EXCLUSIVE: Former 2020 Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh said working for the former president was “the highest honor” of his career, while telling his “redemption story” in the hopes of helping others to overcome addiction.
Murtaugh, a political consultant who has served on numerous national political committees and campaigns, is rolling out a new book — “Swing Hard in Case You Hit It,” set to be released in April but available for pre-order on Amazon.
Murtaugh’s book will focus on his “escape” from alcoholism to “the top of the political world on the 2020 Trump campaign.”
Tim Murtaugh speaks with President Donald Trump before the presidential debate in Nashville, Tennessee, in October 2020. (Tim Murtaugh)
In an interview with Fox News Digital, Murtaugh said his initial idea to write the book came after political opposition researchers approached reporters in 2019 with stories about his alcohol-related legal problems in, what he called, an attempt to “harm the Trump campaign through bad stories about my past.”
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“I wanted to tell this story on my terms to take away the power of some of these dark times in my life, and hopefully help other alcoholics see that there can be a pathway through for them as well,” Murtaugh told Fox News Digital. “I was able to make it thanks to the support of my wife, family, and friends; and I now have two young sons who have never seen their father take a drink.”
“My recovery also allowed me to experience some amazing things on the Trump 2020 campaign, and there are some stories in there that people have never heard before,” Murtaugh told Fox News Digital. “This is far from a regular political book.”
Fox News Digital obtained excerpts from the book exclusively.
“Swing Hard in Case You Hit It” is set to be released in April. (Tim Murtaugh)
The book “has some stories from inside the Trump 2020 presidential re-election campaign, but it’s not totally about that race, or Donald J. Trump, for that matter,” Murtaugh writes in the preface.
“It’s about the path that I took, starting early in life, and the poor choices that I made that eventually threatened to ruin everything I had tried to achieve over my first forty-five years on this planet,” he continues. “It’s about going to jail — twice — because I couldn’t stop guzzling alcohol, and it’s about very nearly losing my loving wife, my career, and all my self-respect, and still somehow recovering to hold a prominent job for the president of the United States less than four years later.”
Murtaugh adds: “I am proud to have worked for President Trump, and proud to have run comms on his re-election campaign. To have been trusted with that responsibility remains the highest honor of my professional career.”
Murtaugh’s book is filled with stories from Trump rallies to COVID, to Election Day 2020, to Jan. 6, 2021, and beyond.
Tim Murtaugh is seen as a child with his grandfather, Danny Murtaugh, who was the manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates, circa 1971. (Tim Murtaugh)
The title of his book comes from what his father used to say to him before he left for baseball practice growing up: “Swing hard in case you hit it.”
Murtaugh is the grandson of Danny Murtaugh, who was the manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates and won the World Series twice.
Murtaugh writes that he “truly” hopes that his story can “help other alcoholics to get closer to being sober.”
“I know that writing it all down for once certainly helped me to continue to avoid drinking, one day at a time, because I was reminded of how farcical my whole existence once was,” he relates.
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Murtaugh’s book alternates between stories from the 2020 Trump campaign, his experience leading communications for the former president’s re-election and his time struggling to combat alcohol addiction.
Murtaugh had his last drink in May 2015, after alcohol-related legal troubles threatened to send him to jail for almost three months and “ruin” his career and personal life. At the time, Murtaugh was working for Rep. Lou Barletta, R-Pa., in Congress as his communications director.
Murtaugh, who has been critical of Hunter Biden and his foreign business dealings, at one point in his book says he never targeted the president’s son over his addiction because he “understood.”
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The book reads: “I never sought to attack Hunter for things directly related to his addiction, or for his condition of being an addict.”
“I knew what it was like to be controlled by a substance, and I wanted to stay away from bashing him for that,” Murtaugh writes. “But anything involving foreign payments that could have involved his father were totally in bounds.”
“Swing Hard in Case You Hit It” is being published by Bombardier Books, an imprint of Post Hill Press.