Peril

by Bob Woodward

The president had misused him and politicized the U.S military. They had become Trump’s pawns.

But his private counsel only meant so much. This was a president who traced political capital through public statements and media hits.

“Interestingly,” Milley said of the nearly 500 Confederate soldiers buried there, “they’re arranged in a circle and the names on the gravestones are facing inward, and that symbolizes that they turned their back on the Union. They were traitors at the time, they are traitors today, and they’re traitors in death for all of eternity. Change the names, Mr. President.”

Hahn realized the president had no idea how the FDA operated and had made no effort to find out before sending the tweet. It was a classic tweet-burst, ignorant and disruptive. Trump did not understand the power of his words. Public faith in safety procedures was critical to convincing people to get vaccinated. Hahn did not ask the president whether he ever considered what thousands of FDA workers might think when they read the statements attacking their work from the president of the United States.

Despite all his rhetoric playing down the virus, Trump knew a vaccine before the election could help him politically. Pfizer’s chief executive Albert Bourla joined the chorus of voices in the scientific community trying to shift the president’s tactics and tone. “Once more, I was disappointed that the prevention for a deadly disease was discussed in political terms rather than scientific facts,” Bourla said in an open letter to colleagues.

The White House remained a hot zone for infection. Meadows and other senior staffers eschewed masks and low-level staffers felt the office culture seemed to encourage ignoring public health guidelines. They sat through meeting after meeting where missives from Fauci and others were derided by Trump and his aides as preachy and liberal. At least “34 White House staffers and other contacts” had contracted the virus, noted an internal memo from FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, in October.

“Being Donald Trump,” McConnell told others, was enough for Trump to lose in November. “Trump’s personality was his biggest problem and from a personality point of view, Joe was the opposite of Trump.”

Milley instantly realized how valuable and important a channel he had. In a few minutes, he had been able to deescalate and avoid miscommunication that could lead to an incident or even a war between the U.S. and China.

In the months before the election, Trump systematically claimed the outcome would be rigged. If he didn’t win, the election would be stolen. It was his unless there was massive fraud.

In his own Republican National Convention speech on August 27, Trump declared, “the only way they can take this election away from us is if this is a rigged election.”

Fox News’s decision desk called Arizona for Biden shortly before 11:30 p.m., stunning Trump’s crowd. Trump pressed his family members and advisers to tell the network to pull the call back. Fox refused, enraging the president, who said Fox News was now in on the steal.

“This is a fraud on the American public,” he said. Trump’s tone was dismissive, indignant. “This is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election.” He added, “So we’ll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court.”

Morgan was silent. Any seasoned election lawyer knew some counties were infamous, decades-long late reporters of their results. Nothing new.

“Well, why don’t we just get up to the Supreme Court directly?” Trump wondered. “Like, why can’t we just go there right away?” There was a legal process to follow, the lawyers repeated.

Further evidence of just how little Trump understood how government, and the legal processes involved with the Rule of Law, work. The irony of the stupidity of this man juxtaposed against the office he occupied is eclipsed only by the tragic indicator of the brainwashed populace that voted him in.

Milley vividly recalled a statement that Trump had made to Breitbart News in March of 2019: “I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the bikers for Trump. I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad.” It seemed to be a warning. Milley thought of the military, the police, the FBI, the CIA and the other intelligence agencies as the power ministries. These power centers had often been the tools used by despots.

For Milley, the firing of Esper in the cauldron of the election upheaval was a turning point. The danger to the country was accelerating, a mindless march into more and more disorder.

“I know this is hard,” Hicks said. “It’s really hard. I don’t like to lose. Nobody likes to lose. But there is so much to be gained by moving forward.”

An appeal to sanity and rationale by a subordinate, one of many from many.

Jonathan Swan and Zachary Basu of Axios later established in May 2021 that John McEntee, the president’s former body man and a former college quarterback now running personnel, and retired Army Colonel Douglas Macgregor, a senior adviser to Miller, played roles in the drafting and signing of the memo.

The next day, Thursday, November 12, election security groups, including from the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the National Association of State Election Directors, released a joint statement that said, “The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history. “All of the states with close results in the 2020 presidential race have paper records of each vote, allowing the ability to go back and count each ballot if necessary. This is an added benefit for security and resilience. This process allows for the identification and correction of any mistakes or errors.” In bold it added, “There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.” Trump soon fired Department of Homeland Security’s cyber chief, Chris Krebs, by tweet.

Later that night, Pompeo called Milley and thanked him for arguing against a strike and emphasizing the downsides. “We’re all good,” Milley said, emphasizing the importance of calm and piling on the metaphors. “Just steady. Breathe through our noses. Steady as a rock. We’re going to land this plane safely. We’ve got a plane with four engines and three of them are out. We’ve got no landing gear. But we’re going to land this plane and we’re going to land it safely.”

On November 18, in an early morning call, Graham told him, “Mr. President, working with Biden helps you, drives the left crazy. “You’ve expanded the Republican Party,” Graham told him. “You got more minority votes. You’ve got a lot to be proud of, in terms of accomplishments. You’re going to be a force in American politics for a long time. And the best way to maintain that power is to wind this thing down in a fashion that gives you a second act, right?” Trump resisted the advice. Graham found him angry, disappointed and occasionally nostalgic.

Another attempt toward acceptance of the election, and reasonable respect for enabling a smooth TOP. This time by a hardcore GOP supporter in the Senate. Rejected by DJT. Again.

Rove had lengthy experience crusading against voter fraud. It just did not apply here. The machines were reliable and safe, he repeated to others as questions mounted.

“Et tu, Rove?”

Trump was losing everywhere. “Trump and the GOP have now lost more than 50 post-election lawsuits,” read the headline in Forbes on December 8, after the Supreme Court threw out an effort by his ally, Pennsylvania congressman Mike Kelly, to block the state from certifying the election for Biden. The high court’s rejection, from one of the court’s most conservative justices, Samuel Alito, was one sentence: “The application for injunctive relief presented to Justice Alito and by him referred to the Court is denied.”

“We’re the party of the working people. They’re now the elitists who tell us where to eat, how to eat, what to drink, what to think, what we can read, what’s news and not,” he said. “That doesn’t sell at the end of the day.”

Still, Quayle said, it is nonsense to say the election was stolen, and to even entertain the idea of blocking Biden in January.

Bannon told Trump to focus on January 6. That was the moment for a reckoning. “People are going to go, ‘What the fuck is going on here?’ ” Bannon believed. “We’re going to bury Biden on January 6th, fucking bury him.” If Republicans could cast enough of a shadow on Biden’s victory on January 6, Bannon said, it would be hard for Biden to govern. Millions of Americans would consider him illegitimate. They would ignore him. They would dismiss him and wait for Trump to run again. “We are going to kill it in the crib. Kill the Biden presidency in the crib,” he said.

One of Trump’s darker angels — Steve Bannon — weighs in.

“You’re losing in the courts,” Graham said. Trump’s lawyers had now lost nearly 60 challenges. By the end, about 90 judges, including Trump appointees, would end up ruling against Trump-backed challenges.

Holmes was stunned at the blatant discrepancies in Giuliani’s submission. As best he could tell, nearly all of the 789 dead people who allegedly voted in Georgia had properly received their ballots before they died. The sourcing was unclear. He could not figure out which government documents might have been used.

“Donald Trump fomented this, he revved them up,” Ryan angrily told several friends. “He sent them up there. He filled their heads with this. He chose to believe crackpot advisers. He could have listened to Pat Cipollone or Bill Barr but listens to Rudy Giuliani.”

Paul Ryan, former US Senator and Republican House Speaker, weighs in on the side of sanity and condemns Trump for influencing the J6 mob.

Trump did not seem to grasp the gravity of the situation. He never asked about McCarthy’s safety. And one remark stood out: “Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.”

“The focus needs to be making sure that we don’t let a lunatic back into the White House,” Smith said. “Two hundred years of history teaches us the president of the United States uses the military the way he wants. “Trump is mentally unstable,” he said. “He’s a narcissistic psychopath. The great fear was that he would use the Pentagon and the Department of Defense basically to stage a coup.”

Obst turned to a colleague and confided that this moment was a consequence of the “toxicity of power.” Can you imagine, Obst asked, if Trump had reacted to defeat with a touch of grace and then bowed out, with an eye on 2024? “The guy would have a complete stranglehold on the Republican Party,” Obst said. “It would be completely galvanized. And the vice president would be the first to say, ‘I’m out. How do I work for you for four years, to make sure you’re president again?’ ”

One hundred million vaccinations in 100 days and passing the rescue plan—those were his priorities.

Milley summarized and scribbled. “Big Threat: domestic terrorism.” Some were the new Brown Shirts, a U.S. version, Milley concluded, of the paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party that supported Hitler. It was a planned revolution. Steve Bannon’s vision coming to life. Bring it all down, blow it up, burn it, and emerge with power.

They all read it, and all said they would sign the letter. It went out January 12.

“Pain of preparation is much less than the pain of regret,” Milley said.

The future of American democracy depends on which party is the party of the working class, Sanders, 79, added in his raspy, Brooklyn accent. Democrats must have deep appeal to people on the margins, the strugglers. He believed the Democratic Party was increasingly too cozy with the elites, the educated class with power and connections.

As a group, they largely disdained Trump’s foreign policy process, dismissing it as incoherent, amateurish and unnecessarily isolationist.

“One, do we believe that our presence in Afghanistan is fundamentally contributing to a significantly higher likelihood of a durable, negotiated political settlement between the Afghan government and the Taliban? “Two, do we believe that the nature of the Al Qaeda and ISIS threat from Afghanistan is such that we have to keep thousands of troops on the ground there indefinitely? “Three, if we go beyond the May 1 deadline and say we’re just staying on an open-ended basis, what is the risk to the force and risk to the mission? And will I have to flow more forces back into Afghanistan?”

He also said he wanted them to examine, in depth, the humanitarian consequences for the civilian population of Afghanistan if U.S. troops were withdrawn.

Over the course of the two months of meetings and private discussions in the Sullivan review, the Pentagon eventually laid out two main options.

Biden could either execute an orderly withdrawal of all troops as quickly and safely as possible or he could approve an indefinite U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan.

Sullivan concluded that meant the question was not whether to stay or leave, but whether to add more troops or leave. That gave powerful argument to getting out because it was crystal clear that Biden was not going to add more troops. That was not even an option.

“January 6th was a disgrace,” and an act of “terrorism,” he said, fueled by people “fed wild falsehoods by the most powerful man on earth because he was angry he’d lost an election.”

“There is no question that President Trump is practically and morally responsible,” McConnell said. “It was also the entire manufactured atmosphere of looming catastrophe, the increasingly wild myths about a reverse landslide election that was being stolen in some secret coup by our now president.” Still, he said, “by the strict criminal standard, the president’s speech probably was not incitement.”

“Hatred of Trump knows no boundaries,” Graham once said. “It makes people do things not in their self-interest. Like Mitch. I’ve never seen a person who could affect others as much as Donald Trump. “I’ve seen it over and over. It’s just the most amazing thing in politics. Smart, rational people break when it comes to Trump,” he said. “He’s not trying to get them to break. There is no magic. He’s just being him. And he wears you down. He’ll get you to do things that are not good for you because you don’t like him.”

Graham also saw his engagement with Trump as a political necessity for the Republican Party. “I don’t see how we come back without him,” he said, “and I don’t see how we get there without him changing.”

Warner and the others were pushing for more, citing how the pandemic had changed Americans’ lives and made high-speed Internet access essential for health care, distance learning, and working from home. The Biden White House agreed to increase the total amount of broadband spending for fiscal year 2021 to $20 billion.

Steve Ricchetti and Warner had a little blow-out over this, and Ricchetti stuck to the $20 billion total for 2021. Warner and his allies ultimately agreed and secured an additional $17 billion in broadband spending. It was a major commitment, the largest federal broadband investment ever.

McConnell considered Graham the “Trump whisperer.” He was fine with Graham playing the role. But he did not buy into Graham’s strategy. McConnell said he saw Trump as a fading brand. Retired. “OTTB” as they say in Kentucky—“off-the-track Thoroughbred.”