Politico journalist describes how he was threatened while reporting on Trump ally Mike Davis
Published
Citation From a September 20, 2024, video uploaded to The Bulwark's YouTube channel
SAM STEIN (THE BULWARK): Let's talk let's end on the on sort of where you end in your piece, a very chilling anecdote. I'm just gonna set it up for you. You're at the RNC convention. You're in a hotel with the grand pooh-bas of the party, where the Trump team is sort of having their victory celebration. You're there with Davis, kinda shadowing him as a reporter does at his behest.
Don Junior is there. Some other luminaries are there. Paint a picture of what happens next.
ADAM WREN (POLITICO NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT): Yeah, so this is on the 9th floor of the Trade Hotel and, you know, Davis had just come off the convention floor after Trump's final speech. And, you know, I just wanted to see how he's how he was received in a room like this, and he was received like a conquering hero. I mean, he is popular among all of these people. And he went over and talked to Donald Trump Jr., and I sort of trailed him, wanted to get a fresh quote from Donald Trump Jr.
I had a statement, a paper statement at that point, but wanted to actually talk to Donald Trump Jr. And, this man and woman beside Donald Trump Jr. drinking with him at the bar, you know, started eyeing me, I had my yellow media lanyard on, and this woman came over as I was with Davis later and sort of accosted me for staring too much at the Trump family, and then as, Donald Trump Jr. exited the bar near closing time, she came over and noticed that I was taking, you know, notes on my interaction, on my iPhone, and, I heard Donald Trump Jr. essentially asked Davis to be his attorney general, and, you know, Davis said he would give Trump 3 weeks as viceroy. And this woman, you know, was frustrated that I was chronicling this scene. And so, essentially, she confronted me, demanded that I delete my notes, which obviously I saw all this play out, so it wasn't gonna, like, delete from my mind.
So that was sort of curious, and, you know, obviously, I refused to delete my notes. I tried to exit the exit the building, go to the elevator, and and leave. She actually recruited 4 men to block my egress, from the building and, you know, had a had a standoff for 15 minutes or so. You know, I said, 'I really need to to get to the airport here eventually to go home and see my family,' and she said, 'You should have considered —'
STEIN: What are you doing during — sorry, just where are you in the standoff?
WREN: So I am outside of a very tiny bar, on the 9th floor of a hotel outside a bank of elevators. There's sort of a restaurant to my left, and I'm not —
STEIN: They're just not letting you get on the elevator?
WREN: No. They're refusing. I didn't wanna engage physically and sort of push past them to initiate physical contact. And so they're not they're not allowing me to get on to the elevator to leave until I either give them my phone or delete my notes. I think in retrospect, I could have pretended to delete my notes, but, you know, I didn't wanna give them that that —
STEIN: And you call Mike at this point?
WREN: Mike and said, 'Mike, they're not letting me leave.' He had disappeared. Didn't know where he went at the moment. You know, can you can you come and help me? They're not letting me leave.
And so, you know, after that call, you know, things were getting pretty tense. And, I read, the woman's threat about I should have considered, you know, documenting the exchange, you know, I should have considered my kids before doing that. I read that as a veiled threat, of some kind. So, I kinda looked to my left and noticed that there was an exit, and made a bolt for the exit. I couldn't get out on each on each floor.
I couldn't get into the lobby.
STEIN: Did you literally run?
WREN: Yeah. I literally ran, and I could hear at the top of the staircase, you know, the woman yelling and, what sounded like a man behind her. You know, I would I would later learn that, you know, they had threatened to call Secret Service on me and, from a colleague, who would relay that anecdote. Yeah. And I ran down about 9 flights of stairs and —
STEIN: Did they cut — were they chasing after you?
WREN: They were, they came the first two floors, and I think they sort of gave up after that. And, you know, when I got to the bottom floor to go into the lobby, I didn't have a key card, so I couldn't do that, and noticed kind of around the corner and exit onto the street. And so I went out onto the street and, you know, walked towards the Uber zone. And, as soon as I got out, I called my editor, David Siders, woke him up at, like, you know, 3, 4 AM, and, you know, stayed on the phone with them until I got into an Uber. But, yeah, it sort of shook me.
And, you know, Davis had at that point as I was leaving come down and lay I would later find out, dressed down this woman and said, 'You know, this is not North Korea. You don't ask a reporter to delete their notes.' And he continued to kind of call in and check on me. He called the Trump campaign and relayed to them what had happened, and was very, you know, I think shocked by it as well. He says in the piece.
And at that moment, you know, I didn't really wanna write the scene. It was sort of, you know, I wouldn't go so far to say traumatic, but it tripped me up a little bit in the moment, and I didn't really wanna rewrite the scene. But when I learned how Davis reacted to it, it really helped clarify a little bit about him at least, and that there is the vestiges of that traditional republicanism in him and that he does despite saying he's gonna send journalists to the gulag, you know, he does have a reaction against that. And so I think the piece kind of captures him in mid-stride in the transformation from, you know, a traditional Republican as Bannon says to what Bannon says is a quote 'full fucking MAGA Warrior.'
STEIN: Did you ever find out who the women, who the woman was or the four men?
WREN: I did find out who the woman was, and, you know, for editorial reasons, we decided not to name this person. Reached — she identified herself as an aid to Kimberly Guilfoyle — as an employee to Kimberly Guilfoyle, Donald Trump Jr.'s fiancée. We did talk to a spokesperson, working on behalf of Kimberly Guilfoyle who denied that this woman, was an employee of hers. And so, ultimately, you know, this was a story about Mike Davis, and we decided editorially to not name this woman.
STEIN: Does Mike Davis if we'll keep it on Mike Davis then, and maybe this is a good concluding question, but does Mike Davis recognize that this is kind of Frankenstein's monster? He's Frankenstein that he unleashed this type of behavior?
WREN: I think he does, to some extent. I don't think he's fully grappled with it, and I don't think he's fully grappled with where it's headed. Later in the process of reporting this piece, I was surprised to see him reshare, you know, cat-eating memes, from Springfield, Ohio, and also, you know, reshare on X, memes about Kamala Harris using AI to generate false crowds at her rallies. You know, as much as I had come to know Davis, those two particular things surprised me and seemed dissonant with, you know, who I understood this person to be. And I've told him that, before this piece runs, and he sort of tries to reconcile with that in the piece.
We have a disagreement. I've spent time on the ground in Springfield, Ohio, and I've not found evidence of this unfounded claim. And so I think that I think that he has truly been radicalized in some sense. You know, he says it dates back to the Kavanaugh hearings, but I do think there's sort of a negative polarization, here where he feels he's responding, in proportion to Democrats' politicization, and that just doesn't seem to be leading for to a healthy place for either party.