Peril

by Bob Woodward

Milley was not going to allow an unstable commander in chief, who he believed had engaged in a treasonous violation of his oath, to use the military improperly.

Incensed, Biden grabbed the phone and called “Mike D.,” Mike Donilon, his closest political confidant, who at 59 had the look and manner of a neighborhood priest. Gray hair, bushy eyebrows, glasses, hushed voice.

Over four decades, he had become Biden’s gut check and a blend of John F. Kennedy’s two key advisers: his younger brother and strategist, Robert F. Kennedy, and Theodore Sorensen, his wordsmith.

“I have to speak out on this,” Biden told Donilon. “This is different. This is darker. It is more dangerous. This is really a fundamental threat to the country.”

Biden was often stirred emotionally and long-winded, but on Charlottesville, he was going on and on, even more than his usual length.

“What’s different about this moment in history is that the American people are going to have to stand up and defend the country’s values and the Constitution because they...

The president of the United States had given moral equivalency to those who stand against hate and the haters—safe harbor for white supremacists and Nazi...

“Trump is breathing life into kind of the darkest, worst impul...

“The reasons they felt they could do it there was because they believed they had the president of the U...

Biden had been trying to abide by the traditional rule for a previous administration: avoiding public comment on a new president. Let them get their sea legs. But he told Donilon the rule no longer applied. “I have to speak,” he said. “I need to be a very clear voice.”

Trump was systemically attacking the courts, the press, and Congress—a vintage move by an autocrat to dismantle institutions constricting his power.

“There is only one side.”

On August 15, during a press conference at Trump Tower in New York, he maintained “there is blame on both sides” and there were “very fine people on both sides.”

Within two weeks, an 816-word piece under Biden’s name ran in The Atlantic, with the headline, “We Are Living Through a Battle for the Soul of This Nation.”

“The crazed, angry faces illuminated by torches. The chants echoing the same anti-Semitic bile heard across Europe in the 1930s,” Biden wrote. “The neo-Nazis, Klansmen, and white supremacists emerging from dark rooms and remote fields and the anonymity of the web into the bright light of day.”

“Who thinks democracy is a given?” Biden asked corporate leaders at a closed event on September 19, 2017. “If you do, think again.”

Known as Mr. Silent, Donilon was an unusually good listener.

“The battle for the soul of the nation” did not resonate like JFK’s famous inaugural command, “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.” But it asked deeper, more fundamental questions: What is your country? What has it become under Trump?

Republicans were at a crossroads that summer of 2017, pleased to be holding power across Washington but increasingly unnerved about Trump and his response to Charlottesville.

Throughout the 2016 campaign, Ryan had been supportive of the Republican nominee, whom most GOP leaders doubted would be able to win. But his support of Trump started to crack that October, when Ryan publicly said he was “sickened” by Trump’s lewd, caught-on-tape comments about women, which were revealed by The Washington Post.

Once Trump won, Ryan was caught off guard.

“thoughts on how to best deal with a person with anti-social personality disorder.”

Ryan’s main takeaway: Do not humiliate Trump in public. Humiliating a narcissist risked real danger, a frantic lashing out if he felt threatened or criticized.

Ryan tested out his research on December 9, 2016. He and his senior aides, including soon-to-be chief of staff Jonathan Burks, arrived at Trump Tower in Manhattan for a transition meeting with the president-elect.

Trump had a reputation for secretly recording.

Trump nodded as Ryan spoke earnestly about taxes and health care, then looked down at his cell phone, which was ringing. It was Sean Hannity of Fox News. He answered the call as Ryan and his advisers sat silent. “Yeah, I’m here with Paul,” Trump told Hannity. “Oh? You want to talk with him?” Trump looked at Ryan then put the call on speakerphone. “Sean, talk to Paul,” he told the host, and Hannity did for about seven minutes.

On April 26, 2017, Ryan got word that Trump was ready to announce that the United States would leave the North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA, the pact linking the U.S., Canada and Mexico. Ryan told Trump he risked public humiliation.

On the line, an adviser had bad news: Trump was at it again, blaming “both sides” for Charlottesville.

“You’re not in the foxhole with me!” Trump screamed. Ryan yelled back. “Are you finished? May I have some time to speak now?

“You’re the president of the United States. You have a moral leadership obligation to get this right and not declare there is a moral equivalency here.” “These people love me. These are my people,” Trump shot back. “I can’t backstab the people who support me.”

There were white supremacists and Nazis in Charlottesville, Ryan said. “Well, yeah, there’s some bad people,” Trump said. “I get that. I’m not for that. I’m against all that. But there’s some of those...

When he arrived, Trump started yelling immediately. He said he despised the omnibus and was now crosswise with his core voters. “This is a terrible deal! Who signed off on this piece of shit?” Trump asked. No one answered.

“The wall! It’s not in here!” “You have to sign this, we just passed it,” Ryan said. “I mean, we discussed this already. This is the military. This is the rebuild. This is veterans.”

“It’s like this every day around here,”

He and Ryan were the two leaders of the Republican Party in Congress. The coaches on the field. With Ryan exiting, would Trump now be unbound? Who else would try to hold him back?

Joe Biden’s first two runs for the presidency, in 1988 and 2008, were disasters, plagued by plagiarism charges in the first and by mangled remarks on race in the second.

Biden’s 2008 failure offered a consolation prize: then Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, soon to be the nation’s first Black president, picked him to be his running mate.

Hunter’s alcoholism, drug addiction and financial problems would later generate headlines.

Nor did they know of the brain cancer threatening Hunter’s brother, Beau, a secret held closely by the family.

“Beau and I always knew that Dad wouldn’t retire until he became president. That was the collective dream of the three of us.”

A few months later, on May 30, 2015, Beau Biden died at age 46, ending a life that included a Bronze Star for military service in Iraq and two terms as Delaware’s attorney general.

“The only way I’m going to be able to get through this,” he said, “and we’ll be able to get through it as a family, is if we just, you know, you have to keep me working and busy.”

But as Donilon looked at Biden, he could see how the heavy burden of Beau’s death weighed on him—the loss of a second child and the third member of his family gone. Biden was taut with pain, the usual easy smile now a jaw clenched.

“I don’t think you should do this,”

The following day, Biden stood in the White House Rose Garden, with President Obama at his side, and announced he would not run for president.

“A fish is going to swim, a bird is going to fly, and Biden is going to run,”

Jill and Joe Biden had been married since 1977.

As the evening wore on, the needle swung toward Trump.

“My God, the world has just turned upside down,”

On January 20, Biden sat through Trump’s stark “American carnage” inaugural address and then turned to writing a second memoir, Promise Me, Dad. It was a chance to think and talk about Beau, a “search for a way forward in his own life,” as Ricchetti explained it to others.