Exclusive — Tim Murtaugh Talks About His Book: Hitting ‘Rock Bottom’ with Alcoholism to ‘Redemption’ with Trump Campaign

“They told their own stories, and a lot of them are so absurd that they’re funny, but then they tell you about how they came through the other end and made it through. And those books helped me so much when I was really, really struggling,” he said, expressing hope that his book can do the same for someone else.

Further, Murtaugh said he is “living proof” that those with the same struggles can overcome them.

“I know a lot of people — I count myself lucky because the way I was — I was really bad. I had two DUIs. One time, I spent five days in jail for the first time for the first one. I spent ten days in jail for the second one, and I had 80 days suspended. And those suspended 80 days were what I was worried about, when I woke up in jail that day, because I got arrested for drunk in public while I was on probation for my second DUI. And if I had been convicted of that, of that drunk in public charge, I would have violated probation. I would have had to go to jail for three months, it would have been the end of everything. I would have lost my job when I was working for Lou Barletta, who should have fired me many, many times,” he said, praising he people who stood by him and did not give up on him, including his wife and former Rep. Lou Barletta.

“I thank Secretary Sonny Perdue, who hired me at the beginning of the Trump administration to be his comms director. Before I went to the campaign, I told him — when I — at that point, this was all in my past, but I had to be honest and tell my view and my prospective employer what they will find when they do the background check, right? So I told him, I told President Trump when I went to the campaign and said, ‘If you’re gonna hire me, then this is what you’re going to find.’ And he said that he likes a good redemption story. He likes a good comeback story,’” he said.

“But — so I count myself lucky for having made it through. A lot of people who are in the situation that I was in don’t survive. They die. Literally a lot of people die. And you’re right. It is — it’s basically a universal problem from what I have found. So many people have come up to me and people that I’ve known for years who I didn’t know they themselves had an alcohol problem,” Murtaugh said, adding that he wrote the book because “I know that I really struggled and I needed the help of other people, and I needed just encouragement to believe, like you’re saying, that it is possible… that maybe it wasn’t too late for me, [and] it’s not too late for somebody else,” he said, emphasizing that the book is his story, providing a little background to the title of the book as well, noting it is a baseball reference.