Peril

by Bob Woodward

“We are all lucky that Hunter and Hallie found each other as they were putting their lives together again after such sadness. They have mine and Jill’s full and complete support and we are happy for them.”

“You’ve got to promise me, Dad, that no matter what happens, you’re going to be all right. Give me your word, Dad,”

“I’m going to be okay, Beau,” Biden replied. “No, Dad,” Beau Biden said. “Give me your word as a Biden. Give me your word, Dad. Promise me, Dad.” “I promised,” Biden wrote.

The key question Donilon asked was: “Did Biden still have real standing in the party and in the country?” The answer, he concluded, was yes. The book hit No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list for one week. Biden was drawing crowds.

“Democratic primary voters tended to support more traditional, establishment candidates over progressive firebrands.”

“Importantly, there is no urgent demand for a younger generation of leadership among voters.”

Joseph M. Bartholomew Golf Course, a historic public golf course named after the Black architect who had designed many of Louisiana’s best country club courses but could not play on them in the segregated South.

“I’m not making any commitment on running,” Biden said. “I just want to get us to a place where we can beat Donald Trump. I don’t have to be the person to beat him.”

Trump usually aligned with McConnell and Trump’s White House counsel, Don McGahn, who worked closely with the Senate leader to fill up the judicial pipeline with conservative nominees.

But Trump’s commitment to the enterprise was never grounded in ideology, only in winning, leaving him susceptible to changing his mind.

Just before Kavanaugh’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Christine Blasey Ford, a college professor, stepped forward on September 16, 2018. She accused Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her when they were teenagers.

The Senate voted to confirm Kavanaugh on October 6, 50 votes to 48 votes.

“You may be the only person who can beat Donald Trump,” Richmond said. “I think you should do it.” Run and beat him.

“Look, African Americans appreciate, one, your authenticity. Two, they appreciate that you had Barack Obama’s back. And three, they know how much our community has to lose if Democrats can’t beat Trump.”

His social media following was what you would expect for a well-liked former vice president, but his political presence was almost nonexistent.

At the close of 2018, President Trump appointed General Milley, then the Army chief, as chairman of the Joint Chiefs, a year before the official end of the term of Marine General Joseph Dunford Jr.

“General Milley, given the risks that you have articulated and that the National Defense Strategy articulates, I consider your job the second most important in the United States government because we are living in a dangerous world. And your position as principal advisor to the president in a time of heightened international tension and risk is incredibly significant and important. You know what my question is going to be.”

Milley was self-righteous and relished proclaiming his independence. But nothing prepared him for Trump. There was no training course, no preparatory work, no school for handling a president who was a total outsider to the system. Trump simultaneously embraced military imagery and language but could be harshly critical of military leaders. Trump had isolationist and unpredictable instincts when it came to policy. America First often meant America Only.

The job also meant being the top military adviser to Trump, a responsibility that prompted Milley to think about a doctrine called “movement to contact,” where you navigate through smoke in a battlespace and try to feel out the unknown, step by step, learning as you go. Milley had practiced it before Trump, now it was a way of life.

Top naval officers later explained to Trump that the island was set to the rear to expand the runway space for the aircraft that landed on the deck. If the island were in the center, they said, it would funnel the wind in a way that made it more difficult for pilots. “It just doesn’t look right,” Trump said.

The president did not like a ship’s look. He had to endure it, just let him vent.

A conservative Republican, Barr was one of the strongest advocates for the executive power of the president, and he was a firm supporter of Trump’s policies, tax cuts and deregulation.

Just so it was clear, Barr said again that he would not tolerate the president trying to monkey around with the criminal justice process—who to prosecute, who not to prosecute. “I don’t want to hear about it,” Barr said. “If there’s something that’s appropriate for you to know, I’ll tell you.” Trump acknowledged Barr’s declaration, but Barr was not sure the president understood it.

“The president’s going crazy. He thinks he made a mistake picking you because of what you’ve been saying. You said nice things about Bob Mueller.”

Now Melania was speaking the language of the president, who put a premium on appearance. Barr, six feet and with an extraordinarily large belly, came across as the sober, knowledgeable lawyer, she said.

Trump, who was on the chunky side himself, said to Barr about his weight, “You hold it well, Bill. You carry it well. Be careful because if you lose too much weight, your skin is going to start becoming saggy.”

Barr said Mueller found no evidence that Trump or his aides worked illegally or colluded with Russia. But on the critical question of whether Trump had obstructed justice, Mueller wrote one of the most convoluted lines in the history of high-profile investigations: “While this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”

Barr released a letter stating that he and his deputy “have concluded that the evidence developed during the Special Counsel’s investigation is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense.”

Many were outraged, calling Barr a sycophant and loyalist dutifully protecting the president, and cleaning up Trump’s mess.

“It was a complete and total exoneration,” Trump said, contradicting Barr’s letter, which quoted the Mueller report’s statement that it “does not exonerate him.”

Next, 700 former federal prosecutors weighed in, saying the Mueller report showed multiple acts of obstruction of justice by the president, and that the president was not charged because of the Justice Department policy of not indicting a sitting president.

Trump was not charged, nor was he ever impeached as a result of the findings in the Mueller probe. Trump had weathered a real threat to his presidency. He told Woodward in a taped interview, “The beautiful thing is, it all evaporated. It ended in a whimper. It was pretty amazing. It ended in dust.”

Anita Dunn, a veteran of the Obama White House and managing director at SKDK, a political and communications firm in Washington, to meet him at the estate he rented in the Virginia suburbs. Dunn—married to Bob Bauer, who had served as Obama’s White House counsel—was a defender of the party’s centrist wing. She considered herself a proud liberal, but she was not in lockstep with the progressives who were increasingly gaining power after Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont built a movement with his 2016 primary campaign against Clinton.

At 61, Dunn was in the same age range as Donilon and Ricchetti and had gotten her start in presidential politics inside Jimmy Carter’s White House. Dunn was known as formidable, opinionated, tough, and smart.

Dunn told him. Biden had one clear advantage: Most candidates struggle with the message. In his case, he was the message.

Ron Klain, who had served as chief of staff in the vice president’s office during the first two years of the first term.

Klain, 55, with wavy dark hair, had the persona of a university president who had spent years on the faculty. Comfortable with power, but even more comfortable in the policy weeds. Easygoing and social, but sharp-elbowed if anyone tried to scramble his agenda.

He was one of Biden’s Ivy League high achievers—magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, editor of the Law Review, and Supreme Court law clerk to Justice Byron White.

“I just feel like I have to do this,” Biden said as they sat down. “Trump represents something fundamentally different and wrong about politics.”

“This guy just isn’t really an American president.”

Klain was also struck by how different this Biden sounded from the Biden of that first presidential run back in the late 1980s.

The theory was that Biden, then at age 44, was the right generation. He had the look, and National Journal had put him on its cover as a Kennedyesque figure, a significant accolade at the time.

Now, Klain felt differently. This was not a political conversation. It was to fix what Trump broke, a mission. They did not talk about the states Biden could win, the blue Democratic wall or the Electoral College.

When Biden was on the ticket in 2008, he and Senator John McCain, then the Republican nominee, would have off-the-record, back-channel exchanges to smooth the waters. “There’s going to be no phone calls here,” Klain said. “This is going to be a battle to the death. Nothing off-limits. Trump will use every possible tool, legitimate and illegitimate, fair and unfair, true and false to try to destroy you and your family.”

Biden’s grandson Robert “Hunter” Biden II handed him a photo taken of the two of them at his father, Beau’s, funeral. He was then nine years old, and Biden had bent down to comfort him with his hand cupping the boy’s chin. Corners of the right wing online had lit up with wild allegations about Biden’s gesture, suggesting Biden was a pedophile. The younger Biden told his grandfather he knew a campaign could be nasty.

“They, the most important people in my life, want me to run.”

What Biden did not disclose was that his family also was in severe crisis. Hunter Biden was in the throes of addiction to crack cocaine.

He wrote in his memoir he had a “death wish,” seeing his ability to “find crack anytime, anywhere” as a “superpower.” “It was nonstop depravity.”

In March 2019, the family staged an intervention.

“I don’t know what else to do,” his father pleaded. “I’m so scared. Tell me what to do.” “Not fucking this,” Hunter said.