Peril

by Bob Woodward

China was also aggressively staging war games and sending military planes daily toward the island of Taiwan, the independent offshore nation that China considered theirs and the U.S. had pledged to protect. The previous year, General Li had announced that China would “resolutely smash” Taiwan if necessary. Taiwan alone was a powder keg.

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 a legitimate election won by Joe Biden. It was indeed a coup attempt and nothing less than “treason,” he said,

“It was awful. I was awful,” Hunter recounted, and the evening “devolved from there into a charged, agonized debacle,” with Joe Biden chasing Hunter down the driveway as he tried to leave, grabbing his son and hugging him tightly, crying. One daughter grabbed his car keys.

Members of Biden’s family were surprised and indignant. Senator Harris, the former California attorney general, had been close with Beau when he was Delaware’s AG. How could she?

If a vaccine could be created, equitable distribution would be essential, Biden said.

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.

Barr, who also attended the meeting, understood Milley’s frustration with Miller. He had also once told Miller to shut the fuck up.

“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.”

“Do you know why Tillerson was able to say he didn’t call the president a ‘moron’?” McConnell would dryly ask colleagues in his Kentucky drawl. “Because he called him a ‘fucking moron.’ ”

“We need you to join ARMY FOR TRUMP’s election security operation!” read one official Trump campaign post at the end of September, with Donald Trump Jr. imploring “every able-bodied man, woman” to enlist in the president’s “security” effort. “Don’t let them steal it,” Trump Jr. said. “Enlist today.”

Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and others get elected president and be aggressive, only to be rebuked by voters in the midterm elections.

Whaaa???? Those dem presidents were moderate and restrained by negotiating with republican terrorists

“The old Joe will only come back when he has to, and that will depend upon whether or not he can succeed in running the table with Democrats only,” McConnell said. “If he can’t, then we’ll be back in the game.”

Compromise manchin

Rove said, “the question is going to be, are there people whose lives depend upon division and dissension and disruption in the party, who fight for the sake of fighting? Who say, ‘You know what, you can’t disagree with me unless—if you’re not with me, you’re a zero and I’m going to punish you.’ And I think that’s very problematic.

Politics was ruthlessly partisan, McConnell believed. Bipartisanship was fine—if it was the only way to achieve something concrete that he could not get any other way, and without giving up too much in a deal with the Democrats.

Portman had told Ricchetti, “Take the microphone and say, ‘You know what? We sent this package up there. It’s our campaign agenda. We believe in it. But we’re all going to take a deep breath and we’re going to stop.’ ” He said Biden could easily start over and do something bipartisan and smaller. Unite the country. Ricchetti was polite but they were speaking different languages.

“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.”

so cynical. fdr saved america

“As a kid, I read a lot about the Holocaust and Germany in the 1930s,” Sanders later told others. “Germany was one of the most cultured countries in Europe. One of the most advanced countries. So how could a country of Beethoven, of so many great poets and writers, and Einstein, progress to barbarianism?

She saw this was an unexpected chance to have a Susan to Joe, Joe to Susan talk. She and the group of nine other Republicans had increased their proposal by $32 billion, going from $618 billion to $650 billion. The new money would be used to increase the total amount going toward stimulus checks, with a targeted group of Americans now getting $1,400 checks. She and other Republicans believed that was a significant jump. That used to be real money.

Pence grew nostalgic as he recalled his House days a decade earlier. He told them that when he was in the House in 2009, not one Republican voted for President Obama’s stimulus package—and he said conservatives should try to oppose Biden’s rescue plan in the same way this time around. Not one vote. It was an opportunity to unite the party on something. “This is a defining moment for us, for Republicans,” Pence said. “Obama left us out of the negotiations and if they didn’t have us at the table, we said we’re not going to be part of the bill. “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.

Biden called Joe Manchin around 1 p.m. Manchin was in his hideaway with his chief of staff Lance West. “Joe,” Biden said, “you wanted the unemployment smaller. We did that. You wanted certain dates” for the supplemental unemployment benefit. “We addressed that. You wanted checks targeted. We did that. You know, this is basically it. You need to come along.” Manchin corrected Biden. He said additional unemployment checks, though smaller, went for a longer time into the fall. People would be paid for not working for an extended period. And then he voiced frustration about this new $10,200 tax credit, which he had just learned about. Someone who was not working was going to get an additional tax break, while someone who worked would not get it. “Joe,” Biden said, “if you don’t come along, you’re really fucking me. I need you on this. Find your way to yes on this.” “I don’t know, I promised Rob Portman,” Manchin said. He said he was talking to economists. They were telling him the economy would take off like a rocket. Mr. President, we need people ready to go back to work no later than July. Mr. President, you have said that we will have vaccines available to all citizens in our country who want it by May. I can’t lose this bill, Biden said. His voice was insistent, flecked with irritation. You’re going to make me lose my bill, Biden said. “You have to trust me,” Manchin said. “You will not.” He said his intention was not to kill the bill, only to get some parts removed. He wa...

selfish

“You know what, Joe?” Stabenow asked. “Any one of us could do this. We have 50 people here. And do you think everything in this bill is perfect for me?” Manchin was listening. “The reality is, you’ve got a whole bunch of colleagues right down the hall who are pretty upset with you,” she said. “Do you realize that?” “I know, I know, I know, Deb,” Manchin said. “But you don’t understand. I represent West Virginia.” “Well, I represent Michigan. We’ve got a whole lot of people that kind of feel like, you know what? We’re not a caucus of one. We’re a caucus of 50. And we have to find a way to come together here, even if something is not perfect for our own state. Because you know what? This isn’t a bill just for West Virginia. This is not a bill for Michigan.” Manchin started to talk about unemployment. With vaccines being rapidly distributed, he said he wanted to see people go back to work rather than choose to take their unemployment benefits and stay home. He was worried about businesses that could not find people to work. “You know,” she said, “you’ve been governor. Nothing’s perfect. You try to get it to be good. “You’re being selfish.”

“Democracy is on fire and the Senate is fiddling!” he said to his aides as the Democrats struggled. “The head of the orchestra is a man named McConnell.”

In a 2015 interview, Russian president Vladimir Putin was asked if his 16 years in the KGB influenced him. Putin’s memorable answer: “Not a single stage of our life passes without a trace.”

Biden recalled visiting Afghanistan while he was vice president-elect. He met with then–U.S. commander David McKiernan, who said they had not seen Al Qaeda in 18 months. Biden said he then asked Secretary of Defense Gates, “Let me ask you a simple question. If there were no Al Qaeda, would we be spending 100 plus billion dollars sending tens of thousands of men and women to Afghanistan? The response was ‘yes.’ That was a crystallizing moment.”

The problem, Graham said, was, “Radical Islam cannot be accommodated. It cannot be appeased. The Taliban is a radical Islamic movement, inconsistent with any of the values that we hold near and dear. That is oppressive to women, completely intolerant of religious diversity, and would take Afghanistan back to the 11th century if they could. All I can say is that a movement like this eventually will come back to haunt us.

They had met a decade earlier, in 2011, when Biden was vice president and Putin was temporarily serving as prime minister. Biden later told The New Yorker that during that meeting, he said, “Mr. Prime Minister, I’m looking into your eyes and I don’t think you have a soul.” Putin smiled and told Biden, through an interpreter, “We understand one another.”

Had January 6 been a dress rehearsal? Milley told senior staff, “What you might have seen was a precursor to something far worse down the road.” Milley knew that history moves slowly but then often without warning lurches suddenly forward so it seemed impossible to stop. Whether the country was witnessing the end of Trump or the beginning of the next phase of Trump would only be known in retrospect.