(CNN) – It adds another show of evidence to the growing case that a second Donald Trump presidency would be more extreme and dangerous than the first.
In new examples of the threat posed by the former president, an explosive book of the legend of The Washington Post Bob Woodward and his fellow newspaper and co-author, Robert Costa, uncovered another vision of the frightening and rampant weeks within Trump’s inner circle around the Capitol uprising.
The problem Trump poses now is not an aberrant past presidency, it is the corrosive impact it could have in the future.
It’s not just his previous behavior that was shocking. Before California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom survived Tuesday’s early election, according to a CNN projection, the former president was opening a new front in his “Big Lie,” which now effectively claims that every time a Republican loses is the product of a massive fraud. It’s a hoax that could cloud the U.S. Democratic election in the coming years, but millions of Trump voters enthusiastically accept it. And the former president’s behavior over the weekend, using the 9/11 commemorations to beat his successor, President Joe Biden, seemed more like an attempt to launch himself back on the national stage in a time when the former commander-in-chief, who was kicked out of social media for inciting violence, could claim an easy focus.
As Trump jokes about another run in the White House, his behavior and new accounts of his savage last days in office are becoming too extravagant to be ignored, as he is already the banned favorite for the nomination. republican. Before that, he is the spearhead of the Republican Party’s attempt to resume the House in the midterm elections next year. The entry price for any party candidate is fidelity to the blatant lie sold to millions that Trump remains the legitimate president. And he is undoubtedly the dominant force in Republican politics, even if his increasingly radical conduct may make his appeal in a national election more dubious. At least in a free and fair election.
Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley, upstairs, watches as President Donald Trump signs the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2020 at Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland, December 2019. (AP Photo / Andrew Harnik)
The revelations in “Danger” by Woodward and Costa are among the most serious and alarming to date. If confirmed, they would not be just a case of a president tearing apart the structures of US democracy. U.S., as it did with the U.S. Capitol Uprising on Jan. 6, designed to disrupt Biden’s certification as the winner of the November election. But they would also represent a sign that the nation’s highest-ranking military officer believed Trump was a grave danger to the world in the feverish days when he tried to hold on to power.
The duo reported in the book, obtained by CNN’s Jamie Gangel, that Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley took steps to disrupt any orders Trump might give for military action because he thought the former president had deteriorated mentally after January 6th. If true, the new details raise serious doubts about the former president’s suitability for a second term with the nation’s nuclear football, which contains codes that could throw Armageddon at his side.
And Milley was not alone in her worries. Then-CIA chief Gina Haspel feared an out-of-control Trump would be on the way to a right-wing coup or could charge against Iran. And in another surprising measure, reporters say Milley also had indirect contact with her Chinese counterpart, who was alarmed that even Beijing was in Trump’s sights.
Milley in the middle of the storm
Milley has not commented publicly on these bombs. But he was at the center of a debate Tuesday night over whether he had acted as a justified precaution to restrict a derailed president.
There were some, Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, for example, who asked Biden to fire Milley, after claiming that the general had violated the almost sacred principle of civilian control of the armed forces in the United States. divert a possible presidential order.
But Woodward and Costa addressed Milley’s actions in the book’s prologue, according to the copy obtained by CNN. “Was he subverting president?” They wrote. “Some might argue that Milley had exceeded his authority and taken extraordinary power for himself. But his actions, he believed, were a good faith precaution to ensure that there was no historical break in the international order, no accidental war with China or others, and that no nuclear weapons be used. “
At the very least, the president of the Joint Chiefs of Staff will be pressured to explain his version of events in Congress.
The level of documentation in the new book, including a transcript of a call in which House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Milley agreed on the danger posed by the then president’s “crazy” behavior, suggests that there may be more to explain.
Earlier reports earlier this summer have indicated that Milley had informally planned different ways to stop Trump, including the cascading resignations of top national security leaders, because he was deeply concerned about the then president’s behavior after the November election. , even going so far as to speak out loud about his fears that Trump would attempt a coup.
On Tuesday night, Trump charged Milley and called for action against him.
“For the record, I never thought of attacking China, and China knows it,” Trump wrote in a statement. “The people who made history are sick and insane, and the people who print it are just as bad. In fact, I’m the only president in decades who didn’t put the United States in a war.”
Why Trump can’t be ignored
The book raises multiple alarming questions.
The fact that people behind the scenes were even more frightened than outsiders by Trump’s behavior after inciting the Capitol looting puts the national trauma of early January in an even more serious perspective.
In 2016, the idea that Trump was temperamentally inappropriate for the White House was a central argument of his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton, who warned that “a man who can be teased with a tweet is not a man to whom he we can rely on nuclear weapons “.
While Trump’s rhetoric was often worse than his actions, if warning that it could rain “fire and fury” on North Korea, for example, there is plenty of evidence that the United States and the world faced additional danger with him in office. This is confirmed by his two political trials for serious abuses of power and his apparent attempt to obstruct justice by firing then-FBI Director James Comey.
Some Trump opponents, Democrats and journalism consumers would like the media to stop talking about him because he is no longer in power. And there’s nothing Trump yearns for more than attention, let alone the glow of bad publicity. With three years to go before the next presidential election, and perhaps new evidence of Trump’s apparent inability to run for office offers some steel to Republican rivals who could face him in the presidential primary election. However, this seems a remote possibility, as any Republican official who has criticized Trump in recent years has been excluded from the party base.
But there can no longer be any doubt about the kind of presidency the United States would face from a Trump vindicated and unbridled in a new four-year term. And Republicans, especially in the House, who have effectively given their party to its kind of authoritarian conservatism, must also be held accountable for the kind of figure they are empowering and trying to come to power.
However, a new book involving Woodward is unlikely to do anything to weaken the former president’s support base. A CNN poll released this week found that 63% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents said they want Trump as their party leader. Six out of 10 say supporting Trump and believing he won in 2020 are an important part of what it means for them to be Republican.
If recent history is a guide, Republicans in positions of power will shrug their shoulders at new revelations. Conservative media will call them “fake news.” And the idea that a high-ranking member of the military establishment has tried to subvert Trump’s powers would only enrage those who believe a “deep state” always frustrated an innocent president.
There is a definite sense – confirmed by five years of scandals, crushing presidential rules and evidence of the political damage a president can do out of control – that what does not kill Trump’s political career strengthens him.