Peril

by Bob Woodward

Milley had witnessed up close how Trump was routinely impulsive and unpredictable. Making matters even more dire, Milley was certain Trump had gone into a serious mental decline in the aftermath of the election, with Trump now all but manic, screaming at officials and constructing his own alternate reality about endless election conspiracies.

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.

To the contrary, Milley believed January 6 was a planned, coordinated, synchronized attack on the very heart of American democracy, designed to overthrow the government to prevent the constitutional certification of

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

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.

Mattis once called Trump’s tendency to wander off during briefings “Seattle freeway off-ramps to nowhere,” where Fox News items were “more salient to him.”

Biden’s next words would stick forever with Klain: “This guy just isn’t really an American president.”

“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.”

And the other thing that’s different, and I think the thing that’s the main problem, is you think you’re a fucking genius, politically.

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

Less than a week after Floyd’s murder, Milley was walking through the report with Trump in the Oval Office. “Mr. President,” Miller said, piping up from one of the Oval Office couches, “they are burning America down. Antifa, Black Lives Matter, they’re burning it down. You have an insurrection on your hands. Barbarians are at the gate.”

“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. “That guy up there, Lincoln, had an insurrection.” Milley cited the militia bombardment of the U.S. Army’s Fort Sumter in 1861 that started the Civil War. “That was an insurrection,” Milley said.

Esper explained to Trump the 82nd was trained to take the fight to the enemy with the biggest, most modern weapons. They were not trained in crowd control and civil unrest. They were exactly the wrong troops for the job.

Walking with Trump when he was on a political mission, even for a split second, was utterly wrong. This is my Road to Damascus moment, Milley thought, feeling as if he was looking into a personal abyss.

It was a reminder to the military of their duty, and a recentering for himself, one day after the chaos alongside Trump in Lafayette Square. Near his signature, Milley scrawled out an additional message in longhand: “We all committed our lives to the idea that is America—we will stay true to that oath and the American people.”