Peril

by Bob Woodward

Whatever happened, Milley was overseeing the mobilization of America’s national security state without the knowledge of the American people or the rest of the world.

Biden had never seen anything like Trump’s response, maybe in his lifetime. The president of the United States had given moral equivalency to those who stand against hate and the haters—safe

Jill and Joe Biden had been married since 1977. He had spotted her, then a teacher and part-time model in the Philadelphia area, on an advertising billboard at the airport and sought out her phone number.

Biden spent two hours with the men. It was as honest a human encounter that Richmond had ever seen from a politician.

He saw Trump as America’s Benito Mussolini in waiting. Clyburn wondered if Trump would leave the White House if he lost reelection.

Outside of the intense echo chamber on Twitter, Donilon said, “there’s a fundamental fear” at the crux of this presidential race.

“You know,” Pelosi added, “these young people now, they have a smaller attention span. So, we all have to be briefer in how we speak.”

Pottinger said his excellent sources in China believed the U.S. could suffer hundreds of thousands of deaths from the virus.

It was unseemly for the president of the United States to be part of a legal crusade to take away health insurance from 20 million Americans.

But the strategy of letting Trump run against himself seemed to be working. Biden’s lead widened to double digits as the president continued to mismanage the pandemic.

Woodward asked, was there a moment where you said to yourself, this is the leadership test of a lifetime? “No,” Trump said.

If there were ever a modern-day Rasputin, Joint Chiefs chairman Milley had concluded it was Miller.

Milley then carefully broached the issue of systemic racism and policing with Trump. “That’s pent up in communities that have been experiencing what they perceive to be police brutality,” he said. Trump didn’t say anything.

They were traitors at the time, they are traitors today, and they’re traitors in death for all of eternity.

“Yesterday was appalling,” Haspel told Milley. “We are on the way to a right-wing coup. The whole thing is insanity.

“Yeah,” Trump told advisers, speaking about Giuliani, “he’s crazy. He says crazy shit. I get it. But none of the sane lawyers can represent me because they’ve been pressured. The actual lawyers have been told they cannot represent my campaign.”

I would imagine it would be in the first part of the Biden administration, hopefully maybe in the first six months.” Trump shouted, “First part of the Biden administration!” Oh, shit, Barr thought.

Astonishingly, at an early December rally with Sidney Powell, he told Georgia Republicans to stay home. “They have not earned your vote,” Wood said of the two GOP senators. “Don’t you give it to them. Why would you go back and vote in another rigged election for God’s sake?

lowlifes and creeps like Lev Parnas,” the Ukrainian-born American businessman involved in various efforts to assist Trump. “Sitting around with their shirts open and gold hanging out in the Trump Hotel,” Barr summarized.

These things are like forest fires, Klain told Biden, and even if only five embers remain, the trees will burn down again. You have got to ride this all the way to the bottom.

The early shortages—of masks, protective equipment for health workers, ventilators—had certainly been a factor in the virulent spread of the airborne virus in the first months of the pandemic.

The two spent weeks trying to understand how Trump planned to actually get shots in arms, but cooperation and information from the Trump administration had been spotty and insufficient. Worse, the Trump team did not seem to have a comprehensive vaccine distribution plan.

The Trump administration had encouraged and helped develop the vaccine, a remarkable achievement in record time, but intended to drop-ship the vials to the states and let each state come up with a distribution plan.

There was no out. Pence would now be forced to emcee his own defeat, and Trump’s, on national television, as rivals and allies pounded lecterns.

The possibility of alternate or dueling slates would be national news. Yet there had been no such news.

much of the latest data could be traced to investigative work done by Christina Bobb of the One America News Network,

Holmes knew that citizenship checks were not required or even permitted in federal elections.

“I think the reason you fell short in Arizona is you started beating on a dead guy,” Graham said.

Raucous cheering and blasting bullhorns could be heard through the Oval Office windows. “If these people say you had the power, wouldn’t you want to?” Trump asked. “I wouldn’t want any one person to have that authority,” Pence said. “But wouldn’t it almost be cool to have that power?” Trump asked.

tensions flared. Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, a Democrat, at one point told Lindsey Graham to shut up.

even with the carnage and push from some colleagues to stand down, Hawley decided he would keep his objection to both Arizona and Pennsylvania. He would remain in lockstep with Trump.

Several passengers also mentioned “6MWE.” Smith did not know what they were talking about. He was horrified to learn, listening as some passengers explained and discussed openly that it meant “6 million weren’t enough,”

“You should move to Idaho,” suggested one woman. “I just don’t think they have decent seafood in Idaho,” the young man replied. Smith thought that this young man wanted a fascist takeover of the United States, but at the end of the day, if he couldn’t get decent sushi, it just might not be worth it.

But Trump was still arguing that the election was stolen. Cooperation on the transition was spotty at best, even obstructionist.

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.

During the ride, Trump turned to Obama. “What was your biggest mistake?” Trump asked. Obama paused and glanced at Trump. “I can’t think of anything,” he said.

the president had given us two hours! He listened carefully to us. It was an excellent, productive meeting from my perspective.”

“They all want to be the next FDR,” McConnell said, referring to a long line of Democratic presidents. “They know they can’t have three terms, but they’re hoping there will be a monument.”

Collins was always explaining why Biden was wrong, in a nice way. They gave her credit for her consistency.

He had wanted out, ever since 2009 when he believed the military and then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had boxed in and overwhelmed President Obama in his first year. They insisted that Obama add tens of thousands of U.S. troops to the Afghanistan mission. Their resistance to any other option was so great, and often public, that Obama, who had little foreign policy or military experience, almost had no other choice.

Biden could be prickly and impatient. One top adviser found him almost impossible to work with, as Biden pressed for more detail and intelligence estimates. Others thought the review was a textbook example of how foreign policy decisions should be made.

“The party needs to reclaim our mantle on spending,” Pence told them. There were “complications” to this message, Pence added. But he did not explicitly acknowledge the hypocrisy. Republicans under Trump had spent trillions and all but abandoned fiscal conservatism. U.S. debt had surged. But returning to finger-wagging of years past was an easy play.

Klain recalled that they all thought that life in the Obama White House had been hard with 58 Democratic senators. He fantasized that if Biden had 58 Democrats, as chief of staff Klain would only have to work three days a week.

The United States was 32nd in the world on genomic sequencing, the testing method used to detect new variants.

Biden demanded that Putin crack down on the Russian-based criminals involved in the corrupt and malicious attacks. “If you can’t or won’t, I will,” Biden said. “I just want to be clear about that so there’s no ambiguity.”

Graham had been in the House for eight years before moving to the Senate in 2003 and knew them well. “You’ve got the Republican Study Groups. You’ve got the moderates. The House is just a constant shit show.”

One night, Biden wandered into a room where a huge video screen covered the wall. To relax, Trump used to upload programs to virtually play the world’s most famous golf courses. “What a fucking asshole,” Biden once said as he surveyed the former president’s golf toys.