd roared with delight.
    They howled again when Obama unloaded Apatow’s Apprentice takedown: “The men’s cooking team did not impress the judges from Omaha Steaks, and there was a lot of blame to go around. But you, Mr. Trump, recognized that the real problem was a lack of leadership. And