“Every day on the phone it was F-bomb ridden conversation,” the former official recalled, reeling off a list of outrageous ideas floated to Nielsen by President Trump to harm migrants in order to deter migration—ideas that were first publicly reported in Border Wars, the book from New York Times reporters Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Michael Shear. “Painting the wall black. Shooting people. Snakes.” Despite the “crazy,” Nielsen decided not to resign.
