The Choice 2016

>> NARRATOR: This past July, Donald Trump accepted the Republican nomination.

>> I humbly and gratefully accept your nomination for the presidency of the United States.

(cheers and applause) >> NARRATOR: It was a moment of vindication for a candidate who had climbed back from a bitter public humiliation.

>> We're talking about the White House Correspondents' Dinner tonight.

>> Donald Trump has been invited.

>> NARRATOR: It happened in April 2011, at one of Washington, D.C.'s most glamorous nights.

>> I got to talk to Donald as we were going to our seats, and he was in just such a great mood, and he was very jovial, and people were taking pictures.

It was very exciting that Donald was there.

>> Donald, over here!

>> NARRATOR: Trump's invitation to the exclusive gathering came after weeks of attacking President Barack Obama on television.

>> You are not allowed to be a president if you're not born in this country.

He may not have been born in this country.

But there's something on that birth certificate, maybe religion, maybe it says he's a Muslim, I don't know, maybe he doesn't want that, or he may not have one.

But I will tell you this: if he wasn't born in this country, it's one of the great scams of all time.

>> Absolutely.

>> NARRATOR: But that night, in front of Washington's journalists, politicians, and powerbrokers, Obama would hit back.

>> President Obama takes the microphone.

>> All right, everybody, please have a seat.

Donald Trump is here tonight!

>> And proceeds to filet Donald publicly.

>> No one is happier, no one is prouder to put this birth certificate matter to rest than the Donald.

And that's because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter, like did we fake the moon landing?

>> I was sitting 20 feet from him, and just the look of discomfort on his face.

>> What really happened in Roswell?

And where are Biggie and Tupac?

>> Donald's face was so incredibly serious.

It was so incredibly just...

He just put on a poker face.

>> I was two tables away from Trump.

The conventional way in Washington of absorbing a joke at the White House Correspondents' Dinner is to keep your chin up and at least pretend to have a sense of humor about it, even if you go cry into your pillow that night.

Trump was steaming.

His face was all locked in, he was not having a good time.

>> All kidding aside, obviously, we all know about your credentials and breadth of experience.

(laughter) For example... No, seriously, just recently, in an episode of Celebrity Apprentice, at the steakhouse, the men's cooking team did not impress the judges from Omaha Steaks.

And there was a lot of blame to go around.

But you, Mr. Trump, recognized that the real problem was a lack of leadership.

And so ultimately, you didn't blame Lil' Jon or Meatloaf.

You fired Gary Busey.

And these are the kind of decisions that would keep me up at night.

>> And he's being treated like a piñata by the president of the United States.

And I think he felt humiliated.

(applause) >> Well handled, sir.

Well handled.

>> But it just kept going and going, and he just kept hammering him.

And I thought, "Oh, Barack Obama is starting something that I don't know if he'll be able to finish."

>> Say what you will about Mr. Trump, he certainly would bring some change to the White House.

Let's see what we've got up there.

>> Donald dreads humiliation and he dreads shame.

And this is why he often attempts to humiliate and shame other people.

So in the case of the president ridiculing him, I think this was intolerable for Donald Trump.

>> I think that is the night that he resolves to run for president.

I think that he is kind of motivated by it.

"Maybe I'll just run.

Maybe I'll show them all."

>> Every critic, every detractor will have to bow down to President Trump.

It's everyone who's ever doubted Donald, who ever disagreed, who ever challenged him.

It is the ultimate revenge to become the most powerful man in the universe.

>> God bless you, and may God bless the United States of America.

>> Donald Trump's fantasy is to be the guy who takes the key to the Oval Office from Barack Obama's hand in 2017.

And it's personal.

This is a burning, personal need that he has to redeem himself from being humiliated by the first black president.

>> NARRATOR: Hillary Clinton had spent decades laying the groundwork for her candidacy.

>> And so, my friends, it is with humility, determination, and boundless confidence in America's promise that I accept your nomination for president of the United States.

(cheers and applause) >> NARRATOR: Her entrance into politics had been difficult, marked by questions of just who she was.

>> What kind of plans have you made to be first lady of Arkansas?

>> Well, we've spent a lot of time talking about the kinds of work that we want to do.

>> NARRATOR: In Little Rock, the new first lady, Hillary Rodham, was a curiosity.

>> We haven't made any final plans.

>> Hillary, when she first got there, everybody makes such a big deal out of her hippie flowered pants and her big, you know, strange glasses, and her crazy hair.

>> Could it be that you have political aspirations of your own?

>> No, I just think it's...

I don't have any except for my husband, who I think is a terrific politician and a wonderful man.

>> Arkansas has a new governor.

>> They looked like they were having a ball.

I mean, it was really a heady experience.

These were young people.

They were the governor and first lady.

>> The youngest governor in the United States now, young Governor Clinton of the state of Arkansas.

>> NARRATOR: But Hillary's approach to her new role was seen as unconventional.

She kept her maiden name and had her own career as a corporate lawyer.

>> She didn't want women to be accessories to their husband, and that is usually what a political wife is, is an accessory to her husband, and it didn't fit well.

>> The thought occurs to me that you really don't fit the image that we have created for the governor's wife in Arkansas.

You're not a native.

You've been educated in liberal, Eastern universities.

You're less than 40.

You don't have any children.

You don't use your husband's name.

You practice law.

Does it concern you that maybe other people feel that you don't fit the image that we have created for the governor's wife in Arkansas?

>> No, because each person should be assessed and judged on, you know, that person's own merits.

>> The Southerners just really rejected this, you know, uppity woman from, you know, the East Coast, and she doesn't dress right, she doesn't talk right.

Her hair isn't right, you know, she's just no credit.

She's not a Southern governor's wife.

>> We now have a clarification, state of Arkansas... >> NARRATOR: The governor's term was only two years, and before he knew it, Bill Clinton was out.

>> Projected the winner over the incumbent Democrat Bill Clinton.

>> This political defeat has been a bitter pill to swallow for Bill Clinton.

>> I regret that I will not have two more years to serve as governor because I have loved it.

>> And here, Bill Clinton, defeated, and to be rendered a beaten pair at that age was pretty devastating.

>> Thank you very much, and God bless you all.

>> NARRATOR: Hillary, with their new daughter Chelsea, took it hard.

>> She understood that she was part of the reason for him losing the governor's race, because she wouldn't take his name and just because of the way she was.

>> NARRATOR: Hillary decided to fight.

She took charge of her husband's political comeback.

>> Hillary got very involved in the campaign.

For all intents and purposes, she was the campaign manager.

>> NARRATOR: One of her first moves-- rebrand herself and become "Mrs.

Clinton."

>> It was symbolic.

I'm sure she had to swallow hard, but it was just not worth trying to keep her last name at the expense of everything they wanted to achieve together.

>> In order to avoid any problem and just to put it to rest, I will forever be known as Hillary Rodham Clinton.

>> She completely forfeited her own identity, at least physically.

Got rid of the glasses, got her hair dyed, started dressing at least modestly better, wore some makeup, cultivated a little bit of a drawl.

>> The road to being somebody in this society starts with education... >> NARRATOR: The transformation was a surprise to some of those who had known her the longest.

>> When she had to begin to change her appearance, dye her hair, lose a lot of weight, get rid of her glasses, not speak up, not be as much who she was, that hurt all of us.

We all felt bad about that.

It was hard.

It was hard on us, it was hard on her.

>> NARRATOR: She formed an alliance with a controversial political consultant from New York-- Dick Morris.

>> She has a wonderful instinct for the jugular.

She felt that he lost it because he wasn't tough enough, wasn't strong enough.

And she reached out to me because she felt that I would be stronger and tougher.

>> I think it only intensified and began a lot of the characteristics that you saw from then on-- that the ends justify the means, that we'll do what we have to do to win, turn to the dark arts of politics to survive.

>> NARRATOR: Hillary helped engineer a comeback that returned her husband to the governorship and put her in the national spotlight for the next 34 years.

>> This is New York, a miracle city, a city of tall buildings, narrow, dark streets, magnificent parks, broad avenues, homes and schools, stores and theaters, and palatial hotels.

>> NARRATOR: Back in the 1940s... >> The borough of Queens, occupying part of Long Island... >> NARRATOR: Just across the East River from Manhattan... >> A municipally-operated electrical railway system spreads through four of the five boroughs... >> NARRATOR: ...Donald Trump grew up in a posh suburb called Jamaica Estates.

>> It's perhaps typical of New York's residential areas.

>> The Trump family had a huge house in Queens that they used to refer to as "Tara."

It had nine bedrooms, it had columns, it was quite beautiful, but it was in Queens.

>> NARRATOR: The Trump family would spend 50 years building memories here.

Fred Trump, a real estate developer, designed the house himself and raised Donald and his brothers and sisters in luxury.

>> It's not like he knew anything but comfort.

When it rained and he had to deliver his papers, the chauffeur would take him around.

>> NARRATOR: But Donald's father was tough and insisted everyone learn the family business.

>> He was a guy who worked seven days a week.

It's Sunday-- why wouldn't you be working?

And would, even on the weekends, pile the kids in the car and go to a building site, pick up old nails that weren't used.

Why would you waste a nail?

>> Fred Trump was a machine.

I mean, he was a human machine.

He was driven beyond whatever the description of driven could ever mean.

And when you look at the picture of Fred and you look at Donald, you see the great resemblance between the two.

And when you think about Fred's energy, you see how it is channeled through Donald.

>> NARRATOR: Fred was seen as passionate about the business, but not warm with his children.

>> Cold-- he was not a warm person.

I see his father at the beach, even, with a suit and a tie and a hat, a clipped very kind of military mustache, and simply being... correct.

>> NARRATOR: Fred had theories.

He shared them with his kids.

Donald especially liked one of them.

>> This is a very deep part of the Trump story.

The family subscribes to a racehorse theory of human development.

They believe that there are superior people, and that if you put together the genes of a superior woman and a superior man, you get a superior offspring.

>> NARRATOR: Fred's other theory: life was a competition.

There were winners and there were losers.

He called the winners "killers."

>> The way the game got played in his household was: if you did not win, you lost.

And losing was you got crushed.

Losing was you didn't matter.

Losing was you were nothing.

>> NARRATOR: Donald took the lessons to heart-- always tried to be the winner.

But he was also a handful.

>> His brother, Robert, who's very discreet, told me that Donald was always the kid in the family who would start throwing birthday cake at all the parties, that you would build up a tower of blocks, he would come knock your blocks down.

>> This is the person he's been, I think, since he was five years old.

Donald told me that he is essentially the person he was in first grade and that he hasn't really changed.

>> His self-definition was built around the idea that he was one tough son of a bitch.

That meant in classrooms, that meant with teachers, that meant with his father.

>> NARRATOR: By the seventh grade, even Fred had had it with Donald's mischief.

He sent him up the Hudson River just a few miles from West Point to the toughest boarding school he could find-- the New York Military Academy.

(drumline performing) >> You have to think of this 13-year-old kid who's lived a very comfortable life, but then all of a sudden, he's the one child of five to be banished to this austere life.

Goodbye, luxury.

Goodbye, Mom and Dad, brothers and sisters.

Hello, drill sergeant.

>> NARRATOR: The New York Military Academy was no-nonsense, heavy on the discipline; over the years, home to the children of gangster John Gotti and Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista.

>> It was an austere, very scary place.

I was homesick, I was crying hysterically.

In fact, I was crying so much the first couple of nights, they put me in the infirmary.

>> We were in a culture of hazing at the military school.

Everyone...

I mean, that's just the way it was.

>> You got hit, you may have gotten slammed against the wall, you got put artificially into fights.

>> NARRATOR: But the rough and tumble didn't seem to bother Donald.

He thrived.

>> He liked it.

Apparently he really liked it.

He liked the accountability.

He liked the kind of clarity of it.

And he liked that there was a medal and a prize for everything.

>> NARRATOR: He was a star athlete.

He claimed he could have played pro baseball.

But his classmates agree he was proudest of winning the ultimate accolade in an all-boys school.

He was named "ladies' man" in the school yearbook.

Hugh Hefner, the publisher of Playboy, was a role model for many of the boys.

>> Yeah, you know, he had a very Hugh Hefner, Playboy magazine view of success.

>> NARRATOR: The young cadets learned a lot from Playboy magazine and what they called "barracks talk."

>> In fact, our biggest advice in our lives came from Playboy magazine.

That's how we learned about women.

So that was all of my adolescence.

And that's why getting out of military school was difficult.

You had to realize that you couldn't just follow the Playboy philosophy.

>> NARRATOR: They would graduate and grow up.

But Donald's classmates say in some ways, he hasn't changed at all.

>> The things that we talked about at that time in 1964 really are very close to the kind of way he talks now.

I hear these echoes of the barracks life that we had and that we grew out of.

>> NARRATOR: Back when Donald Trump was growing up in Queens, Hillary Rodham was living a short train commute from downtown Chicago.

>> Hugh and Dorothy Rodham moved from Chicago, the tough city, into the all-white, new suburb of 1950s America.

>> And I remember men walking home from work from the train station with their cigarettes dangling and their Chicago American evening newspaper under their arm.

>> NARRATOR: They called Park Ridge "an idyllic American suburb."

Hillary has said her life was straight out of the 1950s sitcom Father Knows Best.

>> The story of a man, his home and his family.

Starring Robert Young.

>> NARRATOR: But the truth was much more complicated.

Inside the Rodham family, Hillary's father Hugh was a staunchly conservative and demanding presence.

>> Hugh and Hillary always had a relationship that had its difficulties.

Hillary goes to school and makes straight A's and he says, "That must be a really easy school if you got straight A's."

I mean, gets no credit for her effort, no credit for her work.

>> NARRATOR: With Hillary's mom Dorothy, the treatment was worse.

>> Her father was abusive verbally and dismissive.

When her mother and father would have these tense, demeaning discussions, Hillary would run to her room and put her hands over her ears and say, "I can't stand listening to this."

>> There was a lot of fighting in the Rodham household.

And I don't think she invited many friends home.

That's when her whole penchant for secrecy and privacy began.

>> NARRATOR: Dorothy had had to overcome a difficult childhood of her own.

>> I think the resilience of Dorothy Rodham, this little girl born to 16-year-old parents who did not want her and did not love her-- they never showed her any affection, never hugged her, never kissed her-- and I think it would have defeated most people.

>> NARRATOR: Dorothy was determined to give Hillary a better life.

>> I think that Dorothy was frustrated, like many, many women of that era.

She had far more abilities, talents, and intelligence than the world or her relationship with her husband allowed her to show, and I think that she poured a lot of that ambition into her daughter.

>> NARRATOR: Outside the home, in Room 224 at Eugene Field Elementary School, they saw that ambition early on.

Betsy Ebeling became her best friend.

>> I was the new girl in class, and somebody else in the classroom said to me, "You know, you're very lucky.

You're sitting across from Hillary Rodham."

And I said, "Yeah, she seems very nice."

And she said, "No, she's captain of the crossing guards."

So see, I knew then that she was destined for great things.

Captain of the crossing guards.

>> NARRATOR: But in the 1950s, her classmates believed a girl who was a star could only rise so high.

>> I remember our class prophecy in the sixth grade that Hillary would be married to a U.S. senator.

Nobody could wrap their mind around a woman having that kind of achievement, you know?

>> NARRATOR: But the world of Hillary and her friends was changing.

At the Methodist church, a new minister arrived.

>> A youth minister named Don Jones, then about 26 years old, arrives in a red Chevy Impala convertible and becomes really the most influential, certainly male figure, almost as a counterweight to Hillary's father.

>> Don Jones was good looking.

He was young.

It was just contrary to everything that we'd ever had in church-- any church, right?

>> NARRATOR: In the conservative Republican community of Park Ridge, Jones was controversial, introducing Hillary and her youth group to progressive ideas.

One Sunday, he did just that when he took them into downtown Chicago.

>> And he took Hillary and some of her friends to hear Martin Luther King speak.

>> It was at the Chicago Sunday Evening Club, you know, which was, and still is, at Symphony Hall in Chicago.

So you were dressed up, you wore white gloves, and oh yeah, you went down, it was a big event.

>> Indeed, a revolution is taking place in our world today.

It is sweeping away an old order.

>> Here is this black man from the South who's talking about segregation, and she didn't even know what segregation was.

>> They came to realize that slavery and segregation were strange paradoxes in a nation founded on the principle that all men are created equal.

>> NARRATOR: Betsy says she and Hillary would never forget the moment.

>> There was something very deep inside Martin Luther King that is not just moving, but life-altering.

And the words that came out were so profoundly affecting that you left feeling more fulfilled in many ways, and more empty in many ways, than you had before.

>> The old order is passing away, a new order is coming into being.

God grant that we will use the moment.

>> NARRATOR: As a young man, Donald Trump grew up hearing the gospel of success at the Marble Collegiate Church in Manhattan.

>> The Marble Collegiate Church, with Norman Vincent Peale as the minister, he preached the gospel of success.

Success was not only okay; it was a really good idea and you should actually do it.

>> The God who made this world was a wise God.

>> NARRATOR: Norman Vincent Peale had sold millions of copies of his book The Power of Positive Thinking.

>> He wants people who live life and like it, love it.

>> NARRATOR: The church was a place to be seen for leaders of business, socialites, politicians.

>> Donald's father made sure to expose him to Norman Vincent Peale.

It was consistent with his father's ambition.

>> How then can you face the future with confidence?

>> It elevates capitalism, honors wealth, wholly consistent with who Donald Trump wanted to be and who he became.

>> By being 100% alive!

>> Donald Trump learned this notion that through the power of positive thinking, you could focus your life on your business, and your achievements in the business world would be the measure of your success.

>> You are endowed with the tremendous powers of God, and you may have trouble with it, but you can handle it!

>> NARRATOR: Following Peale's method, Donald graduated from Wharton School of Finance and Commerce and joined the family real estate business as an apprentice to his father.

It was a job Donald's older brother-- they called him Freddy-- had once held and then lost.

>> Fred Junior worked for his dad, but he showed little aptitude and really not that much interest in the business.

He, by all accounts, tried, but it wasn't him.

He wasn't hyper-aggressive, he wasn't hyper-competitive.

>> NARRATOR: Unlike his father, Freddy was friendly and outgoing.

But his dad thought he didn't measure up.

>> Maryanne, who was working for her father during the summers, told me that his father never praised Freddy.

He was always thought... he treated him like somebody who was a loser.

His father told the boys to be killers, but Freddy was never a killer.

>> NARRATOR: Freddy had always loved flying.

He struck out on his own to pursue his dream.

He became an airline pilot.

>> What Donald told me at the time was that he and his father had perhaps been way too hard on him.

They used to say to him, because he was an airline pilot, "What's the difference between what you do, Freddy, and driving a bus?"

>> NARRATOR: Freddy started to drink heavily.

>> Fred Junior, his death at a young age-- he was in his 40s-- was formative for Donald.

And I think it was shocking for their family.

He was a guy who struggled with alcoholism for a long time.

>> NARRATOR: For Donald, Freddy's story was a lesson he would never forget.

He said, "Freddy just wasn't a killer."

>> I think he saw his brother as being intimidated by his father.

So he set himself out to be the very opposite of that with his father and with everybody else that he dealt with for the rest of his life.

(bells ringing) >> NARRATOR: By the mid-1960s, Hillary Rodham was a student at Wellesley College.

(choir singing) >> She is now living a life that is not dictated by her parents but is affected by what's going on in America at the time.

>> Good evening.

Dr. Martin Luther King, the apostle of non-violence in the Civil Rights Movement, has been shot to death in Memphis, Tennessee.

Dr. King was standing on the balcony... >> That was a huge event for her.

And she came into her dorm room, she threw her handbag against the wall, she said, "I can't stand it anymore!

They've killed him, They've killed him!"

"Who?"

"Martin."

>> My thanks to all of you, and now it's on to Chicago... >> NARRATOR: Two months later, Senator Robert Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles.

Then, tensions over the Vietnam War erupted at the Democratic Convention in downtown Chicago.

>> (chanting): Stop the war!

>> Here's this convention going on, right, and Hillary said, "We have to go see it."

And she and I told our mothers that we were going to the movies, and we drove my family station wagon downtown, parked.

I have no idea where we parked.

I had never driven downtown.

>> NARRATOR: Thousands of Chicago police confronted anti-war protestors.

(people shouting) As Betsy and Hillary waded into the crowd, they saw an old high school friend.

>> She was there volunteering, patching up heads, and said, "You've got to be aware of this and everything that's going on."

It was chaotic, it was mayhem, but it was also almost beautiful in its portrayal of, like, opened up this road and said, "This is where you're going, and this is why."

>> They've just turned Michigan and Balbo into a warzone.

>> She knew she was going to go back to Wellesley, and she would find people of like thinking of, "This war has to end."

>> The police are now pushing and shoving.

Now they're clubbing this young man.

>> She had become much more political, as frankly had most of us.

You couldn't really go through those years... >> One of the darkest hours... >> ...and all the tumult in America and not be affected by it.

>> NARRATOR: One year later, her classmates selected Hillary the first student at Wellesley to give a commencement address.

The Republican senator from Massachusetts, Edward Brooke, spoke first.

>> At the commencement, he gives a speech that is really kind of condescending.

>> Senator Brooke basically told us that the people who are protesting are kind of like elite ne'er-do-wells.

So I can remember sitting in my seat just fuming!

I mean, this is my college graduation and I am just fuming.

And you know, we're just... all of us were just ready to pop.

>> Hillary was scribbling notes all through his speech.

>> And all of a sudden, I looked up and Hillary Rodham is rising from her seat and walking to the podium.

>> And it is a great pleasure to present to this audience Miss Hillary Rodham.

>> I find myself in a familiar position: that of reacting, something that our generation has been doing for quite a while now.

>> And she began with a complete, utterly articulate rebuttal of everything Senator Brooke had said.

She was going to say what we all wanted to say.

>> For too long, our leaders have viewed politics as the art of the possible.

And the challenge now is to practice politics as the art of making what appears to be impossible possible.

>> NARRATOR: The speech turned Hillary Rodham into a national celebrity.

She was called "a voice of her generation."

>> LIFE magazine picks it up and profiles her.

And she likes the attention.

>> That was probably the first time that Hillary felt what it would be like to be a political leader.

And she thought then, "Well, maybe I can someday be a larger figure on this political stage."

>> NARRATOR: For Hillary, that meant law school.

She applied and was accepted by one the nation's top law schools, Yale.

>> A lot of very ambitious people who wanted to change the course of American history were at Yale Law School in that period.

>> NARRATOR: Among them her friend Robert Reich, Clarence Thomas, and Bill Clinton.

They were all in professor Thomas Emerson's civil liberties class.

>> I remember that every time Professor Emerson asked a question, Hillary was the first hand in the air, and when he called on her, she always got the answer exactly right.

I was about the second or third hand in the air, and I half the time got the answer right.

Bill Clinton missed most of the classes, as I remember.

I think he was off doing political work.

And Clarence Thomas never said a word.

Well, I would say it was sort of a kind of metaphor for where we were all heading and how we all prioritized our lives.

>> NARRATOR: For the group at the law school, it seemed inevitable that one day, Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham would get together.

>> When they meet, Hillary's the one who's the celebrity.

Hillary is the one who's been in LIFE magazine.

Bill is dazzled.

>> Hillary from the beginning fell into the spell of Bill Clinton's charisma, and Clinton saw in Hillary a woman who was his equal or better in terms of intelligence and ambition.

And I think very early on in their relationship, they saw that they could get someplace together that they might not get to apart.

>> NARRATOR: But after graduating, a separation.

Bill headed back home to Arkansas.

Hillary took a job in Washington.

>> ♪ ...I'm a woman's man, no time to talk ♪ ♪ Music loud and women warm... ♪ >> NARRATOR: In the early '70s, Donald Trump headed out of Queens into Manhattan.

>> From the very first time I met Trump, I thought of Saturday Night Fever and Travolta.

>> ♪ Whether you're a brother or whether you're a mother ♪ ♪ You're stayin' alive ♪ >> He was the kid who grew up as an outsider to where the real action was.

And he was acutely aware of it.

He always had his eye on what he thought was a glamorous, Hollywood-ish life, and that was the life of Manhattan.

>> I think if you had to pick sort of three stereotypes that are probably constantly tap-dancing in Donald's mind and in his imagination of himself, it's Clint Eastwood, James Bond, and Hugh Hefner.

>> He's really spreading his wings when he comes to Manhattan.

Well, I think he's having the time of his life.

He's a bachelor-- he's an eligible bachelor.

>> NARRATOR: Donald frequented the city's hottest places.

He met Nikki Haskell, the host of an underground cable show about the party scene.

>> When I saw Donald, nobody knew who he was.

He was just a young, very aggressive, smart boy.

A hotshot, so to speak, someone that had big dreams, and that's what this town is built on.

>> What's going on?

>> NARRATOR: During the day, he worked hard to do something his father never did-- break into Manhattan real estate.

>> He's a kid who wants to figure out how to make deals, to figure out how to establish a presence for himself in Manhattan.

And he's right to believe that that's not easy to do.

>> NARRATOR: He needed a mentor.

He found one in Roy Cohn, the notorious New York lawyer.

>> Well, he was savage.

Cohn had an incredible reputation for being a tough, tough guy.

>> The scene is Washington and the Senate Investigating Subcommittee.

Mr. Cohn, his friend and aide, was present with Senator McCarthy to answer accusations.

>> NARRATOR: Cohn had become famous during the McCarthy hearings, a witch hunt that accused Americans of communist sympathies.

>> He delighted in the fact that he had ruined so many lives in the McCarthy era.

>> There is detailed testimony of that in the record, Mr. Chairman, of Levitsky's association, close personal association with Julius Rosenberg over a period of years.

>> Roy Cohn humiliated people.

He made up things.

He had no morals.

You couldn't even say that he had the morals of a snake.

He had no morals.

He had no moral center.

>> Everyone knows the most famous legal eagle, my pal and yours, Roy Cohn.

>> Good evening, Nikki.

How are you?

>> Roy was like a street guy.

You know, he was like, "Punch.

You punch me, I'll punch you."

And I think he made Donald very confrontational.

And I think you had that sort of "tough guy, don't take any kind of bull(bleep) from anybody" kind of an attitude.

And I think a lot of that, you know, he instilled in Donald.

>> And in his drawer, he had a picture of Roy, and it was a grainy black-and-white picture, and Roy looked like the devil.

And he would pull it out and he would say, "This is my lawyer.

"If we can't make an agreement, this is who you're going to be dealing with."

>> NARRATOR: In 1973, Trump hired Cohn to defend him and his father.

They had been sued by the federal government for discriminating against black renters looking for apartments in their buildings.

>> The lawsuit revealed that Trump agents allegedly were writing down "C" for colored or "Number 9" to indicate a black prospective tenant, and those people were often turned away.

>> And Trump asked him for advice: "What do I do?

Do I settle?"

And Roy Cohn said, "Never settle."

Roy Cohn said, "You need to fight back harder than they ever hit you."

>> NARRATOR: At a press conference and in court filings, Trump and Cohn claimed they were the victims.

>> He comes right back with a $100 million lawsuit, which was filed by Roy Cohn.

And that was Roy Cohn's signature kind of thing.

>> Roy Cohn taught Donald how to come out punching, how to use lawsuits like machine gun bullets, and take a no-prisoners approach to City Hall, to your business opponents, to anyone else who might get in your way.

And I think Donald reveled in that.

>> NARRATOR: But with damning evidence of racial discrimination, the company was forced to settle.

Nevertheless, Donald didn't admit any wrongdoing and even declared the outcome a victory.

>> This is a classic example of where Trump begins to demonstrate something he talks about all the time today, which is he's a counter-puncher.

So somebody comes after him and says that he's done something nefarious and horrible, and he just goes back at them with all guns blazing.

You know, "Boom, boom, boom!"

And admits nothing.

Never admit anything.

Never say you made a mistake.

Just keep coming.

And if you lose, declare victory.

And that's exactly what happened there.

He lost as clearly as you can lose, but he loudly proclaimed his victory.

>> NARRATOR: Fresh from Yale Law School, Hillary Rodham arrived in Washington... >> The committee will come to order.

>> NARRATOR: ...a city gripped by political scandal.

She was at the center of it, an attorney on the Watergate Committee.

>> What did the president know, and when did he know it?

>> NARRATOR: As the committee dug into allegations of presidential crimes, Hillary and the other staff were sworn to secrecy.

>> Hillary was working on a committee where I think she probably learned a lot about secrecy and how you really needed to preserve it in political life more than anywhere else.

>> It's clear that we're entering a very serious phase of these hearings.

>> NARRATOR: Hillary worked in a secure location and was taught how to operate in complete secrecy.

>> We'd get together and Hillary never said a word about anything.

She said they were working really hard and they had lots of things to do.

It was remarkable-- they were remarkably close-mouthed.

>> Good evening.

President Nixon reportedly will announce his resignation... >> NARRATOR: That summer, President Richard Nixon resigned.

>> The president now at the door.

A final wave.

>> NARRATOR: As the committee shut down, Hillary had a number of high-powered opportunities in Washington.

But she had a secret of her own.

>> Lo and behold, she fails the D.C. bar exam and is devastated by it, hanging her head a bit at this terrible failure that she won't speak about and doesn't reveal.

And she kept it a secret for 30 years.

>> NARRATOR: Hillary would write about her failure in her book Living History.

>> "When I learned that I had passed in Arkansas but failed in D.C., I thought that maybe my test scores were telling me something."

>> NARRATOR: She said she believed it was a sign that she should move to Arkansas to be with Bill.

She told her landlord and friend Sara Ehrman about her decision.

>> She said, "I'm going to Arkansas to be with my boyfriend."

My reaction was very skeptical because she had a tremendous future ahead of her.

She was a star.

I thought, "She's going down there to Arkansas?

Nobody goes to Arkansas."

I said, "You're not gonna go down there.

"They don't have French bread, they don't have brie.

What are you going to do down there?"

>> She could have done anything with her life.

She could have been a powerhouse in and of her own self in Washington, D.C. And yet, she makes this very interesting and life-changing decision.

She is going to be part of Bill Clinton's political career.

>> I said, "I'll drive you.

Get in the car and I'll drive you."

We got to Fayetteville, and it was the Arkansas-Texas football day.

And the whole city was full of Arkansans wearing pig hats.

Apparently, the pig is the mascot.

And they were saying, "Sooie, sooie, pig, pig, pig!"

And I began to cry.

Very sad.

>> (man singing hymn) >> NARRATOR: Her friends from Yale Law School couldn't believe this was where Hillary was going to end up.

>> We go to this dinner at a church hall, we're sitting there talking and jabbering, and then Bill gets up to leave the table, and he says, "Well, we're going to go talk politics."

So I get up and Hillary says, "Sit down."

I said, "What?"

She said, "The men go to talk politics."

And I looked around and everyone left at the table were women, and I'm thinking, "Oh.

Oh, this is really bad."

I said, "Hillary, this is not... this is not good."

(applause) >> NARRATOR: But Hillary decided to make Arkansas home.

And in 1975, she married Bill.

>> I think she was head over heels for Clinton, I really do.

And I think she was also carrying in her heart an ambition that she and Bill and a lot of members of their generation could transform America.

It was...

I think it was that large.

>> NARRATOR: In the mid-1970s, Donald Trump lived the life of a playboy and made the rounds with one particular model: Ivana Zelnícková.

>> It's about wanting to come into a room and command all of the attention.

What better way to do that than to have a six-foot-tall, blonde supermodel on your arm?

>> NARRATOR: Roy Cohn drew up the pre-nup, Norman Vincent Peale officiated, and Donald and Ivana were married.

Trump also had his eye on real estate.

He had looked all over Manhattan for the perfect location.

>> And Donald came upon this site, which had the Bonwit Teller building on it.

It was kind of a landmark building.

It was next door to Tiffany's.

He loved it.

>> NARRATOR: It was to be called Trump Tower-- 58 stories of high-end retail and high-priced condominiums.

A chance for Donald to finally surpass his father.

To oversee the project, Trump surprised the construction world-- he put a woman in charge.

>> He said that I would be his representative and act sort of like a Donna Trump, he said, calling me a "killer."

I would be in charge of everything that would normally come to him.

>> NARRATOR: The men's world of unions and subcontractors in New York had never seen it before.

>> Donald told me that he thought that men were better than women, especially in this field, but he said a good woman is better than ten good men.

I think he believed that women had to prove themselves more than men, so a good woman would work harder.

>> NARRATOR: Res kept the contractors in line, and executive vice president Louise Sunshine handled the sales.

>> He hired the right people to help him, myself being one of them.

And we got the job done.

>> Look at my next guest.

This is a reporter on Wall Street.

This is what he has in mind... >> NARRATOR: And Trump personally took care of the marketing.

>> Donald Trump, as I say, is just 33 years old.

He now has an apartment for sale in a new Trump building called the Trump Tower, one floor of it, $11 million all together.

You're worth all this money.

You say you didn't say that you want to be worth a billion dollars.

>> No, I really am not looking to make tremendous amounts of money.

I'm looking to enjoy my life, and if that happens to go with it, that's fabulous.

>> NARRATOR: And to help sell the apartments, Trump had a novel idea-- he inflated the floor numbers.

His 58-story building became a 68-story building.

>> How he got away with that, I'm not sure, but he did, and it made a lot of sense in his mind because if you're renting a room, you'd rather be on the 14th floor than on the sixth floor.

In his mind, having an apartment, the higher the apartment was, the better it would look.

>> NARRATOR: In his autobiography, written with author Tony Schwartz, Trump would call it "truthful hyperbole."

>> "People want to believe that something is the biggest "and the greatest and the most spectacular.

I call it truthful hyperbole."

>> I came up with the phrase "truthful hyperbole," and of course it's a ridiculous term because there is no such thing as truthful hyperbole, but it's kind of a winning phrase.

It really does capture a way in which he sees the world.

The truth doesn't mean much to Donald Trump.

>> In the time that I was reporting on him, his lawyer said to me, "Donald is a believer "that if you repeat something enough, people will start to believe it."

>> Its opening party was one to end them all.

Guests, thousands of them, mingled... >> NARRATOR: And at its grand opening, the marketing, the publicity, paid off.

>> ♪ Whoo-hoo!

♪ ♪ This is your celebration.

♪ >> It's Donald Trump constructed out of marble and brass.

That's what Trump Tower is.

It's him.

You know, it's bold, it's big, it's polished, and it's highly marketed.

>> Trump Tower made him.

It was a moment where glitz took over New York, and Donald embodied that glitz.

>> And that was one of the first times he really got a taste of real celebrity, and Donald Trump is a man who thrives in the spotlight.

Outside of the spotlight, I think he feels diminished.

>> NARRATOR: He had succeeded.

Trump Tower was a reality.

He had proof he was a winner, but not in everyone's eyes.

>> There is an old money elite in Manhattan that has never accepted Donald.

He was considered, I think, loud and obnoxious and too self-centered and ill-mannered and not someone who fit in.

And so I think this is where Donald's resentment of the elite comes from.

>> NARRATOR: As Donald and Ivana moved into a penthouse on the top three floors of Trump Tower, something was missing.

>> He doesn't have a lot of friends, but how can somebody in his position have friends?

How do you trust anyone that, you know, isn't working for you?

What do they want out of you?

It's very difficult, it's very lonely at the top, and he is the epitome of loneliness at the top.

>> As much as I care about my work, my relationship with my wife Hillary means even more to me.

>> Sometimes people ask me what it's like being married to Bill.

He works so hard and keeps such long hours and becomes involved in so many other people's lives and problems.

I always tell them it's great.

We really cherish the time we do have together and appreciate the fact each of us works hard.

>> NARRATOR: In Arkansas, as Bill Clinton rose from attorney general to governor, Hillary Rodham became his most powerful aide.

She changed her appearance and eventually her name.

>> In order to avoid any problem and just to put it to rest, I will forever be known as Hillary Rodham Clinton... >> NARRATOR: She became skilled at policy and politics, a fighter willing to play hardball to win.

>> Not only is she with him every step of the way, but he's relying on her more than ever.

She was his main policy maven during that period as well as political advisor.

>> It's a moment we've been waiting for.

We all know it.

You can feel it.

Destiny is about to shake hands with history.

>> NARRATOR: And after a decade as governor, they believed they were finally ready.

They would make a run for the White House.

>> And that is why today, I proudly announce my candidacy for president of the United States of America.

>> ♪ Don't stop thinking about tomorrow... ♪ >> And Hillary was right with him, holding each other, waving to the crowds.

And I remember looking at them and I said, "I just hope they know what they're getting into."

>> I have no idea because I've never done it before, I don't have any idea what's going to happen, but I'm ready for it.

We'll see.

>> NARRATOR: Hillary would find out whether she was ready soon enough.

>> Yes, I was Bill Clinton's lover for 12 years.

>> NARRATOR: Bill's past was about to catch up with him and Hillary.

>> The truth is I loved him.

Now he tells me to deny it.

>> The problems of Bill and other women are central to the Arkansas years and the marriage of Bill and Hillary Clinton.

>> Well, I'm sick of all of the deceit and I'm sick of all of the lies.

>> The rumors about other women that are more than rumors; they're based on fact.

>> He is absolutely lying.

>> Every marriage is a puzzle, even to the people in it, and to have, on top of everything else, to have that laid out there... And did I know that he had almost... did I know he had been unfaithful in his marriage?

Yes.

He's a great flirt.

We'll leave it at that.

>> NARRATOR: In Arkansas, there was even a name for it-- "bimbo eruptions."

>> Hillary certainly knows, she absolutely knows then.

She doesn't know everything.

She never wanted to know everything.

Hillary is the only person in the world who can completely answer that question accurately, but from all of my reporting on that subject, she certainly knew.

>> NARRATOR: Hillary had avoided speaking publicly about it.

>> She would never do that.

She will never open the door to the possibility of opening a conversation about his peccadilloes.

And I think that that goes to the core of a lot of the clenched quality that she portrays in public.

>> NARRATOR: As they campaigned in New Hampshire, the press pounced.

>> What's your relationship with Gennifer Flowers?

>> There really isn't one, obviously.

>> The allegations were beginning to take hold.

They were beginning to undermine the credibility of this candidacy.

>> Flowers' allegations of a prolonged extramarital... >> He's trying to regain his lead in the polls... >> NARRATOR: In New Hampshire, Bill's candidacy seemed doomed.

If they wanted to win, Hillary would have to be willing to talk about Bill and other women on national TV.

>> Clinton sat down with me to try to put the issue to rest.

>> NARRATOR: The interview would air just after the Super Bowl, with 40 million Americans watching.

>> And I was there backstage, I was thinking to myself, "I can't believe the two of them going out under these circumstances."

I mean, they must have nerves of steel to be able to do this.

>> Earlier today, Governor Clinton and his wife Hillary sat down with me to try to put the issue to rest.

>> And I remember I didn't want to watch it with friends.

I wanted to sort of face it.

Um... it was excruciating.

>> Who is Gennifer Flowers?

How would you describe your relationship?

>> Very limited, but until this, you know, friendly, but limited.

>> She's alleging a 12-year affair with you.

>> That allegation is false.

>> NARRATOR: Everything she had fought for was in peril.

Now Hillary would speak.

>> You know, I'm not sitting here, some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette.

I'm sitting here because I love him and I respect him and I honor what he's been through and what we've been through together.

And you know, if that's not enough for people, then heck, don't vote for him.

>> Again and again, she was willing and able emotionally to step into the breach and protect her husband.

>> She's looking at the ends justify the means, there's this huge political fight going on in the nation, they're on the right side of that fight.

And sort of taking it out of the personal and putting it into this larger construct is really her armor from then on.

>> Maybe Clinton has kept the dogs off long enough that he'll go on to Super Tuesday.

>> Has Bill Clinton won second?

If so, is it a strong second?

>> In New Hampshire today, after months of campaigning in some cases, candidates... >> NARRATOR: The 60 Minutes appearance worked.

They got the comeback they were looking for.

>> I think we know enough to say with some certainty that New Hampshire tonight has made Bill Clinton the "Comeback Kid."

(cheers and applause) >> NARRATOR: The truth would only come out years later in this deposition.

>> And I had to admit under this definition that I'd actually had sexual relations with Gennifer Flowers.

Now, I would rather have taken a whipping than done that after all the trouble I'd been through with Gennifer Flowers.

♪ ♪ >> It's another dazzling Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, your password to the last word in money-no-object adventure and excitement!

>> NARRATOR: He had hit it big with Trump Tower.

He was a celebrity in New York City.

At 40, he claimed he was a billionaire.

>> Welcome to the world according to Trump, the billionaire builder with a big bang approach who dared to autograph the Manhattan skyline.

>> NARRATOR: He was now determined to make "Trump" a household name all over America.

He began with a legendary buying spree.

>> Banks were lining up to give him money, and they would beat each other on terms to provide money to him.

He was spending money like a drunken sailor.

He buys a giant yacht that he doesn't really enjoy at all.

>> NARRATOR: There was an airline.

>> He bought the Trump Shuttle from bankrupt Eastern Airlines, had no idea how to run an airline.

>> NARRATOR: Then he built a gambling empire in Atlantic City-- two casinos and a hotel.

(cheering) Then, the iconic Plaza Hotel in New York City.

>> It did seem out of control and possibly even pathological.

Casino after casino after casino after casino.

Hotels, yacht.

Everywhere he turned, another big piece of real estate here, another big piece of real estate there.

>> NARRATOR: By the late 1980s, Donald Trump's ambition pushed him into uncharted territory-- presidential politics.

>> The signs of power and opulence in place, Donald Trump's personal helicopter descended onto this small airfield, greeted by a one-man "Trump for President" bandwagon.

>> I arranged for the Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Chamber of Commerce to invite him for a luncheon speech.

And a local Portsmouth city councilman named Mike Dunbar forms the first known Draft Trump for President Committee.

>> NARRATOR: Trump's political advisor Roger Stone was a longtime associate of Roy Cohn.

>> In truth, I don't think he was ever serious about running in 1988.

I think he liked the publicity, he liked the notoriety.

It was great media.

>> What I want is I want extreme competence.

I want strength and extreme competence, and you need a combination of both, but I want strength and extreme competence at the helm of this country.

>> NARRATOR: In one speech after another, Trump's political message was simple and direct.

>> I am personally tired of seeing this great country of ours being ripped off and really decimated and hurt badly by so many foreign nations that are supposedly our allies.

>> "NATO's ripping us off.

"Why are we paying for this?

"Why don't the Japanese pay for themselves?

"Why don't all our allies, they're rich now, "why don't they pay for themselves?

"Trade, we're getting taken to the cleaners in these trade deals."

So he's already formulating his views as early as '88.

>> Thank you, bye.

So long, so long.

>> NARRATOR: He loved the attention, and he even began to insert himself into controversial issues in New York City.

>> It is the ages of the accused, 14 to 17 years old, and the horror of their alleged crimes that has caused a furor.

A woman jogging in New York's Central Park last Wednesday night raped and nearly beaten to death.

>> What happened in Central Park was a violation to him, and he felt it keenly and he had a deep emotional reaction to it, and so he lashed out.

>> He took out a full-page ad after the Central Park jogger case and said, "The kids who did this should be executed.

"This is terrible.

They're beasts, animals."

>> You better believe that I hate the people that took this girl and raped her brutally.

You better believe it.

And it's more than anger, it's hatred.

And I want society to hate them.

>> The unstated text of this was, because they were five minority kids who brutalized a white woman in Central Park and everybody's outraged about it.

And they're different from us, and so we need to treat them with the severest methods possible.

>> NARRATOR: The five young men spent years in prison, but were later exonerated when the actual rapist admitted his guilt.

>> But Donald Trump never apologized.

He didn't want to admit he was wrong, and to this day he has not apologized for the statements he made at the time.

>> NARRATOR: But for Trump, his television rage had worked.

His celebrity was bigger than ever, and the talk of President Trump had begun.

>> I don't believe that Trump himself felt that he was running for president, but once the notion got stirred up in him, it never went away.

>> Governor, are you ready to take the oath?

>> I am.

I, William Jefferson Clinton, do solemnly swear... >> NARRATOR: It had been nearly 20 years since Hillary Rodham Clinton lived in Washington.

Now she was back.

>> ...the office of President of the United States, so help me God.

>> Congratulations.

(applause) >> I think the hopes were very high.

It just seemed like, you know, the sky is the limit.

>> NARRATOR: The question in Washington: what role would she play?

>> I do remember the president- elect noting a couple of times that if another Democrat had been elected president, Hillary Clinton might be the attorney general pick.

>> When I first interviewed him, I said, "So what's your goal for the next eight or ten years?"

He said, "Eight years of Bill, eight years of Hill."

>> I want to say good afternoon... >> NARRATOR: On the fifth day of his presidency, Bill Clinton ended the speculation about his wife.

>> Today, I am announcing the formation of the President's Task Force on National Health Reform.

>> NARRATOR: A first lady had never had an office in the West Wing.

She had one, and now she had an official position.

>> This task force will be chaired by the first lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

>> She was considered a political asset to accomplish the president's agenda.

And health care reform was high on that agenda.

>> NARRATOR: Hillary Clinton surprised Washington by operating in near total secrecy.

For months, her task force worked behind closed doors.

>> The health care plan is being developed secretly.

They're walled off.

I mean, it's like the development of the atom bomb.

I mean, it's almost in a fortress.

>> NARRATOR: She believed the secrecy was necessary, but it provoked a backlash.

>> She's shutting down dissent.

She is operating in secret.

She's throwing her weight around in a way that people in the United States Congress are absolutely appalled by and also are empowered by and use it against her and the Clinton White House.

>> This is the Social Security Act passed in August of 1935, 38 pages in length, establishing Social Security for all Americans.

This is the Health Security Act.

Excuse me if I have a little trouble picking it up.

And that is 1,342 pages.

38 pages versus 1,342.

>> Few first ladies over the years have earned as much attention.

>> NARRATOR: Her health care plan was under fire.

>> ...complained about secrecy surrounding her health care task force.

>> NARRATOR: But that wasn't all.

>> The most powerful and public first lady ever.

>> NARRATOR: The criticism was becoming personal.

>> Mrs. Clinton is a player in this administration.

>> When you come to the White House, you are literally under attack every moment of the day.

>> Hillary Rodham Clinton has forever changed the role of first lady.

>> The fleas come with the dog with this job, and I'm sure that they knew all of this, but it is a real eye opener when you see how brutal it actually can be.

>> Quite capable of playing hard.

>> NARRATOR: There were reports of marital strife, allegations that she'd orchestrated the firing of White House travel office employees, and questions about their finances and real estate deals.

>> She cannot be fired, she cannot be disciplined.

>> This was all happening at once.

And they'd gotten the prize, and the prize was turning to dust.

The prize was becoming a complete nightmare.

>> The hearings are likely to embarrass some people very close to the president.

>> No ordinary American... >> NARRATOR: Increasingly, the first lady believed she was at war.

>> The Whitewater political battle continues... >> Hillary Clinton began to feel very much a victim of, you know, as she described it, the vast right-wing conspiracy.

>> A lot of hearings so far, and they haven't done much for the credibility of a White House already under siege.

>> And builds up a set of resentments that I think she's carried to this day.

>> ...president's personal lawyer subpoenaed the records... >> NARRATOR: As the attacks mounted, she decided that what she needed to do was to get out of Washington.

>> They are on the road again, a Clinton Campaign style caravan of buses... >> NARRATOR: She would try to sell the health care plan directly to the American public.

>> If we do not guarantee health insurance to every American, then we have failed all Americans.

>> NARRATOR: But if anything, the reaction outside of Washington was even worse.

>> Since last September, when the president proposed his health plan, the Clintons have campaigned endlessly for it.

(crowd booing) >> NARRATOR: There was anger in the crowds.

It was about more than health care; it was about her.

>> I remember as though it were yesterday was as her car was leaving, there were such angry faces pushing as best they could in sort of a mob attack on the windshield and screaming at her for, you know, "What is it she's trying to do?"

>> NARRATOR: Hillary Clinton began to realize that just as in Arkansas, there was something about who she was that some people didn't like.

>> And she talked about how she was shocked, and she got a little emotional about this, by the reaction to her when she went on the road trying to sell the health care plan.

They spit on her.

They cursed her.

>> She said, "I don't know what I'm going to do."

She said, "Everything is my fault.

"Nothing I do works.

"And white men hate me.

No," she said, "it's not me they hate.

"It's what I represent.

"It's the changes I represent.

"I'm the wife who went back to college "and got a better education and got a better job than my husband."

She recognized that problem back then, and of course it remains a problem for her today.

>> One of the most extraordinary off-year elections... >> The Democrats are finding it tough going tonight... >> Just when you thought it couldn't get any uglier, it does.

>> NARRATOR: The health care plan died.

>> The Republican Revolution of election '94... >> NARRATOR: And that year, the Democrats lost the midterm election.

>> The man of the hour clearly is Newt Gingrich, the Republican firebrand... >> NARRATOR: Some of the blame fell on the first lady.

>> She was viewed I think slightly radioactively by some people in the West Wing and on the president's staff.

People in the West Wing were pointing a lot of fingers at her.

>> Hillary did feel a sense of disappointment, a sense of responsibility, a feeling that certainly had contributed to the political landscape.

>> A monumental problem for President Clinton and his political agenda.

>> NARRATOR: In desperation, again, Hillary reached out to the controversial political operative Dick Morris in secret.

>> We both decided to keep it secret, and I came up with the code name "Charlie," and I used that, and from November '94 until April '95, nobody knew I was there but Bill and Hillary.

>> NARRATOR: Among Democrats, Morris, now a Republican strategist, had an unsavory reputation.

>> Dick Morris was ghastly.

He was absolutely horrible.

He was the most arrogant, narcissistic person I had ever met in Washington, I mean, and there are a lot of arrogant narcissists in Washington, believe me.

But he was beyond the pale.

>> NARRATOR: Still, if Morris could help, the Clintons welcomed it.

>> The thing about the Clintons is you can basically predict what they're going to do.

The same patterns repeat themselves over and over and over again in their lives.

They got beat, just like they got beat for governor, and they did what it took to recover from that, and that was "Bring in Dick Morris and we'll figure our way back."

>> NARRATOR: To win reelection, Morris persuaded the president to champion more conservative positions.

The first lady's longtime friends were alarmed.

>> I was naturally upset.

I mean, here we had a takeover of the White House in the form of Dick Morris, and he was pushing the president to the right.

It was distressing, to say the least.

>> NARRATOR: Morris also identified one other problem that needed fixing: Hillary.

>> I recommended that Hillary withdraw entirely from West Wing activities in public in the White House-- that is, public policy.

That she no longer be seen as the key strategist, as the de facto chief of staff because I said it was giving Bill a reputation for weakness where he might not be able to win reelection.

>> NARRATOR: With her husband's reelection at stake, she agreed to withdraw.

She stayed away from the West Wing and transformed herself once again.

>> Hi, how are you all?

Well, welcome to the White House and the beginning of the Christmas season here.

>> The Christmas scene was a variation of staying home and baking cookies.

She was standing by her man and doing what it took to do that.

>> NARRATOR: And it worked.

With her help, Bill Clinton was reelected in 1996.

>> NARRATOR: By the early 1990s, Donald Trump's life was about to fall apart professionally and personally.

>> The rumors began that he had a girl and so forth, and I was being bombarded with these stories.

>> NARRATOR: Liz Smith was a well-known gossip columnist in newspapers and on television.

Smith kept a close eye on Donald and Ivana.

>> Ivana was totally fixated on Donald.

I heard all these things: that she had tried to please him and gone away and had her breasts augmented, and a face lift.

>> NARRATOR: But now there was another woman-- 26-year-old Marla Maples.

Ivana and Donald had been married 12 years.

They had three children.

>> She threw herself in my arms sobbing and crying and saying, "Donald doesn't want me anymore.

"He has told me he can't be sexually attracted to a woman who's had children."

>> The Trumps are good copy, and the gossip columnists are in for a field day.

>> The unfolding saga of Trump versus Trump.

>> A high-octane mix of the stuff that sells newspapers.

>> NARRATOR: For months, the tabloids reported on every detail of the affair, the breakup, and the divorce.

>> The model from Georgia cast as the other woman.

>> It was ugly, it was horribly ugly.

The press was devastating in my mind.

>> Linking Trump to a bevy of beauties... >> But Donald didn't seem to think it was so devastating at all.

He just rode with it, and he had his camp and Ivana had her camp.

>> In Manhattan, the story is Trump versus Trump.

>> And he was totally comfortable in that period under the tutelage of Roy Cohn and the idea that all publicity is good publicity.

Donald Trump felt that his name, his image, his brand were enhanced by having this war go on in the tabloid newspapers of New York complete with sexual details of relationships.

>> The worst publicity in the world can end up being good publicity.

Meaning, "Yeah, people said terrible things about me, but they sure know who I am."

And a month later, or three months later, they don't remember what it was they didn't like about you; they just remember they know your name.

>> NARRATOR: Just then, Donald took on the biggest deal of his lifetime-- the Taj Mahal Casino.

>> If Trump Tower is one bookend of Donald Trump's career in business and represents everything that he did right, the Taj Mahal is the other bookend that represents everything he did wrong.

>> NARRATOR: It was huge-- 1,250 rooms.

The casino was the size of two football fields.

$14 million worth of chandeliers.

On Wall Street, some analysts were worried, and one of them spoke to the Wall Street Journal.

>> I saw a real problem.

I didn't think that the company could cover its interest expenses on that debt.

Plus the payroll was enormous because of the scope of the property.

>> NARRATOR: Trump had spent more than a billion dollars on the Taj.

>> "Once the cold winds blow from October to February, "it won't make it.

The market just isn't there."

>> NARRATOR: Donald Trump sent Marvin Roffman's boss this letter.

>> "Mr. Roffman is considered by those in the industry "to be a hair-trigger and, in my opinion, somewhat unstable in his tone and manner of criticism."

>> Donald Trump sees the people who have criticized him or have predicted that he would do poorly, he sees them as traitors.

And so his immediate instinct is to tear that person down.

>> "I am now planning to institute a major lawsuit "against your firm unless Mr. Roffman makes a major public apology or is dismissed."

>> NARRATOR: Roffman had worked at his brokerage firm for 16 years.

He says they told him to back down.

>> Donald Trump was trying to send a message to other people on Wall Street: "You better not badmouth me, or your job may be in jeopardy."

>> NARRATOR: Roffman stood his ground.

>> My firm, I mean, fired me, like, on the spot, and not just in a nice way.

They actually escorted me out the building, and when the elevator got down to the lobby to exit, my boss made a comment to me.

"Marvin, you know, I like you as a person, but a little friendly advice: keep your mouth shut about this or you'll never work in the industry again."

>> NARRATOR: Burdened by debt, the Taj would not turn a profit.

By that winter, as Roffman predicted, the casino was in serious trouble.

>> His business condition was terrible, worse than terrible.

We were in a deep recession and people weren't going to Atlantic City, so the revenue stream from Atlantic City, the Taj Mahal, and the other casinos was poor.

>> NARRATOR: Trump's other investments had not fared much better.

The Plaza Hotel-- a financial disaster.

The airline Trump Shuttle was bleeding money.

>> He sort of blamed the people around him for what went wrong instead of himself.

>> He started blaming people, he started firing people, he started yelling at people.

He said, "I can be a screamer," and he certainly was, according to various accounts.

>> NARRATOR: Trump had long cast himself as a winner.

Now he was looking like a loser.

>> I think that the downtime for him was really a shock, and he was not prepared for it.

It caught him totally off guard.

It was probably the biggest challenge of his life.

>> The Donald is facing an incredible cash crisis.

>> Big troubles for Donald Trump.

>> NARRATOR: Trump and his companies owed more than three billion dollars, much of it to the banks that had fueled his spending spree.

>> As quickly as the banks loved him, that's as quick as they saw him as a pariah.

He was like, "Ew, it's Donald Trump."

They didn't want to have anything to do with him.

They wanted their money and they wanted to be rid of Donald Trump.

>> NARRATOR: The bankers descended on Trump Tower.

>> Bankers held gigantic meetings at Trump Tower with, like, 40 banks all sitting around in a room, Donald very sober-looking, not quite penitent, perhaps, but serious.

>> When you were talking to him in these meetings, he just didn't seem that he had any idea how big the problem was or how it would be resolved.

But he, as far as being a CEO and understanding numbers and understanding the ramifications, doesn't seem like he took economics or accounting in college.

>> Donald Trump's assets are on the line.

Citibank and Trump's other lenders are working on a bailout plan... >> NARRATOR: The bankers faced a fundamental decision.

>> The Trump Organization confirmed today... >> It was at a time when we were all trying to figure out, is it better off this guy being alive financially, or is it better off having him dead financially?

>> NARRATOR: As they stared into the Trump Organization's abyss, the banks came to believe that Trump's assets-- the buildings, the casinos-- were worth more with his name on them than in foreclosure.

>> If they were to take Trump out of it, they would no longer have the name for the casinos, which was a tremendous part of their allure.

Otherwise, basically what could they do?

Liquidate and take a tremendous hit?

>> The brand was worth now so much that bankers were willing to take a haircut in order to hang onto the name.

>> The Trump Princess is said to have a price tag... >> NARRATOR: They sold the yacht and the airline.

>> Trump may have to unload the Trump Shuttle, worth about $220 million.

>> NARRATOR: And they put Trump on a $450,000 a month allowance.

>> By next summer, he could become Atlantic City's biggest loser ever.

>> NARRATOR: In exchange, he would continue to promote the business.

>> I think bankers look at Trump as a promoter, not as a CEO.

At least that's the way I looked at him, and if you talked to other bankers, I think they share that opinion.

He's a wonderful promoter.

You know, he's the P.T.

Barnum of the 21st century.

>> Donald Trump may have pulled off his biggest deal to date.

>> NARRATOR: Donald Trump had survived.

>> Working on a bailout plan... >> NARRATOR: He was too big to fail.

>> The bankers do not want Trump to file for bankruptcy.

>> Explosive new allegations that strike at the very heart of the presidency.

>> NARRATOR: On the morning of January 21, 1998, Hillary Clinton's world was rocked once again.

>> Bill Clinton woke her up one day and said, "I just have to tell you that "there's this weird thing going on and I don't want you to worry about it."

>> NARRATOR: She tells the story herself in her book.

>> "He sat on the edge of the bed and said, "'There's something in today's papers you should know about.'

"'What are you talking about?'

I asked.

"He told me there were news reports that he'd had an affair with a former White House intern."

>> It was at once probably a complete shock to her and no shock at all, if that's possible.

That's the way I would view it.

>> "I questioned Bill over and over about the story.

"He continued to deny any improper behavior "but to acknowledge that his attention could have been misread."

>> And Hillary Clinton believes that, and believes it and wants to believe it.

>> These are dark days at the White House.

>> Monica Lewinsky's told prosecutors all she knows.

>> Monica Lewinsky saved a navy blue dress that had the president's semen stain on it, that she saved it as a kind of souvenir.

>> NARRATOR: As the pressure grew, she decided to act.

>> Live from Studio 1-A in Rockefeller Plaza.

>> Good morning, and welcome to Today on this Tuesday morning.

>> NARRATOR: She headed to New York for an appearance on The Today Show.

Her top aide Melanne Verveer was with her.

>> We'll hear in just a few minutes from the first lady of the United States.

>> The night before was almost surreal because, you know, we just felt this personal pain that she was experiencing.

There wasn't a whole lot of conversation, and it wasn't clear exactly what she intended to say.

>> I think the important thing now is to stand as firmly as I can and say that, you know, the president has denied these allegations on all counts, unequivocally.

>> She had no choice.

I mean, think about all that she had invested in this for so many decades, and this is their most vulnerable point.

I don't think she... you know, with all of that investment, I don't think she had any choice but to say what she did and to do what she did.

>> Has he described that relationship in detail to you?

>> NARRATOR: Hillary fought back like she had always done.

>> The great story here for anybody willing to find it and write about it and explain it is this vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president.

>> Those words, "the vast right-wing conspiracy," helped with that larger construct.

This wasn't personal; this was political.

And that's her armor.

>> This is the last great battle.

>> NARRATOR: Hillary Rodham Clinton had learned how to deal with scandal.

>> Are you saying that this doesn't upset you anymore?

You're almost numb to it?

>> It's not being numb so much as just being very experienced in the unfortunate mean-spirited give and take of American politics right now.

>> If an American president had an adulterous liaison in the White House and lied to cover it up, should the American people ask for his resignation?

>> Well, they should certainly be concerned about it.

>> Should they ask for his resignation?

>> Well, I think that if all that were proven true, I think that would be a very serious offense.

That is not going to be proven true.

>> Hillary becomes almost the last person standing to believe that there was no sexual event or relationship between Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton.

(thunder rumbling) But her world was collapsing around her.

The presidency, her husband's presidency is collapsing.

>> NARRATOR: Then after months, the truth.

>> Five seconds.

>> Look okay?

Indeed, I did have a relationship with Miss Lewinsky that was not appropriate.

In fact, it was wrong.

>> He'd not only made a fool of himself, but he had made a fool of her publicly.

This is Hillary Clinton we're talking about, you know, a brilliant person, who was played for a fool publicly.

>> I misled people, including even my wife.

I deeply regret that.

>> Hillary must have been absolutely beside herself.

I mean, the president had personally assured her that there had been nothing to this.

I mean, here he is, the president of the United States, and he has an intern, I mean, a little girl, and he's risking his entire administration?

I mean, that seemed to me absolutely impossible.

>> She truly hates him.

She thinks, you know, "How stupid.

This woman is Chelsea's age."

That intensifies the... Or almost, you know.

That intensifies that hatred.

>> NARRATOR: The next day, Hillary, Bill, and Chelsea departed for vacation.

>> She's obviously furious, and she clearly is not going to hold his hand.

Both of them are holding the two hands of Chelsea.

>> The entire country was waiting to see how she handled it-- not just the press, everybody, because gosh almighty, who had ever had to be in that position before?

>> She's talked about it only in guarded ways, but in ways that suggest that she went through a terrible, terrible time as a result of that, and lives with that today.

>> NARRATOR: The trip would be the first step in a months-long reconciliation.

>> The nation's most flamboyant and publicity-conscious... >> NARRATOR: In the aftermath of Donald Trump's financial collapse, the casinos were still deeply in debt.

He was looking for a way out.

He found one-- Wall Street.

>> Donald Trump is gambling investors want to bet on him.

>> This is a very exciting day.

This is just the right time, and it's the right time for this industry.

So we're really, uh... we're really happy, and this is a very exciting day.

>> NARRATOR: He was selling shares in the casinos.

With Trump as the pitchman, the stock DJT hit a high of $35 a share.

>> Of course, it left Donald Trump as the steward of a publicly traded company, which is kind of like leaving a kid locked in a candy store overnight.

>> NARRATOR: Trump paid himself $44 million for services, and he'd been reimbursed millions in expenses more for his plane, the helicopter, and other administrative costs.

>> So he was making tens of millions of dollars a year personally while the stock price was sinking, almost collapsing.

>> NARRATOR: The company filed for bankruptcy three times.

Investors lost billions.

>> He never earned a dime for his shareholders, for pensioners who had their retirement funds tied up in those casinos.

Never earned a dime until he just drove the whole thing off the cliff.

>> With all your financial problems, do you think you will survive?

>> Why do you say there are problems?

>> NARRATOR: Trump characteristically described his time in Atlantic City as a success.

>> Everything financially okay?

>> Don't believe everything you read, I'll tell you.

>> Donald Trump believes that he came out ahead because, as he puts it, he was looking out for Donald Trump.

And all of the other people who lost their shirts, it didn't work out for them.

That's the way things go, they should have done a better job of vetting their investment.

>> NARRATOR: And Trump walked away with a key asset-- his name.

>> It really dawned on Trump that he could make a huge business empire out of putting his name everywhere.

"God, I don't have to kill myself "trying to buy up land and deal with zoning boards "and, you know, go crazy, "and half the time it doesn't work anyway.

Why don't I just sell my name?"

>> NARRATOR: Dozens of Trump buildings would go up around the world, but he would neither build them nor own them.

>> "It has my name on it.

"I get a fee.

"I usually get the management of the building as well, "which brings even more money in, "and everybody thinks it's my building.

It's Trump Tower Manila, Trump Tower Panama City."

>> NARRATOR: For Trump, real estate was now a side business; marketing his own name, a full-time job.

>> Do you really think this is the right thing for us to be doing, Ivana?

>> But it feels so right.

>> Then it's a deal.

>> Yes, we eat our pizza the wrong way.

>> Crust first.

>> NARRATOR: Along with his ex-wife, Trump turned his marital problems into a pizza commercial.

>> May I have the last bite?

>> Actually, you're only entitled to half.

>> He's seen that it's a consumer country.

We're all consumers.

We're trained to be consumers.

We're used to being sold to.

He's a really good salesman.

He knows how to sell.

>> It's amazing.

A Big N' Tasty for just a dollar?

How do you do it?

What's your secret?

>> NARRATOR: He used his celebrity to sell everything from computers to hamburgers.

>> Got a buck?

You're in luck!

>> Together, Grimace, we could own this town.

>> He realizes that if you're on TV and you're considered a celebrity and you're considered a success, and that you can essentially trade on that for the rest of your life.

>> What's going on over here?

>> NARRATOR: He even took a turn as a professional wrestler.

>> Hey, look at this!

Donald Trump!

>> Donald Trump taking down Vince McMahon!

The hostile takeover!

>> He was seen for quite a long time as a punchline to jokes about the excesses and the failures of the 1980s, and he's become, you know, a human shingle and a punchline.

The Apprentice turned all of that on its head.

>> New York-- my city, where the wheels of the global economy never stop turning.

>> ♪ Money, money, money, money... ♪ >> He became seen as a credible businessperson with a real track record, even though that was at odds with reality.

And the guy who became a reality TV star via The Apprentice learned that he could become a reality political star.

>> Who will succeed and who will fail?

And who will be the apprentice?

>> NARRATOR: For 14 seasons, millions of Americans watched a carefully crafted Donald Trump.

>> He's perfectly made up.

He's perfectly coiffed.

He's perfectly lit.

He's in the high-back chair making tough decisions.

What does he look like?

He looks like a president.

>> Donald connected with the American public because they wanted to be like him.

They aspired to be just like him.

They wanted to see all this affluence, and he let them see it.

He let them into every aspect of what it meant to be successful in America.

>> Good morning.

>> Good morning.

>> Everybody's saying I should run for president.

Let me ask you a question.

Meatloaf, should I run for president?

>> Absolutely.

>> Now you would definitely vote for me?

>> NARRATOR: As the show took off, Trump again began to discuss a run for the White House.

>> Who would not vote for me?

Who would not vote for me?

All right, good.

>> A hot hint-- don't raise your hand.

>> I would say anybody that raised their hand would immediately be fired... >> He was very serious, there's no question about it.

His popularity was never higher than it was, you know, during this Apprentice time, and he was literally...

He could do no wrong at that stage.

And I think that he realized, "Wow, if I've hit the high, let's take it to the... "Where can you go from there?

I want to be president."

>> NARRATOR: And for his political guru Roger Stone, the TV audience could become Trump voters.

>> Which is the greatest single asset to his presidential campaign, because for 14 seasons, he is viewed by the voters, by the population, in a perfect light.

Now I understand the elites say, "Oh, that's reality TV."

Voters don't see it that way.

Television news and television entertainment, it's all television.

>> NARRATOR: He was wealthy again.

He had rehabilitated his image.

The world knew him.

Donald Trump believed he was ready.

>> One of the most critical days of his presidency.

>> Senators, how say you?

>> NARRATOR: As the revelations about Monica Lewinsky led to Bill Clinton's impeachment trial, Hillary would help rescue him again.

>> She somehow manages to find it in herself not only to forgive her husband enough that they can get back together and be a team, but she actually begins to manage the defense of her husband in the impeachment trial.

I mean, it's utterly extraordinary.

>> There was, we think, a national sense of relief that it was over.

>> NARRATOR: But on the day he was acquitted, Bill Clinton, without Hillary by his side, addressed the press.

>> I want to say again to the American people how profoundly sorry I am for what I said and did to trigger these events.

>> And the day that the Senate votes to acquit Bill Clinton, where is Hillary Clinton?

She is in the study off of her bedroom in the White House with maps of New York State laid out in front of her and considering whether to run for the Senate of the United States.

>> And Bill Clinton comes by, wants to come in to chat.

They don't even invite him in the room.

And they plan and think and plot.

And she told me afterwards, "That was the first time in 53 years "that I spoke with my own voice and planned to use my own voice as my own political person."

>> She was whisked into the Capitol like a visiting dignitary.

>> The star of the day, the new junior senator from New York.

>> NARRATOR: Hillary Clinton became the first senator who was also the first lady.

>> The president's wife is struggling to appear humble in her new world, where power comes from seniority, not celebrity.

>> I think the surprising factor was that yes, she would leave the White House before he left the White House and chart her own very singular public political career as his was coming to an end.

I mean, when have we ever seen that in American history before?

>> NARRATOR: Unlike her failed effort at heath care reform, as a senator, she worked the back rooms and the corridors of power.

>> If she really wanted to develop a base of power that was hers, she had to do it in her own way based on what she had learned the hard way as first lady.

>> NARRATOR: With presidential ambitions in mind, she kept her head down and focused on the practical.

>> She is happier with the grind than she is with the stardust.

She loves delving and drilling down.

She loves public policy.

>> NARRATOR: And for six years, she courted the Democratic Party establishment and big donors, laying the groundwork for her next move.

>> I'm running for president, and I'm in it to win it!

>> She was the overwhelming favorite, yes, but she ran into competition the likes of which she hadn't anticipated.

>> We can finally bring the change we need to Washington.

We are ready to take this country in a fundamentally new direction.

>> They weren't ready for Barack Obama.

She got blindsided completely.

She thought it was her time.

>> The American people are looking for change... >> Her husband was supposed to be the first black president, and along comes a guy who can really be the first black president.

>> Fired up!

Ready to go!

>> Who's younger, who's just as smart, just as cocky as her husband, has this magic to him.

It just blew her out.

>> Give me a break.

This whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen.

>> NARRATOR: The Clintons, now members of the Washington establishment, fought back.

>> Now, I could stand up here and say, "Let's just get everybody together, let's get unified, the sky will open..." (laughter) "...the light will come down, celestial choirs will be singing "and everyone will know we should do the right thing and the world will be perfect!"

>> NARRATOR: At Wellesley, Hillary Rodham had ridiculed politics as "the art of the possible."

But Hillary Clinton now embodied it.

>> It was understandable that in 2008, she is saying to Barack Obama, "It's not going to be as easy as you think it is.

You know, I have the scars to prove it."

>> Maybe I've just lived a little long, but I have no illusions about how hard this is going to be.

You are not going to wave a magic wand and have the special interests disappear!

>> Something very different from what she was in 1992, when she and Bill Clinton were the new guard.

They were the boomers.

They were the voice of change.

But to the American public who wants to elect a president who exudes hope and aspiration, Hillary started to sound like the old guard, the voice of caution, the establishment.

>> It has been the honor and privilege of my life to compete for the presidency... >> NARRATOR: By the end, Hillary Clinton's experience was not her strength; it was her undoing.

>> I pledge my support to the next president of the United States, Barack Obama.

(applause) >> (chanting): Thank you, Hillary!

>> Please welcome my friend Donald Trump.

>> NARRATOR: With his image as a leader burnished by The Apprentice, Donald Trump now saw an issue he could turn into headlines.

>> Why doesn't he show his birth certificate?

I think he probably... >> Why should he have to?

>> Because I have to and everybody else has to, Whoopi.

Why wouldn't he show...?

Excuse me.

No, excuse me.

I really believe there's a birth certificate.

Why... look, she's smiling.

Why doesn't he show his birth certificate?

>> The birther thing is interesting because it harkens back to Roy Cohn and Joe McCarthy.

Donald gets insight into the fact that you can sensationalize someone's personal history in a brutal and insensitive way.

>> I've never heard any white president asked to be shown the birth certificate!

>> When he was becoming the leader of the birther movement, I think he understood who he was speaking to.

It was the Archie Bunkers, who were uncomfortable with an African-American president.

>> If you're going to be the president of the United States, it says very profoundly that you have to be born in this country.

>> Donald Trump is a billionaire, he's famous, he's on TV, and he's saying he's uncomfortable too.

And he's practicing Roy Cohn, Roger Stone innuendo.

>> Where's that coming from?

>> Excellent question.

I assume the internet.

I am not the progenitor of that, meaning I don't first bring it.

I don't bring the phenomena to his attention.

But Trump understands among Republicans, there's a very substantial majority who have questions about Obama's origins and how he just pops up out of nowhere to become a national figure and whether he was in fact eligible to serve as president.

>> Another political story making news this morning: Donald Trump's growing poll numbers on a list of possible presidential... >> NARRATOR: As the birther issue raised his polls numbers, Trump arrived in New Hampshire for what looked like the beginning of a presidential campaign.

>> As promised, Donald Trump speaking now in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

Let's listen.

>> You ready?

You get ready.

Whenever you're ready, I'm okay.

>> NARRATOR: Trump's speech was carried live on national television.

But President Obama had a surprise for Trump.

>> If you put a tax on Chinese products... >> Okay, we're going to leave New Hampshire and go to Washington and the White House, where President Obama is speaking.

>> As many of you have been briefed, we provided additional information today about the site of my birth.

>> NARRATOR: Obama had released his birth certificate and upstaged Trump.

>> Yes, in fact, I was born in Hawaii, August 4, 1961, in Kapiolani Hospital.

>> NARRATOR: With the birth certificate no longer an issue, Washington expected Donald Trump to recede into the background.

They were certain he was finished.

>> Shortly after Barack Obama was sworn in as president, Hillary was nominated and quickly confirmed as his secretary of state.

>> Now Mr. Obama wants to make Clinton the face of his foreign policy.

>> NARRATOR: To the surprise of many in Washington, Hillary Clinton agreed to become Barack Obama's secretary of state.

>> The former presidential candidate constantly sparred over foreign policies... (crowd cheering) >> She wanted to run again, and I think having a secretary of state credential underneath her belt or on her résumé was something that was very important to her.

>> We will have a secretary of state who has my full confidence.

>> NARRATOR: But from the very beginning, she learned that Obama intended to run foreign policy from the Oval Office.

>> What we find out is that all decision-making is concentrated in the White House, that there is no decisions that are going to be made that don't get vetted and run through the White House, no matter how small.

>> NARRATOR: For two years, Clinton tried to work her way into Obama's inner circle and build a legacy.

>> Angry demonstrators marched through the streets of Tunisia.

>> It is a dark, dangerous, and violent night.

>> NARRATOR: And as the Arab Spring erupted throughout the Middle East, Secretary Clinton saw an opportunity.

She went to the president with a plan: to join an international coalition to take out the Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

>> In the decisive meeting that we had, she was saying, "We have to do more if we're going to shape this, "and there's the ability to have a broad coalition to do this."

>> Gaddafi's grip on the country is weakening.

>> NARRATOR: The president agreed.

>> Helping to identify targets for the U.S.-led air assault.

>> NARRATOR: And as Gaddafi's forces crumbled, it looked like a success.

Secretary Clinton was in front of the cameras when she received news Gaddafi himself had been captured.

>> It's unconfirmed.

>> Unconfirmed, yeah.

Unconfirmed reports about Gaddafi being captured.

>> She found out about this as she was doing a television interview.

>> NARRATOR: The moments around Gaddafi's death were also caught on camera.

>> Her response was... >> We came, we saw, he died!

(laughing) >> It didn't have anything to do with your visit?

>> I'm sure it did.

>> It was a moment of success and gratification for her.

It tells you just how invested she was in the Libya mission and what she believed was going to be a great success for herself and for the United States.

>> NARRATOR: The success was short-lived.

Libya descended into chaos.

In Benghazi, four Americans working for the State Department were killed, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens.

Their deaths again put Hillary Clinton at the center of a political storm.

>> Today on Capitol Hill, marathon testimony... >> Directly confronting one of the biggest controversies... >> NARRATOR: There were eight congressional investigations.

She spent hours testifying.

>> The embattled Hillary is the essence of Hillary.

She's comfortable in battle.

She has fought for two generations.

And she's got a lot of scars.

And who she is is a map of how she has traversed that battlefield, going back to Arkansas.

>> NARRATOR: And those old questions about secrecy again resurfaced in a controversy over a private email system she set up.

>> The Clinton team says there is nothing nefarious here.

>> This was the old Hillary: secrecy, denial, keep it all very tight.

It just goes back to, "I'm not going to let them know because they'll use it against me," and they would.

>> Secretary Clinton or her colleagues were extremely careless.

>> NARRATOR: Yet Hillary Clinton was determined to try for the presidency one last time.

>> (chanting): Hell no, DNC!

We won't vote for Hillary!

>> NARRATOR: And again, she faced charges from the young and the progressive that she embodies the establishment.

As always, she fought on.

>> Thanks to you, we've reached a milestone: the first time... (crowd cheering) The first time in our nation's history that a woman will be a major party's nominee... >> NARRATOR: It had been a brutal path to this moment, and a lifetime in politics had taught her more was to come.

>> One of the things that she had learned very early in that Rodham household was you just, when things don't go right, you just get up every morning, you put one foot in front of the other, you get through your day, you do the best you can, and you just keep moving forward until it gets easier.

And she's done that all her life.

>> NARRATOR: At Trump Tower, Donald Trump was ready for yet another comeback.

He believed he had a chance to prove his critics wrong and get even with the establishment by running for president.

>> He's got a great sense of theater.

The orchestration of it recognizes his showmanship.

He's a showman above all.

>> He enters as the royal presence.

>> He understood the drama of coming down the escalator.

>> NARRATOR: He was joined by his third wife, Melania, a supermodel from Slovenia.

>> He descended almost from heaven.

>> He descends down the gold-plated escalator into the rosy marble lobby of Trump Tower.

(crowd cheering) >> That is some group of people.

Thousands!

>> Got on the stage, said, "What a crowd-- thousands!"

It was hundreds.

>> It was like the next chapter of The Apprentice, and it was the moment that he had actually been building toward for decades.

>> Great to be in a wonderful city, New York.

>> He proceeded to launch into an announcement-slash-rant of the type no one has seen in presidential politics before.

>> When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best.

>> And so in this moment, he says, "I'm just going to be myself."

Then he takes a seven-minute script and just goes off and goes on and on, and it's kind of stream of consciousness.

>> They're bringing drugs.

They're bringing crime.

They're rapists.

And some I assume are good people.

>> It's totally his gut.

We didn't know he was gonna talk about crimes committed by illegal aliens... illegal immigrants, and that, you know, that people had been murdered and raped.

>> Sadly, the American dream is dead.

>> Bring it back!

>> But if I get elected president, I will bring it back bigger and better and stronger than ever before, and we will make America great again.

Thank you, thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

(crowd cheering) >> It's like a man working without a net.

You're going to tune in to see what he's going to say because it could be anything.

It's got a daredevil quality to it.

It's genuine, it's real.

You're holding your breath.

"What's he going to say next?"

>> NARRATOR: At the time, some thought it was just another publicity stunt.

>> He made a lot of statements that immediately made people dismiss him, that this guy must be a joke, but Donald Trump was somehow finding a way to connect with the people who mattered at that moment for him.

>> NARRATOR: The man whose father taught him there were winners and losers proceeded to win the votes of millions of Americans and the nomination of the Republican Party.

>> His deepest hunger has always been for attention, and he had exhausted the ways in which to get attention.

He'd gone so far beyond what most human beings can even imagine that he was, at the end of that road, still hungry.

He wanted the attention of the nation, he wanted the attention of the world, and he's gotten it.

>> NARRATOR: America faces a choice between two candidates who have spent decades in the public eye.

Symbols of a bitterly divided country.

Both have life stories that led them to this moment.

Now the nation will decide between them.

>> NARRATOR: Coming to Frontline, the inside story of the U.S. war on ISIS.

>> We will degrade and ultimately destroy ISIL.

>> NARRATOR: From the initial reluctance... >> I was very concerned about losing credibility everywhere in the world.

Our adversaries were watching this too.

>> NARRATOR: ...to the hard reality.

>> Paris, San Bernardino... What happens in the Middle East does not stay in the Middle East.

>> NARRATOR: A Frontline investigation.

"Confronting ISIS."

>> Go to pbs.org/frontline for more on the moments that helped shape Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

View our collection of Frontline interviews, where you can read extended conversations with Robert Reich... >> That seemed to me absolutely impossible.

>> Roger Stone... >> Television news and television entertainment, it's all television.

>> ...and others.

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