The Daily Signal - Addict's Shot at Redemption on Trump Campaign

Episode Date: April 2, 2024

Tim Murtaugh became a familiar face to many Americans as President Donald Trump’s communications director for his 2020 reelection campaign. As one of Trump’s most visible spokesmen, Murtaugh had a front-row seat to the most-watched campaign in history. But just a mere four years earlier, Murtaugh found himself in a much different spot. After struggling with alcoholism for years, he was jailed in 2015 for public drunkenness and unsure of his fate. That’s when he decided to give up alcohol and focus on turning his life around. Murtaugh would go on to work for Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue before joining Trump’s reelection campaign. Today, he’s running his own communications firm. He joined "The Daily Signal Podcast" to talk about his new book—out today—called “Swing Hard in Case You Hit It: My Escape from Addiction and Shot at Redemption on the Trump Campaign.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Tuesday, April 2nd. I'm Virginia Allen. Tim Murtae became a familiar face to many Americans as President Donald Trump's campaign communications director in 2019 and 2020. As one of Trump's most visible spokesman, Murtae had a front row seat to the most watched campaign in history. But just a mere four years earlier, Murtaugh found himself in a much different spot. After struggling with alcoholism for years. years. He was jailed in 2015 for public drunkenness and unsure of his fate. That's when he decided to give up alcohol and focus on turning his life around. He would go on to work for Agriculture Secretary

Sunny Purdue, then joined Trump's re-election campaign. Today, he's running his own communications firm, and he joins the Daily Signal podcast to talk about his new book out today called Swing Hard in case you hit it. My escape from addiction and shot at redemption on the Trump campaign. Mertah sits down with my colleague Rob Bowie to discuss, so stay tuned for Rob's conversation with Tim Murtaugh after this. This is Mike Al at the Heritage Foundation. I know how the left and the deep state operate, because I've seen it from the inside. When I was working for the Trump administration, I learned how the left made our lives miserable and how they continued to think they could play by their own rules. Well, we're taking all of these tricks and tactics that were deployed against the Trump administration

and turning them against the Biden regime. Through the work of the Oversight Project, we're exposing left for what they are and embarrassing some actors responsible. We're using strategic foias and fearless litigation to force these bureaucrats to deliver documents they'd prefer to never see the light of day. But for our work to be successful, we need patriots like you to stand with us. You can take action now. Visit heritage.org slash oversight to learn more.

There's no time to waste. We are joined on the Daily Signal podcast today by Tim Murtaugh, author of a new book that is out today. It's called Swing Hard in case you hit it. My Escape from Addiction, a Shot at Redemption on the Trump campaign. Tim is somebody who our Daily Signal listeners will probably be somewhat familiar with. He's a return guest to this show. He's also the founder and principal at Line Drive Public Affairs and the former communications director for the Trump 2020 campaign. Tim, thanks so much for coming back. It's good to see

you. Good to see you. Rob. Thanks very much. And there was a time where I was a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation as well. You were the visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation. And that is, of course, the occasion why we had so many opportunities to chat and publish your work. So we appreciate your contributions during that time. And I'm really thankful to you for telling this story. I want to begin with this moment that you take us to in 2015. So you are in a Fairfax County jail. And I want to go back to that moment because I think it just illustrates so much about how far you have come. In just a few short years, you would eventually become the communications director for the Trump campaign.

But take us back to that moment and what the situation was. Well, the situation was, and it's kind of alluded to in the subtitle of the book, which is my escape from alcoholism and escape from addiction and a shot of redemption on the Trump campaign. On May 16, 2015, I went out, and as I liked to do at the time, I went out and got drunk. And at that time, I got charged with drunk in public or public intoxication, something along those lines. And I ended up in the Fairfax County Adult Correctional Center, and that's where I came to. although that day was different from many of the other times that I had been drinking too much because I was on probation for the second of my two DUIs, and I had 80 days of suspended jail time

hanging above my head. And if I had gotten convicted of that public intoxication charge, I was going to have to go serve nearly three months in jail. And it would have been pretty much the end of everything. I would have lost my job on Capitol Hill. I would have lost my career, really, forget about just a job. My family was about at the end of their rope. my new wife, I didn't know what to do with me. And so it really could have been the end of everything. And that's the day I took my last drink, May 16th, 2015, and I have never looked back. And I wrote this book for two reasons. One, because when I was in rehab, and I went to rehab five times, when I was there, I spent a lot of time in the bookstore, buying titles and just devouring them that were more

autobiographical in nature, people writing about their own stories and how they made it through their battles with addiction. You know, they had more biological stuff, almost like medical textbooks, telling you all kinds of things about what the physiology of addiction is and all that. But I like the stories more. And so I wanted to write a book that helped people like me who were in rehab and maybe looking for hearing how somebody else made it through. The other reason was, you know, I had some opposition researchers coming after us on the Trump campaign and back in 2020. and they were threatening to write stories, trying to get reporters to write stories about me and my background,

and I thought, gosh, if I just write a book about it myself, they'll never be able to attack me with it again. So two reasons. The first thing and the most important is to help alcoholics. And I think that if I can prevent somebody from picking up a drink for even 10 more minutes while they pick up and flip through my book, then it will have been worth writing. Tim, was it difficult for you to lay it all out there? Obviously, some not so great things that have happened in your life.

but your willingness to help others, I would imagine, supersedes that. But what was that process like in terms of grappling with those incidents from your past? You know, writing it actually, you know, it was cathartic a little bit because there are a few people who know about the stories. And I'm not sure that there's any single person who knows everything that I went through. My wife certainly knows a awful lot about it. My parents and my brother and my close friends and close relatives know big parts of it. But I don't know that anybody, except for me, knows everything else that I, that every person. everything entirely that I went through. And, you know, I think while I was writing it, I know that

when I was, you know, I'm coming up on nine years now since I took my last drink. And I know that any day, any day I could slip and pick one up. And if I had that first one, it would, it would be a downward spiral from that moment. And so, you know, writing the book was an exercise for me. And it helped me stay sober for that period of time and for the period of time that follows. And, you know, when you have been an addict and you've managed to defeat it, there is always that lingering fear that, you know, if I don't, if I'm not careful, this could come back and get me. So writing the book helped me as well. I aimed for it to help other people, but it also had the effect of helping me. And what have you found to be effective in terms of resisting that urge that might come along?

Well, first I want to point out that this is really just a story of how I did it. It's not entirely about this. It's half a political book, half about my life in the Trump 2020 campaign, which at the time, until this next one, at the time, was the most watched political campaign in world history. I don't think anybody could argue that that's actually a fact, the most watched campaign in world history. So there's a lot of stories from behind the scenes from that. But the other half of the book, it is about my struggles with alcoholism and my whole story. And it is not a how-to. No one will read this book and learn how to get sober, much like they, could pull up a YouTube video and learn how to change the headlight on their car. It's not going to be

like that. It's just a story of how I got through it. And so it helped me to write it down. And I think that when people pick it up and people page through it, if either they themselves have a problem with alcohol or some other substance, or they know somebody who does, which I would imagine, knowing somebody who does probably includes basically everybody in this country or any other country, really, you know somebody who's been struggling with this. People might find some parts of it that they can relate to, at least laugh about because, you know, not every word of it is deadly serious. There were some really ridiculous things that people like me do when they're in the throes of all that. So, you know, I think it might be helpful for folks to read it.

And it shouldn't be looked at as a, you know, how to fix it sort of manual, just to, you know, how one guy got through it. That's all it is. Well, thank you for sharing that. You obviously work in a high-stress environment, political communications in particular. And I would imagine being right there in the forefront on the Trump campaign. was at the pinnacle of that. What, so if you could just share with us, what were some of the ways that you found to be effective in terms of keeping your mind on that aspect of work and not getting distracted by alcohol? Well, you know, politics, there's a lot of pressure in politics.

And it doesn't matter if you're on the presidential campaign, which I was, or on lower campaigns, which I've also done, you know, whether there's state races or federal races on the state level, congressional, Senate, governors race, it doesn't matter. varying amounts of pressure. It all seems like the most important thing in the world when you're going through it. So, you know, it helps to stay busy for sure. But I found that what I did was I broke the day up into little chunks. You know, could I get out of bed and get dressed and get ready to go to work without having to stop for a drink? Could I get from home to the office without stopping to buy a drink? Could I make it through the day and not go out, sneak out somewhere at noon? And then at the end of the day, can I make it all the way home without stopping somewhere to pick up a bottle or to stop and get a drink. And I think a lot of people do things that way. I relied a lot on alcoholics

anonymous and going to meetings like that, but I found on my own using the serenity prayer, which I think a lot of people will find that they are familiar with. It just helped me if I had like a little storm going on in my brain and I was worried that maybe I was going to veer off to the side and do something that I shouldn't do, stopping for 15, 20 seconds to say the serenity prayer really helped me sort of refocus and get back on the rails, you know, so to speak. And, you know, as time has going on, I need it less and less, but sometimes I still do. And it's a good practice, I think, to take a little time out, take inventory of yourself, because if you get too confident, you could get in trouble a little bit. And I go through all these things in the book. And as you

said, it's available now. Today is what's called the pub date, which used to mean something different to me. A pub date. A pub date meant something else entirely. But in this instance, it means that my book is coming out today. It's available on Amazon.com or at any other retailer. And I encourage people to pick it up and check it out. It's called Swinghardt in case you hit it or you can search for my name, Tim Murta. Well, thank you, Tim. You mentioned your wife earlier, and I know family played a big route in your recovery. You come from a proud family. Your grandfather is Danny Murtaugh, the legendary manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates, my favorite team, a two-time World Series champion. But talk about the role that your family played and that family could play in general for

others who might be struggling with alcoholism. Yeah, it's a really big, very, very important part of it. I mean, there's no chance if you're... My wife is a very private person and she doesn't relish a lot of these details getting out or any of them really. But in fact, a few years back, it was her idea to write this book. And if she had not been on board with it, I wouldn't have done it. And the fact that she is on board, I think is an illustration of how important she has been to me throughout my entire recovery. Without her, I think there's no question that I would either still be in jail or I would be dead. I don't think there's any two ways about it. And my parents were very, very, very instrumental in guiding me to rehab and helping me. And there were times, I don't cover

every minute of my journey, but there were times where I, as a grown, I have full grown adult, like deep well into adulthood, where I returned home and stayed at my parents' house for lengthy periods of time because I just was, you know, being out there on my own, I was a threat to myself and others, frankly, you know, a threat to myself and others. And I just don't think that whether it's family, actual blood relatives, or people that you're in a relationship with, as I was with my wife, and we weren't married the entire time, but we got married through the course of it. And, you know, I think I'm sure there are some days she might look back on that decision that she made and wonder, boy, was that the best thing. But I, and I think others who are in the spot that I was in,

will say that without loyal friends and loyal family, there's no way. I think it would be extremely hard. I don't think I could have done it myself. I would either still be in jail or I would be dead without, without the assistance of others. And so during this period of time, So in 2015, you find yourselves at a very low point. And then within a span of four years, you are the communications director for, as you mentioned, the most watched presidential campaign in our nation's history serving former president Donald Trump as he's pursuing re-election in 2020. Did the president himself know about your circumstances or did others on the campaign know about what you were going through? Sure.

I mean, I felt like it was my responsibility to tell them. Because when I got to the campaign, it was I started on the Trump campaign in February. of 2019. So it was about four years after I had already taken my last drink. So I was I was already four years into into sobriety at that time. However, I did have, you know, pretty checkered past. And I did have a history with law enforcement. I have two DUIs, serve five days in jail for with some suspended time for the first one, serve 10 days in jail with 80 days suspended for the second one. But I also had a variety of different, you know, drunken publics and and the different public intoxication charges and a variety of things. And as I mentioned,

opposition researchers and anybody who looked into it would find all that stuff in about 10 minutes. And so there wasn't any point in hiding it. And so when I went to work in the Trump administration for Secretary Sonny Purdue, I was his communications director for two years before I went to the Trump campaign. And I told Secretary Purdue up front as I was interviewing. I said, look, I know this is going to require a background check and here's what you're going to find. Let me tell you what you're going to find. And then when I was being considered for the Trump campaign, I told Brad Parscale, the campaign manager, that very same thing. You should look into this because this is what I've got in my past and the president needs to

know this. And at the time, Sonny Perdue said, listen, as long as you're not drinking now, I really appreciate you telling me, you're going to be fine. And then Brad Parzcal went and ran it past the president and came back and he said, look, the president likes a good redemption story. He likes a good comeback story. He himself doesn't drink because he blames alcohol for the death of his brother. But the president was aware of it. And Brad said, you know, what, you've conquered it, let's move on. And if anybody comes after you, I'll stand by you. And he sure did, because a lot of reporters called us, because they had gotten the material from the opposition researchers, and they were threatening to write stories. And Brad stood by me, and the campaign

stood by me, and the president stood by me. None of those stories ever got written. We managed to talk them out of it and talk them into agreeing with us. That was in the past. And if it happened during the campaign, that's one thing. But to write a bad story about the guy who's the communications director because he's got things far in his past four years earlier, only in an effort to hurt the president, who was the candidate. Thankfully, all the reporters saw that for what it was, and they elected not to write the stories. And so I'm grateful for that. And yeah, they all knew. And I thank the campaign and the president for standing by me when people threatened to write about it. Well, and thank you for sharing that, Tim. You've also said that even though you might have

political opponents on the other side who you disagree with, you do have some sympathy for them if they're struggling with an addiction. Can you speak to how you try to reconcile that on a basis where you might strongly and vehemently disagree with your opponent, but you understand from a human level what they're going through? Yeah, that is definitely the case. And I think the one that stands out for me quite clearly, and I think this is obvious. I don't know if this is the way you met the question or not, but Hunter Biden is the obvious person that. comes to my mind. And of course, when you're working for the Trump campaign or if you're working for in Republican politics in general, which is where I am now, I just do Republican politics generally.

I'm not on the Trump campaign, at least at this moment. You know, there's a lot of time that you spend criticizing Joe Biden and Hunter Biden and James Biden for, you know, the Biden corruption machine that we like to describe from the Republican side about how they sold access to Joe Biden, and they sold Biden was the brand and all that stuff. And Hunter was up to his eyeballs at that. In fact, Hunter was the guy who was out there making the sales, right? To the Ukrainians or to the Chinese or the people from other foreign countries. And I always tried to not attack Hunter for his condition of being an addict or the fact that he might have been under the influence of crack or alcohol or whatever it was when he did a whole

bunch of dumb things and pictures that we saw on the laptop. Never wanted to get into any of that salacious stuff. I never wanted to attack him for being an addict because I know what that's like. I do know what it's like. And I have sympathy for Joe Biden because I know what I put my own parents through, and I can imagine that Joe Biden has had similar experiences with his own son, Hunter. I mean, I get all of that. However, the talk about the public corruption and the fact that they were selling access to a guy who was for periods of time during when it was happening was the vice president of the United States, that's a wholly different thing. There can be no expectation that we lay off of all of the potential illegal things, aside from the addictive things, the addiction things, aside from the last things,

all of the illegal things that Hunter Biden was up to and how it involved his father, those things have got to be fair game. I can talk about what people have done wrong in the public sphere without attacking them for being addicts and also having some sympathy and understanding for the fact that they are addicts. But that is not something that someone can hide behind and excuse all of their other behavior just because they have this other condition on this one side. You know, But it is a fine line. And some people on, let's say, on Twitter or X, for example, don't quite get the nuance. And so they might come after me and say, yeah, but you're, you were an addict and Hunter's an addict and therefore you should lay off. Now, that's not, that doesn't like cover all

possible scenarios, just because we might have this one thing in common or he has this affliction. It doesn't mean he gets off. It's not a get out of jail free card for everything that you do in your life. And so not everybody understands that. It's a little bit of a difficult line to walk. And I've tried to walk it. Well, thank you for making that distinction. You're walking it very well, Tim. So I do appreciate that. Again, we're talking to Tim Murta. He's the author of a new book, which is out today. It's called Swing Hard in case you hit it. My Escape from Addiction and Shot at Redemption on the Trump campaign. Tim, tell us about the title. It has an interesting background from what I've heard, a baseball connection, obviously. What's the genesis of it? Yeah. So it does have a baseball connection. As you mentioned, my grandfather was Danny Murtaugh. He was the manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates for he played Major League Baseball. was second baseman for nine years, but he was better known as the manager of the Pirates, during which he won the World Series twice, 1960 and 1971.

So he had most of the baseball talent in the family. Now, my own father, he also was a talented baseball player. He was a great college player, played a Holy Cross, and then also in the minor leagues in the Pirates system, made it all the way up to AAA as both a player and then later as a manager. And I myself played varsity high school baseball and never advanced beyond that. So you can see that the talent level kind of gets watered down by generation. My kids, for example, will have no chance then if the trend continues.

But when I was leaving, when I was a young fellow, maybe middle school or into high school, as I would leave the house to go to baseball practice in the summer, my dad would yell, hey, swing hard in case you hit it, right, trying to be funny. And so that's where I got the title from. And I think if you think about it, that's a pretty good philosophy for anything in life. If you're going to be attempting to do something, you might as well put a good deal of effort into it because if somehow you succeed, the amount of effort might actually indicate greater success. If you actually do well, you're going to do extra well if you tried really hard.

At least that's the case in baseball. So I just think that's a pretty good approach. If you're going to do anything in life, you might as well put a pretty good effort behind it. So swing hard in case you hit it. You never know. I like it. Like life is swing hard. There's no three strikes rule in life, generally speaking, right?

You get as many swings and misses and then maybe one day you will finally connect. by God, swing hard in case you hit it. That's right. That's right. Well, on that note, tell me about your experience on the Trump campaign. Is there a particular moment or a particularly thing that you're most proud of from having to spend those couple of years working for Donald Trump? Well, one, let me say, it was the best job that I have ever had to date. Being the communications director on President Trump's re-election campaign in 2020 is the best job I've ever had. It was so, so challenging. And it's the hardest job I've ever had. I mean, these were certainly 20-hour days many times for a period of 24 months.

And speaking of families, your family has to be on board with that because I have, as I mentioned, I have two little boys who have never seen their father take a drink, by the way. They're five years old and seven years old. And so, you know, I'm pretty proud the fact that they've never seen their dad take a drink. But what sticks out for me, I think one of the most memorable things from the Trump campaign, it was early on. And we thought this was going to be really the big issue that would be with it. for the whole campaign. It was right before Christmas, 2019. So almost a full year before election

day 2020. It was a week before Christmas, and we were at a rally in Battle Creek, Michigan. And President Trump was due up on stage at almost the exact moment that back in Washington, Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats were going to vote to impeach him for the first time, right? And so that was happening. There was two convergent things. They were going to occur almost simultaneously. Pelosi back in Washington impeaching the president while he's supposed to. to be on stage in Battle Creek, Michigan. We had to decide when was he going to go up? Was he going to wait for the vote to happen so that he knew before he went up and started the

speech and all that stuff? And then we thought, well, you can't really depend on that because who knows how long the vote will take. He can't wait here backstage for two hours. That doesn't make any sense. So the decision was made to go up on stage and we figured out a way to get him the word of what the vote count was, at least for the first vote while he was in mid-speech. And so what we did was Hogan Gidley, who was with the White House at the time,

made up a big board with the vote totals and big letters. And it was like maybe a two foot by three foot poster. And we gave it to Kaylee McInachy, who at the time was the campaign press secretary before she went to the White House to be the White House press secretary. And she went out there with the sign with the vote count on it and stood in the buffer area between the stage and where the crowd begins and just held the sign there, just held it and waited for him to see it. And he spotted it.

And you can look through the transcript of the speech that day when he spots Kaylee. And he goes, oh, here it is. I guess we have a vote coming in, and he read the results to the crowd. And then, of course, they had voted to impeach, but we were able to get him the word that three Democrats had crossed over to join all Republicans. And so he, you know, he was very happy about that. And that's the story of how the 45th president of the United States found out that he had actually been impeached. He was up on stage in Battle Creek, Michigan, and Kaylee McInney was holding a sign standing in front of the crowd to let him know that it had actually happened. So, you know, I don't know if that's a moment

that we're proud of. At the time, we thought it was going to be like the defining moment of the campaign. And we thought it would backfire on the Democrats and we would ride this. It would be an unjust impeachment. We had no idea what was to come over the next year. That first impeachment, man, that thing is, you know, practically forgotten in light of everything else. But that was, that was a real moment where I thought, my gosh, I was backstage standing next to Mike Pence, the vice president of the United States, watching on TV while Donald Trump was being impeached back to Washington while he was also on the other side of this black curtain giving a speech to 15,000 people. I mean, it was wild. It was a real, Matt, remember where you were kind of moment. Sure. What a great story. Thank you for recounting that. Obviously, we would go on to

endure through COVID and obviously Democrats changing election laws and all the other things that transpired during the course of 2020. It just goes to show that you never know at any given moment what issues might pop up. What is your advice then going forward as you have a new campaign. team in place. What's your words of wisdom for them as they approach these next few months? Yeah, look, they don't need any advice from me. You know, I'm just the old guy. Man, the 2020 campaign, we're yesterday's news. This is 2024 now. And but I, you know, I support President Trump and I support his reelection or his election again, however you want to phrase it. And I know a lot of the people who are at the controls of the 2024 campaign, I'm eager to help. If they say the word, I'd be happy to do it. But they know what's going on. And you have to

make the campaign, I think, a referendum on Joe Biden. And Joe Biden wants to try to do the reverse. He wants to make the referendum. He wants to make it a referendum on Donald Trump. And I would say, you know, I would invite that. I think what you want to invite is the comparison. You make it a referendum on Joe Biden's record as president of the United States and all the things that he has done wrong policy-wise. And then I think that, you know, the fact that he's not exactly at the controls, let's say, so to speak. I think that is also fair game. And I think you want to compare the two presidencies side by side. Most Americans, according to polls now, look back on the Trump four years as president very fondly, economically, national security, certainly the immigration

situation. There's a whole host of things where Donald Trump has it all over Joe Biden as far as policies and actually results. And that's what I would do. I would make it a referendum on Joe Biden and then compare the presidency side by side. And I think if you do that, Donald Trump clearly comes out ahead. Well, thank you for sharing that. Tim, final question for you here. Let's go back back to where we began with the focus on the book. Are there any resources that you would recommend to individuals who may be struggling with addiction right now? Or, you know, more broadly, what hope do you have that those who purchase your book might come away from reading it? Well, I think it doesn't really matter where you live in this country or anywhere else around the

world. There is always going to be an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting that you can find and get to. And they truly are welcoming anyone can walk in off the street and find people who understand what you're going through. That helped me an awful lot. And I would recommend if anybody is struggling, that would be my recommendation of the first place you should go is find an AA meeting. I think that's absolutely key. And if it gets, if you need more than that, then find a way to check yourself into a 28-day program. I think an inpatient rehab program can do wonders for people. As for me, you know, I went to rehab five times.

So sometimes it doesn't take, you know, right way. But I would hope that if people pick up the book, and I certainly hope they do, again, it's called Swinghard in case you hit it, available on Amazon.com right now or other retailers as well. I hope that they can just, you know, find some humor in it and also maybe find some way to look at it and say that, you know, I can relate to maybe the facts of the individual circumstances are different, but at the core of it, the dependence on a substance is the common thread. And I think if people who have that problem pick up the book, it won't take very many pages before they find something that they can relate to. And, you know, while they're doing that, if it takes, if it takes them, it takes their mind away from where they were, maybe thinking about picking up a drink a few minutes earlier.

It takes them away from that. Then, you know, then it was worth writing. Tim Murtaugh, thanks so much for having the courage to share your story. We're proud of all that you've accomplished. And we are certainly fans of your work and will continue to follow it. we'll make sure to include a link to the book on our show notes, as well as the DailySignal.com transcript of this interview. For our listeners, thanks so much for tuning in today.

Tim, thank you. Rob, thank you very much. I appreciate it. And that's going to do it for today's episode. Thanks so much for being here on the Daily Signal podcast. If you would, take a minute to hit that subscribe button so you never miss out on our new shows. Of course, we have both this edition, our interview edition, that comes out every weekday morning, as well as our top news edition that comes out around 5 p.m. on weekdays where we bring you the top news of the day.

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