LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WHAS11) -- As President Trump faces an impeachment inquiry, we spoke with one of the few people around who can tell you what's going on behind the scenes when something like this goes down. Bob Gunnell has a unique perspective thanks to his intersection with history 20 years ago.
Gunnell, who heads the PR and strategy firm Boxcar PR, helped President Bill Clinton in his time of need. He smiles thinking back to 1998 and 1999 when he was in a high stakes situation with President Clinton facing impeachment.
Gunnell joined a team of 20 fighting a PR battle for the president.
“Every morning we'd have to put a ream of paper into the fax machine just to get out the faxes that were coming in,” he said, “and they were sometimes 40, 50, 60 pages long."
“What was the most interesting part,” Gunnell added, “was that the faxes had notes written through them in certain ways to speak, certain ways to hit the other side and you could tell that they had all been handwritten by one of the Clintons.”
He’s proud of the strategy that worked. They targeted House and Senate districts with messaging to build up the president. They knew that the House would likely impeach, which it did, but they claimed victory when the Senate failed to convict, which meant that Bill Clinton could stay in office. He said that he knew the truth was on their side and that President Clinton committed no crimes, so he was all-in on the messaging.
Gunnell suspects that a team just like his is already assembled and fighting for President Trump.
“That’s what Trump’s challenge will be,” Gunnell insisted, “to sway public opinion back and to use a team, not to get out there with himself on Twitter and try to tweet this thing to death.”
When asked whether he thinks his fellow Democrats will be disappointed when impeachment doesn’t work out the way they’ve planned, Gunnell answered, “I think that the followers are going to be disappointed when the impeachment doesn't work out the way it was planned because I don't think the U.S. Senate is going to vote to impeach. The House might very well vote to impeach but the Senate will never uphold the impeachment.”
His advice for those in his party hoping to see Donald Trump kicked out of office is, be careful what you wish for. Gunnell knows that it can backfire on opponents. Bill Clinton's approval rating spiked 10 points overnight during one of the impeachment proceedings. The PR expert suggests that this could help Trump-backed candidates, and the President, heading into next year's election.
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