'They're not going to f**king succeed': Top generals feared Trump would attempt a coup after election, according to new book https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/14/politics/donald-trump-election-coup-new-book-excerpt/index.html The top US military officer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley, was so shaken that then-President Donald Trump and his allies might attempt a coup or take other dangerous or illegal measures after the November election that Milley and other top officials informally planned for different ways to stop Trump, according to excerpts of an upcoming book obtained by CNN. The book, from Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker, describes how Milley and the other Joint Chiefs discussed a plan to resign, one-by-one, rather than carry out orders from Trump that they considered to be illegal, dangerous or ill-advised. "It was a kind of Saturday Night Massacre in reverse," Leonnig and Rucker write. The book, "I Alone Can Fix It," scheduled to be released next Tuesday, chronicles Trump's final year as president, with a behind-the-scenes look at how senior administration officials and Trump's inner circle navigated his increasingly unhinged behavior after losing the 2020 election. The authors interviewed Trump for more than two hours. The book recounts how for the first time in modern US history the nation's top military officer, whose role is to advise the president, was preparing for a showdown with the commander in chief because he feared a coup attempt after Trump lost the November election. The authors explain Milley's growing concerns that personnel moves that put Trump acolytes in positions of power at the Pentagon after the November 2020 election, including the firing of Defense Secretary Mark Esper and the resignation of Attorney General William Barr, were the sign of something sinister to come. Milley spoke to friends, lawmakers and colleagues about the threat of a coup, and the Joint Chiefs chairman felt he had to be "on guard" for what might come. "They may try, but they're not going to f**king succeed," Milley told his deputies, according to the authors. "You can't do this without the military. You can't do this without the CIA and the FBI. We're the guys with the guns." In the days leading up to January 6, Leonnig and Rucker write, Milley was worried about Trump's call to action. "Milley told his staff that he believed Trump was stoking unrest, possibly in hopes of an excuse to invoke the Insurrection Act and call out the military." Milley viewed Trump as "the classic authoritarian leader with nothing to lose," the authors write, and he saw parallels between Adolf Hitler's rhetoric as a victim and savior and Trump's false claims of election fraud. "This is a Reichstag moment," Milley told aides, according to the book. "The gospel of the Führer." Ahead of a November pro-Trump "Million MAGA March" to protest the election results, Milley told aides he feared it "could be the modern American equivalent of 'brownshirts in the streets,'" referring to the pro-Nazi militia that fueled Hitler's rise to power. Milley will not publicly address the issues raised in the book, a defense official close to the general told CNN. The official did not dispute that Milley engaged in activities and communications that are not part of the traditional portfolio of a chairman in the final days of Trump's presidency. "He's not going to sit in silence while people try to use the military against Americans," the official said. So while Milley "tried his hardest to actively stay out of politics," if the events that occurred brought him into that arena temporarily, "so be it," the official said. The official added that the general was not calling Trump a Nazi but felt he had no choice but to respond given his concerns that the rhetoric used by the President and his supporters could lead to such an environment. 'This is all real, man' Rucker and Leonnig interviewed more than 140 sources for the book, though most were given anonymity to speak candidly to reconstruct events and dialogue. Milley is quoted extensively and comes off in a positive light as someone who tried to keep democracy alive because he believed it was on the brink of collapse after receiving a warning one week after the election from an old friend. "What they are trying to do here is overturn the government," said the friend, who is not named, according to the authors. "This is all real, man. You are one of the few guys who are standing between us and some really bad stuff." Milley's reputation took a major hit in June 2020, when he joined Trump during his controversial photo-op at St. John's Church, after federal forces violently dispersed a peaceful crowd of social justice protesters at Lafayette Square outside the White House. To make matters worse, Milley wore camouflage military fatigues throughout the incident. He later apologized, saying, "I should not have been there." But behind the scenes, the book says Milley was on the frontlines of trying to protect the country, including an episode where he tried to stop Trump from firing FBI Director Chris Wray and CIA Director Gina Haspel. Leonnig and Rucker recount a scene when Milley was with Trump and his top aides in a suite at the Army-Navy football game in December, and publicly confronted White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. "What's going on? Are you guys getting rid of Wray or Gina?" Milley asked. "Come on chief. What the hell is going on here? What are you guys doing?" "Don't worry about it," Meadows said. "Just some personnel moves." "Just be careful," Milley responded, which Leonnig and Rucker write was said as a warning that he was watching. 'That doesn't make any sense' The book also sheds new light on Trump's descent into a dark and isolated vacuum of conspiracy theories and self-serving delusions after he was declared the loser of the 2020 election. After the January 6 insurrection, the book says Milley held a conference call each day with Meadows and then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Leonnig and Rucker report the officials used the calls to compare notes and "collectively survey the horizon for trouble." "The general theme of these calls was, come hell or high water, there will be a peaceful transfer of power on January twentieth," one senior official told the authors. "We've got an aircraft, our landing gear is stuck, we've got one engine, and we're out of fuel. We've got to land this bad boy." Milley told aides he saw the calls as an opportunity to keep tabs on Trump, the authors write. Leonnig and Rucker also recount a scene where Pompeo visited Milley at home in the weeks before the election, and the two had a heart-to-heart conversation sitting at the general's table. Pompeo is quoted as saying, "You know the crazies are taking over," according to people familiar with the conversation. The authors write that Pompeo, through a person close to him, denied making the comments attributed to him and said they were not reflective of his views. In recent weeks Trump has attacked Milley, who is still the Joint Chiefs chairman in the Biden administration, after he testified to Congress about January 6. 'You f**king did this' The book also contains several striking anecdotes about prominent women during the Trump presidency, including GOP Rep. Liz Cheney, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and former first lady Michelle Obama. The book details a phone call the day after the January 6 insurrection between Milley and Cheney, the Wyoming Republican who has close military ties. Cheney voted to impeach Trump and has been an outspoken critic of his election lies, leading to her ouster from House GOP leadership. Milley asked Cheney how she was doing. "That f**king guy Jim Jordan. That son of a b*tch," Cheney said, according to the book. Cheney bluntly relayed to Milley what she experienced on the House floor on January 6 while pro-Trump rioters overran police and breached the Capitol building, including a run-in with Jordan, a staunch Trump ally in the House who feverishly tried to overturn the election. Cheney described to Milley her exchange with Jordan: "While these maniacs are going through the place, I'm standing in the aisle and he said, 'We need to get the ladies away from the aisle. Let me help you.' I smacked his hand away and told him, 'Get away from me. You f**king did this.'" 'Crazy,' 'dangerous,' 'maniac' The book reveals Pelosi's private conversations with Milley during this tenuous period. When Trump fired Esper in November, Pelosi was one of several lawmakers who called Milley. "We are all trusting you," she said. "Remember your oath." After the January 6 insurrection, Pelosi told the general she was deeply concerned that a "crazy," "dangerous" and "maniac" Trump might use nuclear weapons during his final days in office. "Ma'am, I guarantee you these processes are very good," Milley reassured her. "There's not going to be an accidental firing of nuclear weapons." "How can you guarantee me?" Pelosi asked. "Ma'am, there's a process," he said. "We will only follow legal orders. We'll only do things that are legal, ethical, and moral." A week after the insurrection, Pelosi led House Democrats' second impeachment of Trump for inciting the insurrection. In an interview with the authors, Pelosi said she fears another president could try to pick up where Trump left off. "We might get somebody of his ilk who's sane, and that would really be dangerous, because it could be somebody who's smart, who's strategic, and the rest," Pelosi said. "This is a slob. He doesn't believe in science. He doesn't believe in governance. He's a snake-oil salesman. And he's shrewd. Give him credit for his shrewdness." 'That b*tch' The book quotes Trump, who had a strained relationship with Merkel, as telling his advisers during an Oval Office meeting about NATO and the US relationship with Germany, "That b*tch Merkel." "'I know the f**king krauts,' the president added, using a derogatory term for German soldiers from World War I and World War II," Leonnig and Rucker write. "Trump then pointed to a framed photograph of his father, Fred Trump, displayed on the table behind the Resolute Desk and said, 'I was raised by the biggest kraut of them all.'" Trump, through a spokesman, denied to the authors making these comments. 'No one has a bigger smile' After January 6, Milley participated in a drill with military and law enforcement leaders to prepare for the January 20 inauguration of President Joe Biden. Washington was on lockdown over fears that far-right groups like the Proud Boys might try to violently disrupt the transfer of power. Milley told a group of senior leaders, "Here's the deal, guys: These guys are Nazis, they're boogaloo boys, they're Proud Boys. These are the same people we fought in World War II. We're going to put a ring of steel around this city and the Nazis aren't getting in." Trump did not attend the inauguration, in a notable break with tradition, and the event went off without incident. As the inauguration ceremony ended, Kamala Harris, who had just been sworn in as vice president, paused to thank Milley. "We all know what you and some others did," she said, according to the authors. "Thank you." The book ends with Milley describing his relief that there had not been a coup, thinking to himself, "Thank God Almighty, we landed the ship safely." Milley expressed his relief in the moments after Biden was sworn in, speaking to the Obamas sitting on the inauguration stage. Michelle Obama asked Milley how he was feeling. "No one has a bigger smile today than I do," Milley said, according to Leonnig and Rucker. "You can't see it under my mask, but I do."
Trump rages over post-presidential books he did interviews for https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/15/trump-post-presidential-books-499741 The avalanche of coming books has caused recriminations. And there is anxiety about what’s to come. He knew it was coming. But former President Donald Trump still was not pleased. He had read a new book excerpt—one of many about his presidency in the last few weeks—that described him telling his former chief of staff John Kelly that Hitler, for all his horrors, “did a lot of good things.” The account came from Michael Bender’s work, “Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost.” And for weeks, the former president had anxiously anticipated it surfacing. When Bender first approached him about it in the spring, Trump, through a spokesperson, told the Wall Street Journal reporter the anecdote was “defamatory.” Bender said he interpreted it as a legal threat; but like many such threats from Trump, nothing came of it. Now it was in print. Reading the line for the first time, Trump denied it before engaging in speculation about the story’s origins. “But that doesn’t mean John Kelly didn’t tell Mike Bender that,” he said, according to an adviser. “That doesn’t mean other people didn’t say it.” The guessing game that Bender’s book sparked added to the schisms and points of tensions that have erupted in Trump’s orbit in recent weeks. As the deluge of Trump-related books has hit the shelves, the already tenuous alliances that bind aides and associates of the former president have been strained further. Ex-aides have publicly attacked one-time allies while others have sought distance from a presidency they once dutifully served. Fear is mounting, too, about the tea-spilling to come. In particular, Trump officials are anxiously awaiting the books set to be published by actual colleagues, chief among them counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway and Jared Kushner, who plan to write their own accounts of the Trump presidency. “I think it’s fraught right now as to who is telling the truth,” said a Trump adviser. “They’re all trying to go back in time and curate their own images.” Privately, former administration officials and top campaign aides have shared concerns about Conway’s upcoming tell-all in particular. The ex-president’s loyal former counselor is expected to give a hold-no-punches account of her time in the White House and those she worked alongside. Conway herself sat down with Trump for her book at Mar-a-Lago. Every end to a presidency leads to a sprint by the reporters who covered it to tell the definitive history in the form of a retrospective book. But the rush of work related to Trump seems like an avalanche compared to past administrations. In the past four years, there have been more than a thousand unique titles about Trump, according to an analysis shared with The New York Times by NPD BookScan in August 2020. But the most high-profile White House reporters are expected to release their own offerings in the coming year. Already, books about Trump released this week have soared to the top of bestseller lists. The sheer saturation has forced the authors to release a steady stream of scooplets from their books in advance of publication. And though the Trump White House was known, in real time, for its leaks, the post-mortems have exposed infighting that was previously unknown. “I know that there are still a lot of major excerpts that will come out in the future,” said a former senior administration official who participated in multiple book interviews. “The most interesting thing to me is how much the big scoops actually hold until publication.” Eager to put his own positive spin on the books, Trump agreed to sit down with a parade of reporters at Mar-a-Lago. That included interviews with Bender, author Michael Wolff, ABC News’ Jonathan Karl, Pulitzer Prize winning Washington Post journalists Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker, The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman, and Jeremy Peters, among others. According to an adviser, Trump, who is sensitive to how history will remember him, “said that I think if you can improve the book 3, 5, 10 percent [by participating], that matters.” But the publications have, instead, further muddied his reemergence on the political scene. After months of keeping a relatively low profile, the former president has hit the trail and done news interviews with friendly outlets in which he not only continued to falsely claim the election was stolen from him, but praised the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol at his encouragement on Jan. 6. Those who know Trump suspect that he is content to be at the center of conversation, no matter how unflattering the conversation may be, under the mantra that all press is good press. “He thinks that, ‘Oh, they’re talking about me, me, me,’” said an adviser. And yet, if Trump is happy with the new books about him, he hasn’t always shown it. In a statement released last week, the former president said sitting down with the authors was a “total waste of time” and insisted that “so many” of the stories were “pure fiction.” He’s not the only one who has been displeased with the final product. Wolff’s book, “Landslide: The Final Days of the Trump Presidency,” set off fireworks after it revealed that Republican National Committee chief counsel Justin Riemer said Rudy Giuliani and Trump’s former campaign attorney Jenna Ellis election fraud arguments were a “joke.” Since then, Ellis has demanded that RNC chair Ronna McDaniel resign and declared she is quitting the Republican Party for not doing enough to support Trump’s attempts to overturn the election results. “It’s not surprising that some Republicans are too spineless to stand for the truth,” Ellis told POLITICO. “I don’t care what they think. Anyone siding with Ronna is simply outing themselves as the self-serving politicians that have continued to undermine Trump and America for years.” People close to Trump dismissed Ellis’ proclamations as a transparent attempt to stay relevant post-election. And through a spokesperson, both the RNC and Reimer defended their work on election integrity. “I will say publicly now what I then said privately: I take issue with individuals who brought lawsuits that did not serve President Trump well and did not give him the best chance in court,” Reimer said. Trump himself, meanwhile, released a flurry of attacks on his former Attorney General William Barr after the publication of a portion of Karl’s book in the Atlantic. In the excerpt, Barr is quoted as saying he did not believe Trump’s claims of widespread election fraud and felt it was his duty to share his views publicly. “If there was evidence of fraud, I had no motive to suppress it,” Barr told Karl. “But my suspicion all the way along was that there was nothing there. It was all bullshit.” More recently, Trump publicly bristled at another excerpt from Bender’s book, in which it was reported that he and former Vice President Mike Pence got into a heated argument over the hiring of political adviser Corey Lewandowski. Bender stood by his reporting, which he said came from multiple sources. As the excerpts and subsequent recriminations have piled up, people in Trump’s inner circle have criticized Trump’s decision to cooperate with the book authors. Some recalled Trump giving access to Wolff and veteran reporter Bob Woodward during his time as president, only to then erupt over the material that they ended up publishing. “I understand the rationale, but it was a strategic mistake to sit down with these folks — you’re giving them credibility. It’s hard to say, ‘I sat down with them and they got it wrong.’ So they’ve created a sense of credibility that makes it harder to critique,” said Sean Spicer, Trump’s former press secretary turned Newsmax host. Perhaps sensing that it was a mistake to give certain authors content, Trump has, in recent days, taken to promoting the work of MAGA allies. On Wednesday, he issued two glowing reviews about books by friends Mark Levin and Jesse Watters. The Watters one was so glowing that it led to speculation about who wrote the review, only for internet sleuths to point out the book’s own publisher actually wrote the review. Trump had ripped it straight from the promotional web page.
I lost respect for Milley when we walked together to St.John's Church, side by side, and the following day Milley choked like a dog in front of the Fake News. 'Dumbest confession ever': Trump mocked for denying 'coup' attempt by saying he'd never do one with Milley Former president Donald Trump on Thursday issued a statement denying a bombshell report that top military officer Mark Milley feared he would attempt a Nazi-style coup. "Despite massive Voter Fraud and Irregularities during the 2020 Presidential Election Scam, that we are now seeing play out in very big and important States, I never threatened, or spoke about, to anyone, a coup of our Government. So ridiculous!" Trump wrote in the statement. "Sorry to inform you but an Election is my form of 'coup,' and if I was going to do a coup, one of the last people I would want to do it with is General Mark Milley." Trump went on to claim that he only hired Milley because former Defense Secretary James Mattis "could not stand him" and because President Barack Obama had fired him. "I often act counter to people's advice who I don't respect," Trump wrote. "In any event, I lost respect for Milley when we walked together to St. John's Church (which was still smoldering from a Radical Left fire set the day before), side by side, a walk that has now been proven to be totally appropriate — and the following day Milley choked like a dog in front of the Fake News when they told him they thought he should not have been walking with the President, which turned out to be incorrect. He apologized profusely, making it a big story, instead of saying I am proud to walk with and protect the President of the United States. Had he said that, it would have been all over, no big deal, but I saw at that moment he had no courage or skill, certainly not the type of person I would be talking 'coup' with. I'm not into coups!"
Trump is too busy to listen to himself talk. Those TV shows aren't going to watch themselves, you know.
Every day there is some dumb headline excerpt from this so called idiot book to make Liberal Dumbocrap saps happy about their existence. I guess it works for them. LOL
That the entire military brass was aligned to take on Trump if he stepped out of line, which Trump was looking to do if he had more encouragement? That's a dumb headline? Or are you just a dumb reader of headlines?
Prove that Trump was going to step out of line. This book is full of bullshit. And you believe every word of that book? What does that make you? A stupid ass?
It is all he talked and complained about, you moron. Demanding his henchmen to have the “courage” to do the “right thing.” We’re you in a coma or perhaps in space at the time?
You know nothing about what Trump did or didn't do. All you believe is from what you read in books. How stupid of you.