Donald Trump chats with patrons and workers at a George Webb diner following an interview with Fox News on April 5 in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin. | Getty Bill Clinton aides tracked Trump's flirtation with White House run 'Donald Trump ... has his eye on the big JOB,' a Clinton press aide wrote in 2000.

Aides to President Bill Clinton tracked real estate mogul Donald Trump’s flirtation with a White House bid in the 2000 race, according to records released on Tuesday by the Clinton Library, but there was no evidence in the newly published files of a particularly close relationship between Trump and the president or first lady Hillary Clinton.

Despite the lack of bombshells in the records, they do call attention to some of Trump’s past positions that won’t be appealing to some Republican voters. A news story from 1999 headlined “Trump has plan to soak the rich” caught the attention of President Clinton’s deputy press secretary at the time, Jake Siewert.


“We may need guidance on this,” Siewert wrote to members of Clinton’s economic team. The November 1999 Associated Press story by reporter Ron Fournier said Trump had proposed raising $5.7 trillion in government revenues to erase the federal debt by imposing a 14.25 percent tax on the net worth of wealthy Americans.

Before a Clinton trip to California in January 2000, other White House aides gathered up poll numbers showing Trump at 1 percent in an “open primary” survey of California voters.

Still, White House aides were well aware Trump was mulling a White House bid. “Donald Trump … has his eye on the big JOB,” Clinton press aide Lisa Ferdinando wrote that month to a staffer in the office of Vice President Al Gore, the Clinton team’s preferred candidate.

Clinton’s aides also prepared proposed answers to questions he might receive about Trump and other celebrities toying with bids for the White House in the 2000 cycle.

“I think it may say something about the way the media covers politics these days, but I have the utmost confidence in the American people to sort out the wheat from the chaff,” aides counseled Clinton to say at an October 1999 news conference if asked about the possibility Trump or movie stars such as Warren Beatty or Cybill Shepherd might run.

A few weeks later, Clinton aides preparing him for an interview with CBS morning show host Bryant Gumbel urged the president to give a similar answer if asked about Trump, Beatty, Shepherd or wrestler Jesse Ventura. They urged the president to propose that the media focus less on “personalities” and more on “what really matters.”

The records also show that aides told Clinton to brace for questions about the Monica Lewinsky scandal, as well as allegations then circulating in the media from Arkansas resident Juanita Broaddrick that Clinton raped her in 1978.

“That question’s been answered and I don’t have anything further to say about this or any other issues linked in some way to what happened last year,” Clinton was counseled to say, apparently referring to his attorney’s statement that called Broaddrick’s charge “absolutely false” and to the failure of the GOP impeachment effort in 1998.

CBS does not appear to have broadcast any exchange about Trump from that interview, nor any exchange about Broaddrick.

The newly released records show what appears to be routine proposals for social correspondence to Trump, as well as discussion of possible attendance at events where the real estate developer and casino magnate was being honored.

Months after Bill Clinton took office in 1993, the author of a newsletter on Atlantic City casinos urged Clinton to attend a tribute to Trump or to send a video message or telegram. “I’m also not a matchmaker, but if you two don’t know each other, you should,” Tony August wrote to Clinton. “You have much in common, age, broad vision for the future and most importantly, the resources and desire to make America bigger and better than it already is.”

There’s no sign Clinton attended the event.

“What are you [sic] thoughts on sending a birthday letter to Donald Trump — who turns 50 on June 14,” Bill Clinton’s secretary Betty Currie wrote in a June 10, 1996, email to other White House aides. It appears the letter wasn’t sent. “Cancel letter to Donald Trump. Let me know,” Currie wrote to Clinton correspondence aide Maureen Lewis three days later. No reason for scuttling the letter was given.

It’s not clear if Bill Clinton ever attended any of the tributes to Trump, but he did take part in a “photo opportunity” with the developer at Trump Tower in New York City on June 16, 2000, according to the files. A photo of that event was not immediately released. Clinton was in New York that day to attend a Save The Music event promoting music education. Hillary Clinton’s Senate campaign from New York was also underway.

The records also suggest Bill Clinton signed a poster of some sort for Trump soon after the 2000 election, in which Hillary Clinton won the open Senate seat from New York. There was also some discussion of a letter to Trump in December 2000. Aides later said it had been “killed,” but it was unclear whether it was dropped altogether or whether the president made a phone call or sent a more personal note.

Some political operatives thought the records might contain evidence of closer ties between the Clintons and Trump, who appear to have been on friendly terms in the years after the Clintons left the White House. Trump was invited to Chelsea Clinton’s wedding and sometimes made laudatory comments about Hillary Clinton while she was a senator and later secretary of state. Chelsea Clinton has said she counts Trump’s daughter Ivanka as a friend and that their friendship built some connection between the families.

A copy of Donald Trump’s book “The Art of the Deal” was found in the Clinton Library files. Although some political types thought it might contain a friendly inscription that could be politically awkward for Hillary Clinton or Trump, the book was actually autographed with “best wishes” for White House aide Mark Middleton. Middleton was an aide to Mack McLarty, a Latin America adviser to Bill Clinton. Middleton’s access to the White House was restricted in 1996 after officials there concluded he had misused his ties to the White House after leaving the staff and embarking on a consulting career.

The Clinton files, located at the Clinton Library in Little Rock, Arkansas, are managed by the National Archives. The records released Tuesday were requested by BuzzFeed under the Freedom of Information Act.

