It was a Tuesday morning at Englewood Federal Correctional Institution on June 16, 2015. To Rod Blagojevich, that meant mopping time. It was a duty he liked to carry out while listening to Elvis Presley on the tiny MP3 player he had saved up to buy at the prison commissary.
Once the highest elected official in Illinois, the former governor was, at this point, inmate No. 4089-424. He had been sentenced in 2011 to 14 years in prison for trying to sell off the Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama.
As he cleaned around the TV set, a brunette on the screen caught his eye. Man, that’s Melania, he remembered thinking. Then he saw her husband behind her, the two of them riding down a golden escalator. Soon after, Donald J. Trump cleared his throat for an announcement.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I am officially running for president of the United States,” Trump declared. “We are going to make our country great again.”
While the media thought Trump was a laughingstock, Blagojevich saw him as a potential savior. He had first met the real estate developer on the set of The Celebrity Apprentice in 2010, and said he had shown him “kindness” ever since.
“He’s got a real chance at winning,” Blagojevich told me he thought at the time. “And if Trump’s the president, who knows, maybe I could have a chance at freedom.”