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What’s more, Trump refused to spend any time considering, however hypothetically, transition matters, saying it was “bad luck’—but really meaning it was a waste of time. Nor would he even remotely contemplate the issue of his holdings and conflicts. He wasnt going to win! Or losing was winning. Trump would be the most famous man in the world—a martyr to crooked Hillary Clinton. His daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared would have transformed themselves from relatively obscure rich kids into international celebrities and brand ambassadors. Steve Bannon would become the de facto head of the Tea Party movement. Kellyanne Conway would be a cable news star. Reince Priebus and Katie Walsh would get their Republican Party back. Melania Trump could return to inconspicuously lunching. That was the trouble-free outcome they awaited on November 8, 2016. Losing would work out for everybody. Shortly after eight o’clock that evening, when the unexpected trend—Trump might actually win—seemed confirmed, Don Jr. told a friend that his father, or DJT, as he called him, looked as if he had seen a ghost. Melania, to whom Donald Trump had made his solemn guarantee, was in tears—and not of joy. There was, in the space of little more than an hour, in Steve Bannon’s not unamused observation, a befuddled Trump morphing into a disbelieving Trump and then into a quite horrified Trump. But still to come was the final transformation: suddenly, Donald Trump became a man who believed that he deserved to be and was wholly capable of being the president of the United States. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019897