Donald
Trump’s European fixer lives downstairs
Guido
Lombardi is the American president-elect’s neighbor, a Facebook
organizer and his self-professed contact to Europe’s far-right
parties.
By NICHOLAS
VINOCUR 12/5/16, 5:33 AM CET Updated 12/5/16, 8:13 AM CET
Are you an ambitious
European pol seeking an audience with Donald Trump?
Then George “Guido”
Lombardi may just be your man — although there are no guarantees.
The Italian
businessman is the president-elect’s downstairs neighbor at Trump
Tower — he occupies the 62nd and 63rd floors. In Trump’s words,
the two have been “friends for a long time.” To listen to
Lombardi tell it, he is the president-elect’s closest European
confidante besides Nigel Farage.
Lombardi, who
describes himself as a real estate investor with rightward political
leanings, said that throughout the presidential campaign he fielded
calls from representatives of a veritable Who’s Who of the European
Right, including French far-right leader Marine Le Pen, Hungarian
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, members of Austria’s Freedom Party,
as well as the center-right French Républicains party who all wanted
to meet with Trump.
“I’m in contact
with just about everybody,” Lombardi, who is in his early sixties
and emigrated to the United States from Italy in the 1970s, said in a
telephone interview from New York. “When there is a high-level
request, I pass it on. It may be to Eric [Trump], it may be to
someone else. It may be to Donald himself. It depends on who, and
what, it is.”
The National Front’s
representative in the United States confirmed knowing and having
spoken to Lombardi. “He is a go-between,” said Denis Franceskin.
“He is part of the [Trump] network,” he said, adding: “Not the
only one.”
Despite Lombardi’s
dutiful relaying of messages, few requests to meet Trump have been
granted so far.
Trump did meet
Matteo Salvini, the chief of the Northern League to which Lombardi
belongs, but Trump actually didn’t want to meet him, he said later.
“I didn’t even know him,” he said, in an interview with the
Hollywood reporter, adding that there was no “common ground to be
explored with Europe’s far-right parties” and that he did not
want to “establish alliances beyond the Atlantic.”
Last month, Orbán
said the president-elect had invited him to Washington during a phone
call. A source close to Orbán said the call had been set up via the
Hungarian embassy, following preliminary contacts between the
entourage of the then-candidate and the prime minister. The source
said he was unaware of whether the initial contact had gone through
Lombardi, who said he had been contacted by a “Hungarian national
in Washington.”
Others cited by
Lombardi as having contacted him declined to comment for this
article. Trump’s campaign staff and family members did not reply to
requests for comment.
Trump dropped by a
meeting at his Margo-a-Lago club ‘dedicated to defending and
advancing Western civilization against the kinetic and cultural
onslaught of Shariah Islam.’
Trump’s skepticism
about foreign parties — which does not extend to Farage of the
United Kingdom Independence Party who has met him repeatedly — may
explain why Lombardi’s lobbying efforts on behalf of Le Pen, former
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and others have fallen
short, at least so far.
The National Front’s
Franceskin said it was only a matter of time before Le Pen was able
to sit down with Trump. “Have patience,” he said.
Regarding the
request from Orbán, Lombardi quoted Trump as having said such a
meeting would happen after the election: “‘I don’t mean any
disrespect,'” he quoted Trump as saying. “‘I have a rule: No
foreign leaders until after the election. I see this one, I have to
see everybody.'”
Trump has a cold
The attempts by
European politicians to meet Trump and bask in his iconoclastic aura,
started when his campaign picked up momentum earlier this year.
In May, Le Pen’s
parliamentary adviser, Ludovic de Danne, the former UKIP member
Janice Atkinson and several other Euroskeptic MEPs traveled to the
U.S., hoping to meet Trump. At the time, Lombardi acted as a sort of
fixer, trying to get the group in front of Trump, members of the
delegation confirmed.
The European
delegation got as close as the Conservative Political Action
Conference in Washington D.C., where Trump was due to appear. The
then-candidate never showed up.
“I
told Donald, ‘I’d love to help. I will take care of all the
crazies … There is no official connection so [no] liability.’ He
said, ‘Great.'” — Guido Lombardi
Undeterred, the same
group came back to the United States in November to see the election
up close. Lombardi said he had helped organize the election night
victory party at Trump Tower, to which both De Danne and Atkinson
were invited. But Trump, who was following the election from his
apartment and drinking Diet Coke, never came down to mingle with the
guests. Secret Service had forbidden him, Lombardi said.
“He wanted to stop
by,” said Lombardi. “Secret Service didn’t let him because they
had not checked the room beforehand.”
Chief Facebook
Officer
In addition to
living downstairs at Trump Tower in Manhattan, Lombardi said he is a
frequent guest at the Mar-a-Lago estate and boasts of a decades-old
friendship with Trump.
Lombardi hosted a
meeting at Trump’s Margo-a-Lago club of the North Atlantic League,
which he told the gathered guests is fighting to defend
“Judeo-Christian civilization.” The emcee was Frank Gaffney, a
former Reagan administration official who has campaigned for a hard
American line against Islam and published a book entitled “Shariah:
The Threat to America.” A logo of the United West, an organization
that says it “is dedicated to defending and advancing Western
Civilization against the kinetic and cultural onslaught of Shariah
Islam,” appears in the corner of an undated video, which Lombardi
uploaded onto YouTube in May. In an interview, Lombardi said he did
not know when the event took place.
In the video, Trump
can be seen stopping by the event, putting his arm around Lombardi
and his wife, saying: “They’ve been my friends for a long time.
They live in Trump Tower. We love them. They’re members of the
Mar-a-Lago Club … I just want to acknowledge how good these two
people are.”
While never
officially on Trump’s campaign team, Lombardi said he acted as a
helper and occasional adviser to the candidate, with whom he said he
spoke frequently in private settings. In late 2015, Lombardi showed a
French investigative news team a room in Trump Tower he described as
the “campaign headquarters,” although no campaign representative
was present at the time.
Besides relaying
messages from European well-wishers, Lombardi’s main role, he said,
was to run an unofficial, guerilla-style social media operation that
aimed to amplify the candidate’s message online. At its height,
Lombardi said the operation included sites and Facebook pages for
many niche groups of Trump supporters such as “Bikers for Trump,”
“Latinos for Trump” and “Veterans for Trump.”
“In June of 2015,
I told Donald, ‘I’d love to help,'” said Lombardi. “‘But I
can’t work directly for the campaign because I have all kinds of
rules and regulations. I will take care of unofficial media. I will
take care of students. I will take care of bikers. I will take care
of all the crazies … There is no official connection so [no]
liability.’ He said, ‘Great.'”
By the end of the
campaign, Lombardi said he was curating some 500 online groups that
were run by a network of volunteers. He said he had started some of
them but did not specify how many.
It was not possible
to verify this claim or Lombardi’s link to the websites. Several of
the groups cited by Lombardi had garnered more than 100,000 “likes”
on Facebook and featured pro-Trump memes and stories from
little-known news sources. On CitizensforTrump.com, a disclaimer
reads: “Created by grassroots citizens. Not authorized by any
candidate, or candidate committee.”
Lombardi said he
took no payment for his services and did not expect anything in
return. But he did express faith in Trump’s memory for services
rendered.
“He remembers
details like you won’t believe,” he said.
Authors:
Nicholas Vinocur
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