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âKaty Hasnât Even Looked Up Once at Me.â
MAY 23, 2015
535 Days Until Election Day
Paris.
Iâm up with the sun, in a studio apartment thatâs 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, Iâd make a giant cup of coffee, but Iâm in Paris, where âfilter coffee,â 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 isnât 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, Iâm based in London but in love with a handsome Frenchman who is still sleeping up in that loft. The curtains are open, but BenoĂźt has an extra set of blinds behind his eyelids.
Youâre lazy and French, I often say, hoping to get a flirty rise out of him. It always works. Youâre American and you are too much in a rush, heâll volley back in broken syntax. Iâm 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.
Heâs on TV. He canât 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, Franceâs version of The Daily Show. I understand precisely 3 percent of the dialogue but crack up anyway. The squawking television does its work. BenoĂźt is up, looking down at me in disbelief, as if Iâve stirred him for a 3 A.M. fire drill instead of a 9 A.M. breakfast.
âIâm hungry,â I say.
âAllons au marchĂ©!â he says.
âIn English, please!â I say.
âMais, Katy, you need to learn,â he says.
âPff,â I say. âI know âpff.â Thatâs enough.â
The rest of the day is one watercolor painting after another. The farmersâ 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©. BenoĂźtâs friends AnaĂŻs and François join us for another bottleâthis 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 hasnât even looked up once at me.â
The words boom through a microphone.
Huh?
Iâm in New Hampshire just over a month later and itâs 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?
âLol. Trump keeps yelling at me,â I text BenoĂźt.
On July 11 BenoĂźt and I are supposed to be in Sicily. The rooms have been paid for and so have the flights. Our first real vacationâtwo full weeks together. Weâll 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, isâfor the moment, anywayâKaty 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 didnât even bother to take my laundry out of the dryer. I left milk in the fridge. Iâd 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 ITâS GOING TO BE SO HILARIOUS.
Trumpâs speech added to the belief that he was not a serious contender. He said heâd be âthe greatest jobs president that God ever created.â 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, theyâre not sending their best. Theyâre not sending you. Theyâre not sending you. Theyâre sending people that have lots of problems, and theyâre bringing those problems with us. Theyâre bringing drugs. Theyâre bringing crime. Theyâre rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.
Macyâs 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.
âKaty!â someone said. âSheâs just standing around.â
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.
âHeâs number two,â I said, âbehind Jeb Bush.â Then I reminded them, âIt is very early.â
âAll right,â 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 theyâll match with which candidate. Trump wasnât part of anyoneâs 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.
âHey, Katy. Heads up,â the friend said. âDeborah Turness [my boss] is going to assign you to Trump full-time. [David, another boss] Verdi is going to call. If you donât want to do this, you better figure out what youâre going to say to get out of it. Donât let on that I told you, but get ready.â
Anxiety. Indecision. Italy.
My vacation with BenoĂźt is in just over a week. On the other hand, as good as life can be in Europe, thereâs 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.
âThey want me to cover Trump full-time,â I told him. My friend had covered Romney in 2012. âWhat do I do?â
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.
âIt will be fun,â he said, âand if you hate it, at least it will be short.â
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 didnât even make it to his office: he launched into his pitch in the hallway.
âHowâd you like to spend the summer in New York?â 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 youâre doing as I walk to a more important meeting gig. âWe want you on Trumpâs campaign...