Unbelievable
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Unbelievable

Katy Tur

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eBook - ePub

Unbelievable

Katy Tur

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About This Book

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

"Compelling
 this book couldn't be more timely." – Jill Abramson, New York Times Book Review

From the Recipient of the 2017 Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism

Called "disgraceful, " "third-rate, " and "not nice" by Donald Trump, NBC News correspondent Katy Tur reported on—and took flak from—the most captivating and volatile presidential candidate in American history.

Katy Tur lived out of a suitcase for a year and a half, following Trump around the country, powered by packets of peanut butter and kept clean with dry shampoo. She visited forty states with the candidate, made more than 3, 800 live television reports, and tried to endure a gazillion loops of Elton John's "Tiny Dancer"—a Trump rally playlist staple.

From day 1 to day 500, Tur documented Trump's inconsistencies, fact-checked his falsities, and called him out on his lies. In return, Trump repeatedly singled Tur out. He tried to charm her, intimidate her, and shame her. At one point, he got a crowd so riled up against Tur, Secret Service agents had to walk her to her car.

None of it worked. Facts are stubborn. So was Tur. She was part of the first women-led politics team in the history of network news. The Boys on the Bus became the Girls on the Plane. But the circus remained. Through all the long nights, wild scoops, naked chauvinism, dodgy staffers, and fevered debates, no one had a better view than Tur.

Unbelievable is her darkly comic, fascinatingly bizarre, and often scary story of how America sent a former reality show host to the White House. It's also the story of what it was like for Tur to be there as it happened, inside a no-rules world where reporters were spat on, demeaned, and discredited. Tur was a foreign correspondent who came home to her most foreign story of all. Unbelievable is a must-read for anyone who still wakes up and wonders, Is this real life?

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1
“Katy Hasn’t Even Looked Up Once at Me.”
MAY 23, 2015
535 Days Until Election Day
Paris.
I’m up with the sun, in a studio apartment that’s tiny even by New York standards. I think it is charming. The bed is in a loft, connected to the living area by a black iron spiral staircase. I climb down and tiptoe to the kitchen. In America, I’d make a giant cup of coffee, but I’m in Paris, where “filter coffee,” as the Europeans call it, would be a sin and a spell breaker. I pop a little espresso pod into a sleek French machine.
I sip my espresso and stare down into the courtyard through a giant wall of windows, each panel of glass the size of a dining room table. The neighbors are chatting over breakfast. This isn’t the Paris of tourists. I see gray tile roofs and smokestacks, not the Eiffel Tower. This is the real Paris, and I am an American clichĂ©.
An NBC News correspondent dispatched overseas, I’m based in London but in love with a handsome Frenchman who is still sleeping up in that loft. The curtains are open, but Benoüt has an extra set of blinds behind his eyelids.
You’re lazy and French, I often say, hoping to get a flirty rise out of him. It always works. You’re American and you are too much in a rush, he’ll volley back in broken syntax. I’m smiling now at the mere thought of his snoozing face, the way he looks in the morning, rumpled and groggy, and the only person who gets to see it is me.
We met six months ago on Tinder. Yes, Tinder. I logged on while on a weekend trip with a girlfriend. He had a lapel mic in one of his profile pictures.
He’s on TV. He can’t be an ax murderer.
Ever since, my free weekends have all been Paris. The Eurostar from London is quicker than the Acela from New York to D.C.
I turn on French TV and try to laugh along with Le Petit Journal, France’s version of The Daily Show. I understand precisely 3 percent of the dialogue but crack up anyway. The squawking television does its work. Benoüt is up, looking down at me in disbelief, as if I’ve stirred him for a 3 A.M. fire drill instead of a 9 A.M. breakfast.
“I’m hungry,” I say.
“Allons au marchĂ©!” he says.
“In English, please!” I say.
“Mais, Katy, you need to learn,” he says.
“Pff,” I say. “I know ‘pff.’ That’s enough.”
The rest of the day is one watercolor painting after another. The farmers’ market. Fish on ice. Bright green lettuce. Small red strawberries. Eggs for breakfast. A scooter ride to Parc Montsouris. We collapse on a grassy patch. No blankets. No plans. An entire country with a ban on e-mail after work.
On the way home, we stop at a cafĂ© for cheese and bread and a bottle of rosĂ©. BenoĂźt’s friends AnaĂŻs and François join us for another bottle—this time along the banks of the Canal Saint-Martin. Whatever you think of when you think of French beauty, AnaĂŻs is it. François is in love with her, and I am in love with all of this.
Katy hasn’t even looked up once at me.”
The words boom through a microphone.
Huh?
I’m in New Hampshire just over a month later and it’s raining.
Twenty feet across from me, on the other side of a backyard pool, Donald Trump is interrupting his own speech to scold me.
How does he even know my name?
“Lol. Trump keeps yelling at me,” I text Benoüt.
On July 11 Benoüt and I are supposed to be in Sicily. The rooms have been paid for and so have the flights. Our first real vacation—two full weeks together. We’ll swim in the Mediterranean, climb Mount Etna, and see opera in the ruins of an ancient Greek theater. And eat pasta. A lot of pasta. Part of me is already there.
The rest of me is right here in Bedford, New Hampshire. Katy Tur, Fearless Foreign Correspondent and Lady Who Drinks Wine at Lunch, is—for the moment, anyway—Katy Tur, U.S. Campaign Correspondent who, for no apparent reason, is getting called to attention by a reality TV show host turned presidential hopeful.
I came back to America because of a boy named Aaron, a severely ill teen who asked to shadow me for a day through the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Honored, I threw a few dresses into my carry-on and got on a plane. I didn’t even bother to take my laundry out of the dryer. I left milk in the fridge. I’d be back in a week, I figured, wrongly.
On June 16, 2015, Donald Trump and his third wife, Melania, descended the Trump Tower escalator, waving to a cheering crowd padded with paid extras. Among the news media, the Trump announcement was seen as a sideshow. The headlines were savage:
DONALD TRUMP, PUSHING SOMEONE RICH, OFFERS HIMSELF.
FIVE FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES EVEN MORE RIDICULOUS THAN DONALD TRUMP.
DONALD TRUMP IS RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT AND IT’S GOING TO BE SO HILARIOUS.
Trump’s speech added to the belief that he was not a serious contender. He said he’d be “the greatest jobs president that God ever created.” He vowed to build a wall along the southern border and make Mexico pay for it. He delivered his opening lines with a frown and a scowl. His words did not seem destined for the history books.
When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.
Macy’s dropped him as a business partner. Univision followed. The outrage built to such a point that NBC needed a reporter to cover it for a few days.
“Katy!” someone said. “She’s just standing around.”
I did a Nightly News segment and followed up on Today. At the end of my report, I told Matt Lauer and Savannah Guthrie that, despite all the anger, Trump was polling well in New Hampshire.
“He’s number two,” I said, “behind Jeb Bush.” Then I reminded them, “It is very early.”
“All right,” said Lauer before moving on to the next story.
To understand how truly unexpected Trump was you have to understand something about presidential elections in general. The politicians devise strategies and court donors years in advance. At the same time, newspapers and networks carefully decide which reporter they’ll match with which candidate. Trump wasn’t part of anyone’s plan. For that matter, neither was I.
Five days into my New York trip, while I was running an errand, I got a call from a friend at work.
“Hey, Katy. Heads up,” the friend said. “Deborah Turness [my boss] is going to assign you to Trump full-time. [David, another boss] Verdi is going to call. If you don’t want to do this, you better figure out what you’re going to say to get out of it. Don’t let on that I told you, but get ready.”
Anxiety. Indecision. Italy.
My vacation with Benoüt is in just over a week. On the other hand, as good as life can be in Europe, there’s also a lot of professional boredom. It would be nice to get some TV time. And New York is unbeatable in the summer.
I hung up and paced the sidewalk. Then I called a friend from CBS.
“They want me to cover Trump full-time,” I told him. My friend had covered Romney in 2012. “What do I do?”
He laughed. The whole thing was ridiculous: me following Trump, me on the trail, Trump running for president. Still, he urged me to do it.
“It will be fun,” he said, “and if you hate it, at least it will be short.”
A few minutes later, just as my source said, my phone blinked with a message from Verdi asking me to come see him back at 30 Rock. I didn’t even make it to his office: he launched into his pitch in the hallway.
“How’d you like to spend the summer in New York?” he asked as we walked toward the elevators. Apparently Trump was not a sit down in the office and talk about your future kind of an assignment. More of a let me tell you what you’re doing as I walk to a more important meeting gig. “We want you on Trump’s campaign...

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