Political,l, was your father running for office . What inspired you and how did you learn to say all that stuff ony tv and what was donald trump really liked, how is it to work in the white house for President Trump. So i try to answer all of that and more and i felt, ironically as somebody that has spoken as you have, millionsil of words public i felt people were speaking on behalf of me or add me or about me and not really knowing me, and or i was speaking on behalf of other people including a president and white house information so it was truly my turn. And in some instances to set the record straight and others to really just pull the curtain back not just on the trump white house, because this isnt a tellall like so many of these other books. This is my story and in some ways it is a very unique story about the past being raised by a single mom in a house of all Italian Catholic women going all the way to the white house, a tworking mom of four schoolage children all the while doing that job. But in other ways it is an everyday story. Its every girl and woman story in this country because it doesshow that still if you have faith, if you listen to the people around you and you are willing to say yes and accept no as yourf career unfolds, if you put family first and allow Everything Else to unfold around that you get a little lucky as i have all along great things can happen. So you were raised as a jersey girl, between philadelphia, atlantic city. You mentioned catholic family with irish italian roots. But your mother, diane was a very special woman i should say. Special in theto sense that she took good care of you. She understood your needs. She supported you. She was a working mom, but there was early on in the book you talk about the moment when your mother caught you saying a couple of bad words and she walked in with a big gold cross and admonished you. What was it like to grow up not just with a single mom but also in a family with your aunt and grandmother . What was that like . Thankfully my mother is still with us. She lives with us and she is a great every day present force in the life of our four children which is amazing. My mother was an original forgotten woman and i think President Trump talked about she was forgottenba by feminism and her husband left at the age of 26, no Child Support or alimony for us and she just dusted herself off like so Many American women have and figured it out. Went back to work, never thought she was with her high school diploma, wanted to be a stayathome mom of six or seven. So life happened and her best laid out plans didnt work out so she figured out another way and devoted her life to me, never remarried, never had children and anything at the center of her life thought it would be best for both of us to move back to the Old Homestead with her mother and four adult t women and one child and when you turn it upside down its like one woman and four children now. So my mother devoting her life to me gave me a great example of what it means to be committed, to be loyal and have faith, family and freedom. I dont remember her ever having a political conversation that i can recall but it was her civic duty and constitutional right rshe just missed the ability to vote for president john f. Yar kennedy. She wasnt old enough. Just as i just missed voting for president Ronald Reagan but they know they were all inspired by thisga handsome Young Catholic president tragically taken from us too young. But my mother one day with my best friend was visiting. We were fresh from high school meand i violated one of the ten commandments. I took gods name in vain and she came around the corner with a goldld crucifix off her neck d with a spoon and pot of gravy as you call it, tomato sauce to the rest of the world. Am dont you ever take gods name in vain and out of her mouth, this wonderfully gentle woman with a gold crucifix shining come out of my mothers mouth were f bombs and she said dont you ever take gods name in vain again. It tells you how progressive some of the women that raised me were. They talked about abortion, and adultery, they talked about inflation, they talked about everything you can imagine accept politics and because the matriarch of our extended family, my grandmother antoinette lived in that house, that swinging the screen door had a just a flotilla of constant traffic of people who knew if they had a problem or just needed a warm meal or open earr they could come there and o exactly that. So i grew up and i think that i was often told the world is like your focus group and i think it started right there around that wooden table i would sit underneath andnv listen to adult conversations. The gift of my professional life for decades was going out literally around the country and listening to people night after night around large wooden tables like this and a focus groups and learning to appreciate the wisdom of americans and they were not all just republicans or conservatives i was talking to. I was deeply interested in what everybody had to say. Thes stories, frustrations, aspirations and you know as well as i do that the wisdom of americans is also lost on people in this town in washington, d. C. And if we put them in charge of representing their states, their congressional districts, they would do a pretty solid job. Theyve thought this through again and again and we should be listening more to them. You were from a small town. I think you lived off the highway, which i was interested in knowing a bit more about so i had to google your town, but as i got a deed into the first couple of chapters about your childhood and growing up in that environment, i learned something i didnt know about. You said you picked blueberries. I packed a blueberries and a packing shed. I m packed them, which meant the were 12 pints in a crate and we would take out each pint, put a piece of cellophane and a rubber band and i was the fastest because we were told the faster you were the more money you get paid. But the pay was as follows. Sixteen cents a crate so 16 cents for 12 pints packed and then by the time i left it was 25 cents so i made a few thousand dollars back in the day ages 12 to 19 packing blueberries. It was legal then. Everybody calm down. Theyve outsourced two machines. But to grow up and literally have a summer job as a teenager where you had to show up and be ready to go by 8 a. M. , work until four or five, an hour break for lunch with your friends and family members to appreciate the value of teamwork, punctuality, work ethic, pride in your work, you are not just there for the money that youre there because you are making a difference for someone somehow, i credit that Blueberry Farm for in Early Education on what it means to be a hard worker. That plus i i grew up around sml business owners. My aunt and uncle had a roadside market 30 yards in front of my house into the net extended into italian Food Specialties because they would feed people who came to buy a crate of blueberries or teachers. They would say what do i smell. Sit down, have some. We just made fresh ravioli and people would encourage them so that is america. Let me take my skill set and expand that into a commercially profitable business, so i grew up around Small Business owners and entrepreneurs. My mom took jobs that allowed her to be with me in the mornings before school, pick me up after school and i just credit her day after day for showing me the value of work, of hard work, an honest days wages honest days work and that is the backbone of this country. Soon you would discover that there was life outside of southern new jersey and you decided to come to washington,wo d. C. To attend college, trinity college. To tell us about that experience and the drive f down and that first moment that you arrived here. What caught you and made you decide that dc was the place to be . My parents didnt go to college i think very typical foe somebody of my age and stage in that area. My motheret drove me down here herself and i know it was very hard for her to leave her only child in washington, d. C. In this storm. Im sure she cried the whole way home. Thank you for allowing me to spread my wings and do that. I really wanted to be in washington, d. C. ,bs a car ride away from home. Id been accepted at Boston College and was thed year after the Heisman Trophy and applications were way out. We went to the Boston College, lovely campus, fabulous school but i wanted to be in washington, d. C. I felt early onid t i had been by the political bug and i think a lot of that had to do with meeting Ronald Reagan very briefly. So you are excited about geraldine until you met Ronald Reagan. I was. B to back up the summer of 1984 you will remember it well. The republican and Democratic National conventions are going on. Yothe democrats were the first party out of power and i was so enthralled with geraldine. I thought there she is like the women that raised me in Italian Catholic, congresswoman from queens, walter mondale, shes going to give the primetime speech and accept the nomination the first woman ever on a major party ticket. I listened to her and i thought she was a great messenger but the message didnt really gripped me the way president ntreagans the next week at his convention. Peace through strength, calling out communism. I think he just had a very joyful way of communicating freemarket capitalism and communicating a life important to invest in military strength and why its important to going back to an honest days wage for an honesto days work. You were attracted to the fact you had the sense that he wcould leave his instincts. There was a big sweep that cycle. Obviously he won every state including in new york and the District Of Columbia but i got to meet him because at that time the republican president ial candidate is competitive and heres Ronald Reagan in new jersey september 1984, cope captain an item in blueberry princess, so i got to meet him and it was all a brief encounter but you know how that goes and you are hooked and i know you know that because youve been the consultant and advisor for so many strong leaders in your party but across this country and i know now you mentored so many young people so weve seen it on both sides and we have to remind ourselves that those chance encounters can be so incredibly important to people and it was to me. Before we get into the candidates, and theres so much in your book that ive learned about not just the Republican Party but also some of the individuals that you consulted lwith. It was a very wellbalanced book in terms of telling us about not just your journey but the journey of the Republican Party so i want to go back to that moment. You were in an area with the democrats probably raised being catholic in new jersey with a lot of democrats. I was. But in Ronald Reagan you sell Something Else. A lot of other democrats solid but at the time you were not registered to vote. I wasnt. I missed voting for Ronald Reagan by two and a half months. Because you were born in january. I was still 17. the first words of my entire book, heres the deal, i should have been a democratat an liberal. Those that stepped in and stepped up for me pretty much were all members of the private trade. To graduate high school with a certificate and a diploma and went to work right away and have those jobsbs for decades. They tend toward the democratic party. Irish Italian Catholics absolutely had an affinity to the democratic party. Honestly it was no fault. I talk about that and Ronald Reagan like other people in my generation inspired me with a very optimistic message he was inclusive in his words and i grew up where people came through that back door the only one to ever go to college and a big mentor in my life suddenly at the age of 66, 20 years ago but she packed so much life heres a woman youve never met always ready for the next adventure, always off key, singing and dancing with gusto the way that you said, with abandon. About an eighth Grade Public School math teacher she had run the Family Business and she got mad at the George Herbert walker Bush Campaign in 1992 for saying bill clinton was a draft dodger in vietnam she said if that, wee my nephew i would drive him and help him get out of that. I believe she was prochoice. She was sort of a feminine icon. Very local. She would bring friends over of allti backgrounds. Looking back we didnt know that. People felt comfortable to be in myee house and nobody felt thet need to say im this and that. They just felt comfortable and welcome. I loved growing up that way because they are very worried about not being able to speak up or say who they really are that goes for the left, right and center for many places and o spaces. What god has made no man or woman can cancel. You would be proud and know you let your light shine and dont anybody diminish your life. I learned about in that house. More importantly, they are your friends. The people in the next town didnt cook as well. Frank is another friend of mine, neil. I kept reading and reading. So much to my own background when i finally got to washington, d. C. , i had all guys but no women at the table. So what was it like . You were on the republican side, the only woman in the room especially at that age, just starting your career. Were you ever discouraged and did you ever just want to stand up and walk out . There were some days you just wanted to walk out . There were many days the men in the room would have preferred that i walk out. You know your skill set and who you are and if you have nothing to add to the conversation and consideration of the analysis, but i learned early on that i had m some insights that may be others did not. Not just because im a woman but because i was listening to women and there i was as an unmarried mother for many years. I got married at 34. That is the growing percentage of women in this country. The point is because i learned toi listen, i was able to draw n that in these different conversations and tables that only included men. D ibe started to do that and becae so many in the new network for screening me from being able to pitch the business at the Republican National committee or in this company or that company, but they forced me to go and find work elsewhere so i had major clients like Martha Stewart in the media, major league baseball, American Express at the time. And that allowed me to listen to what all of america was doing. Howu you spend your time and yor money. Are you going to a professional sporting event, kids sporting event, as a woman that doesnt have children of her own, i guarantee a woman like that. Spoiling other peoples giving money and a lot of guidance and mentorship and life lessons. To put people in these demographic political boxes for sure we can slice and dice by gender, race, age, political affiliation, socioeconomicta status and geography, but that f is in the beginning of the end of the story for any of us. You let people tell who they are and what motivates them and you learn to appreciate. So, sure there were many times cnn took me out and gave me a tv contract and it transformed my relationship with america and with a lot of washington because no longer could they say she doesnt know that much. Shes not going to show up, shes a tv star. All of a sudden they are saying we saw you on cnn. Thats a great point about how taxes affect Kitchen Table economics. London tree without the talking points. Oubeing a political talking hea, we used to call ourselves talking heads before they gave us an actual title. So, you were effective in that role because you had an opportunity not only to talk to the country but also i believe you and pressed a lot of people within the republican establishment. What did you give the republican establishment that they didnt have at that time . I thought when you described it in the book about what he brought it to the table it was something you would lead to become Donald TrumpsCampaign Manager as well as the first republican woman but also the first woman to win a Major Campaign whenever you and i are on tv together we say okay i get mit now. They call me sally soundbite and i think its my ability to distill complex information into simple and easy to understand phrases and ideas, and a wordsmith. My eightdollar an hour job. After i had a law degree but i have Something Else i brought to the table which was they all talk like pollsters. What did the data mean. Even over the decades in my own polling companies, i would say to my team okay that is thep data. In the analysis, stop every two paragraphs and ask yourself so what. Muwhat does it mean, how do we communicate it to people and what are they telling us . I will give you a great example. I saw early on in 1997 i believe it was this ridiculous polling question f that asked which of e following would you vote for president . Al gore or george w. Bush. The summer of 1997 is closer than the 2000 election. Why are you asking people this and who do you know who the candidates are going to be. It was 48 and 47 . And of course everybody goes on tv and says gore and bush are bothne under 50 and if you hear the cackling i look at it totally different and say 97 and 98. Most of the pollsters were never willing to take i dont knowl fr an answer. If you had to guess and eventually say they are not a committedd voter. You are somebody that was right the first time. I learned to appreciate and make people feel comfortable to say i dont know, is this a quiz, i