Greetings From A Small Closet Inside The West Wing
Day 1: Introduction, A Good Bleeding, and "There's My Boner"
It’s 11pm and I’m fucked.
I knew this job was going to push my life into chaos, and I resigned myself to a certain level of discomfort, but the degree to which I miscalculated is staggering.
Today I spent my first full day in The White House as President Donald J. Trump’s biographer for his second term AND I lost one-third of a pint of blood from each nostril.
I should introduce myself. My name is William Hardigan. I’m originally from South Texas, but for the last twelve years, I’ve lived in Richmond, Virginia, which is where my wife and children live currently….a wife and children I won’t be seeing often because my ego required I accept this fucking job.
I’m not trained to be a presidential biographer in any way, shape, or form. I’m not a presidential historian, a student of history, or even a student of presidents. I’m an advertising copywriter by trade. Well, until I decided to become a journalist. More on that in a sec.
Six days a week, I’ll be working at the White House, going to meetings, watching, learning and eventually, creating a coherent narrative for the president’s second term. At night, I’ll take a 20-minute Metro ride back to my 300 square-foot empty apartment across the river in Arlington. At 5:00 a.m., I’ll head back to the West Wing to my desk in a small, converted IT closet one hallway and one left turn from the Oval Office.
I don’t anticipate spending much time in my office closet. I imagine I’ll spend most of my time lurking behind President Trump, wherever he goes, feverishly capturing the inscrutable brilliance of the man making America great again, again.
The reason I work from a closet is because I refused to take the gig unless I could record voice memos to to help me tell the President’s story more succinctly. It’s how I prefer to write. But, as you probably know, recording devices are strictly prohibited at The White House, certainly in the West Wing, so when I said I needed an office with a computer and a microphone, I was told politely to fuck off by WH staff. After telling me to fuck off, and then having Trump not-so-politely tell them to fuck off because they told me to fuck off, the WH security team resumed giving fucks and spent a few months retrofitting this IT closet for me, which includes:
1 large desk. Secured to the floor.
1 laptop computer, attached to a chain, which is attached to the desk.
1 furry microphone which is secured to 1 boom which is also secured to the desk.
1 overhead light.
1 chair.
1 stack of custom letterhead + 12 no. 2 pencils.
Expertly soundproofed walls and ceiling.
1 speaker in the ceiling, which CONTINUOUSLY pipes in an impossible-to-pinpoint selection of stock music, no doubt a playlist designed for use on prisoners when waterboarding fails to produce results. The music, I can only assume, is to prevent the microphone from picking up any secret conversations that may occur in the hallway…because, as we all now know, Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, and National Security Advisor, Mike Waltz, would shit classified bricks if they learned that muffled hallway conversations about restocking Trump’s Diet Cokes were being recorded on a laptop in the West Wing. That would be fucking irresponsible and a threat to national security.
And finally….and most notable….a secure, Starlink internet connection with upload capability (I think this is where they fucked up.)
Alas….my fortified, OPSEC-reinforced, military-grade IT closet…which, among other things, allows me to freely post to Substack AND record and upload voice memos. Voice memos my intern, Jane, can help turn into a podcast….if I wish to do so…which I do.
You may be picking up that I don’t really give a shit about this job. You are correct.
I’m not that political. I follow politics, of course, but I’m not a card-carrying member of either party. I voted for Trump once. I voted against him once, and I abstained another time. I’m approaching this job like you would approach a 17-car pileup on the highway. I must see what’s going on, but at the same time, I desperately prefer to be elsewhere.
So, how did I get here?
Let me back up.
It was two years ago. I was on a flight back to Richmond from Cannes, France when I decided to quit advertising.
At that time I was an accomplished copywriter at a prominent Richmond agency - one of the best in the country. I was on big accounts. I stayed in boutique hotels and met with C-level clients. But, deep down, my life felt hollow.
I had flown all the way to France for The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, the most important award show in the industry - pretty much the Oscars for advertising. The work I’d done for ChiaPet in the Western-Themed Pottery-Based Plant Wearables category had been nominated for a Cannes Lion. In fact, my client was so excited, he spent three days traipsing around France in a pair of the ChiaChaps we’d developed, which apparently weren’t as comfortable as the actor in the ad made them look. Unfortunately…we lost. We lost to a startup making moss-based holster planters with almost no media buy. Anyway, I got a text from the client on the flight home. I don’t know if it was the infection due to the chafing from the chaps or what, but just like that, he informed me they were taking the brand in a different direction. At that moment, I put the work I did in plantwear and all the other concepts behind me and moved on from the industry for good.
That was more info than you needed.
The point is, my copywriting career ended abruptly. we had two young kids at home and I needed to find a new direction, fast.
So I went back to school for journalism at VCU and, when I graduated, even though I’m not that political, I landed a gig with the Richmond Times-Dispatch covering politics.
You may still be wondering why Donald J. Trump gives a single fuck about me.
I’ll get there.
Fresh out of journalism school, with my new Richmond Times-Dispatch name tag still warm, I received my first political assignment: covering the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee in July of 2024.
I arrived in Milwaukee and had spent roughly three hours on the convention center floor before I struck up a conversation with one of then-presidential-candidate Trump’s staffers. It took this idiot thirty seconds, his eyes darting back and forth between my eyes and my name tag, which read William Hardigan, before he asked me what my middle name was. I said “Blake,” and you’d think he’d been bitten by a rattlesnake right there. He jumped on his phone and made a few calls. Then he started texting people.
I was fucking lost.
He finally turned to me and said, “so your name is ‘Will B. Hardigan’….get it….will…be…hard…again.”
I’ve met a lot of stupid people in my life, but this fucker’s family tree was a shrub.
Before I knew it, there were about ten morons in khakis and blazers and red hats around me laughing about my name.
I went along with it. Probably shouldn’t have, because about an hour later, I was escorted to a back room and found myself face to face with the man himself.
Long story short, Trump loved it. He asked me if I got a lot of erections.
Then Trump asked me how good of a writer I am. He said he was looking for an official biographer and that I’d fit in well with the team. I answered his questions with confidence, but most of the time I just nodded my head, acted interested, and said thank you…and before I knew it, he’d made a decision. As he walked away he said “see ya soon, Boner.”
Everyone laughed.
Then a bunch of people in suits surrounded me and got my information. They said they’d be reaching out. To my surprise, they did, three days later.
And that’s about the whole story - that’s how I became the official presidential biographer for the most powerful man on the planet.
And here I am. I’m in a closet in the West Wing of The White House at 11:30 p.m. writing a Substack. Today I recorded a handful of voice memos that Jane said she’d be able to flip into a podcast by tomorrow.
You know, when they gave me my security clearance, they discussed how I’d be in very sensitive meetings, and I placed my right hand in the air and swore not to share any classified information.
I understand the oath I took, and I’m following that guidance. My goal is to ensure everything I share here and on the podcast is intensely private, but not classified. If I get in trouble for sharing private information, I think it’ll be a slap on the wrist, and I I imagine I’ll get fired, but they’re not going to send me to jail. At least that’s my calculus.
I just went through pros/cons:
Pro: After today it’s become clear. What I’m doing is essential. I cannot do this job without sharing some of the things I’m seeing. The burden is too great.
Con: There’s a chance MAGA hates what I’m doing.
Pro: I’m from Texas and I make my own calls. If they don’t like it, fuck them.
Con: Innocent people, citizens, who aren’t sharing private stories about Trump, are currently being deported.
Pro: After poking around today and seeing enough of this administration in action, there is very little chance anyone will even notice. And if they do, they probably won’t care enough about this Substack or podcast - I mean, they just spent 3 months making a top-secret closet, taking every OPSEC precaution, but then they linked the laptop directly to the internet - basically begging for me to share.
Pro: I’ll never have to quit this job. Getting fired is definitely how this will end.
Pro: I’m a seasoned journalist, right? What could go wrong?
Okay. Pros win. Giddyup.
I’ve exhausted my writing for the day - many details will be in the podcast with some nice audio interactions with a few staffers, but here are the highlights:
The fucking Oval Office doorknob isn’t a doorknob. It’s plastic. It’s fake. It’s attached with velcro. WTF?
The Secret Service guy guarding the Oval Office is trained in MMA or Jujitsu or something. No doubt. And I learned not to lean my head back when trying to stop a severe nose bleed. Pinch and plug.
“There’s my Boner!” is a sentence I heard from the leader of the free world today.
Trump gave me a quick tour of the Oval and I briefly saw inside one of the drawers of the Resolute Desk. Hint: A LOT of _ _ _ _ _ _ _ .
The West Wing is just like any other office. They do team-building exercises too. I learned Trump thinks A LOT about erections, Secretary Lutnick may be deported to El Salvador soon, and Elon Musk saw two Smurfs mating on the Oval Office ceiling.
I give myself two weeks. Stay tuned.