Bob Woodward and Robert Costa’s new book, in describing the end of Trump’s presidency, offers a modern tale of the definition of insanity.
ark Esper, Trump’s second secretary of defense, is not a naïve person. Neither is Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Which makes it all the more surprising how easily Trump could break them for something as trivial as a photo op.
After attempting to de-escalate Trump’s anger over the Black Lives Matter protests that roiled the nation in the spring of 2020, Milley and Esper found themselves desperate to contain Trump’s eagerness to invoke the Insurrection Act and deploy federal troops against the protesters.
In late May 2020, as protests arose after the killing of George Floyd, Trump pressed to have the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division sent in to quell the protests—apparently having in mind the way that President Lyndon Johnson had ordered the 82nd into Detroit in 1967 and into Washington in 1968. Trump adviser Stephen Miller repeatedly urged him to take drastic measures: “Barbarians are at the gates,” Miller apparently said in the Oval Office. “They are burning America down.”
“Shut the fuck up, Steve,” Milley reportedly replied, explaining that the Black Lives Matter protests were not comparable to the 1960s riots, nor to other times the Insurrection Act was invoked.
But Trump remained fixated on the idea of military action. On June 1, he asked about using the 82nd to clear Lafayette Square. According to Woodward and Costa, “The president was getting increasingly contentious, and Esper worried that if he didn’t put something on the table, Trump might formally order him to bring the 82nd to D.C.”
y the end of November 2020, then-Attorney General Bill Barr had had enough of Trump’s conspiracy theories about election rigging, despite the fact he planted some of the seeds for them himself.
On December 1, Barr asked an Associated Press reporter to lunch where he fed him the line he wanted to see printed widely. “To date,” Barr said, “we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome of the election.”
This, of course, made Trump livid. Trump called Barr in for a meeting, and, according to Woodward and Costa, Barr told him, “Every self-respecting lawyer in this country has run for the hills. Your team is a bunch of clowns. They are unconscionable in the firmness and detail they present as if it’s unquestionable fact. It is not.”
One of the people whom Barr quietly reached out to for help post-election was Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Too bad for Barr, McConnell wasn’t about to go out on any kind of limb against Trump.
ke Pence knows, maybe more than anyone, how dangerous Trump is. The president’s fans chanted “Hang Mike Pence!” through the halls of Congress as some of them engaged in hand-to-hand combat with law enforcement, smashing glass windows to reach him. For weeks, Pence agonized over his role that day, seeking counsel from others about performing his duties to count Electoral College votes and while also satisfying Trump’s calls to block Biden’s victory.
“Mike, don’t even talk about it,” former Vice President Dan Quayle and fellow Hoosier told Pence.
“You don’t know the position I”m in,” Pence said.