Peril

by Bob Woodward

In early February, Trump was acquitted by the Republican-controlled Senate of impeachment charges that he abused his power and obstructed Congress, falling 10 votes short of the 67-vote, two-thirds majority required by the Constitution to remove the president from office.

“Mr. President, every day this race is about you, we’re losing,” he said. “Every day the race is about Joe Biden, we’re winning. And right now, Joe Biden’s not doing anything, so the race is constantly about you.”

After 15 months running the Justice Department for the president, Attorney General Bill Barr was also worried in April 2020 that Trump was sabotaging his reelection chances. He needed a come-to-Jesus meeting.

Deep in the heart of Delaware, Joe Biden sits in the heart of his basement. Alone. Hiding. Diminished,” declared one Trump ad. “Punxsutawney Joe,” was another barb, referring to the Pennsylvania groundhog, Phil, who emerges from his underground burrow once a year to predict the length of the winter. And Trump’s campaign tweeted daily about how many days had passed since Biden’s last news conference.

Scheduled for 45 minutes on the phone or Zoom, the oral briefings routinely extended to an hour and a half. Kessler and Murthy were both deeply alarmed by Trump’s attitude and failure to comprehend what he and the world were facing. “I wanted to always play it down,” Trump told Woodward in a March 2020 interview. “I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.” Trump had tweeted earlier that month about his view: “So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that!” Trump shut down the country a week later, but almost immediately began talking about opening it back up. “Our country wasn’t built to be shut down. This is not a country that was built for this,” Trump said on March 23, during a White House press briefing.

In late May, angry protests erupted in more than 140 cities across the country. Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin had been caught on video pressing his knee on the neck of George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, for seven minutes and 46 seconds, killing him. Some of the protests escalated into violent clashes with police and looting as darkness fell each evening. The scenes replayed endlessly on cable news. In an interview at the time, Trump told Woodward, “These are arsonists, they’re thugs, they’re anarchists and they’re bad people.

Very dangerous people. “These are very well-organized. Antifa’s leading it,” Trump said, pointing his finger at the anti-fascist movement that had confronted white supremacists and others. Stephen Miller, the 34-year-old

“Mr. President,” Milley said turning back to Trump, “they are not burning it down.” His extended hands were flat in front of him, and he raised them up to his shoulders and slowly lowered them in a calming motion. He cited information from the daily SECRET report. “Mr. President, there are about 276 cities in America with over 100,000 people. There were two cities in the last 24 hours that had major protests,” he said. “Elsewhere, it was 20 protesters to 300.” While images of burning and violence had been on television, many of the protests were peaceful—about 93 percent of them, according to a later nonpartisan report. “They used spray paint, Mr. President,” Milley said. “That’s not insurrection. That guy up there.” He pointed to the portrait of Abraham Lincoln on the wall in the Oval Office.

“This isn’t even on the same level of the 1968 stuff when tens of thousands of protesters and rioters are going through Detroit and Chicago and L.A.” “That’s right, Mr. President,” Kellogg said. The protests should be monitored, Milley said. “We should pay attention to it. It’s important.” But it was an issue for local police and local law enforcement, mayors and governors.

An aide hurried in: “Mr. President, the governors are on the phone for your conference call.” Trump got up and strode down to the Situation Room. On the call, he told the governors they should forcefully crack down on their demonstrators. There was none of his usual cajoling. His tone was belligerent.

“You have to dominate,” Trump told them, almost issuing a command. “If you don’t dominate, you’re wasting your time. They’re going to run over you. You’re going to look like a bunch of jerks. You have to dominate, and you have to arrest people, and you have to try people and they have to go to jail for long periods of time.”

“We’re going to the church,” Trump told them. Almost everyone at the White House that evening seemed to join in: Esper and Milley, National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien and Barr, senior advisers, family members Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, Trump aide Hope Hicks and White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. It was one of the most photographed and videotaped parades of the Trump presidency.

Milley was not at the church when Trump stood for about two minutes, holding a Bible uncomfortably and waving it around. But it did not matter. The damage was done.

The pandemic “is disappearing,” he insisted. “It’s going to disappear.” Cases in the U.S. had reached nearly 4.9 million confirmed cases—and over 160,000 deaths. Schools were, for the most part, not scheduled to reopen.

Seven former FDA commissioners published an op-ed in The Washington Post on September 29 asking the White House to let the FDA do its job: “The White House has said it might try to influence the scientific standards for vaccine approval put forward by the FDA.