Clintons Have Been Preparing for Trump Presidential Bid Since 1999

By now we all know that Trump has some history with the Clintons. He even invited them to his wedding in 2005, and he defended Bill during the Monica Lewinski scandal. But what no one knew until recently was that the Clintons have been preparing for the possibility of a Trump presidency for nearly two decades.

Never before seen documents from the Clinton administration were unearthed on Tuesday by the Clinton Presidential Library, which pertain to how Bill would respond to Trump’s presidential bid in 1999. At the time Trump was exploring the possibility of running under the Reform Party ticket, and Clinton’s staff thought that Bill’s affair may have laid the groundwork for celebrities like Trump and Warren Beatty to run for office.

So they wargamed a few questions that Bill might have been asked by the press, such as “Is this the result of a demeaning of the office that you’ve contributed to?” To which they expected Bill to reply:

“I think it may say something about the way the media covers politics these days, but I have the utmost confidence in the American people to sort out the wheat from the chaff. Regardless of who runs for president or how they’re covered, the public eventually sees through all the smoke and mirrors. And they, after all, have the ultimate power at the ballot box.”

The documents, which were attained by a Freedom of Information Act request, also reveal that the Clinton administration kept close tabs on Trump’s presidential bid throughout 1999 and 2000.