'The most shocking events during Trump’s last days in office didn’t happen in closed-door meetings or private conversations — they were broadcast live on cable television,' writes bencjacobs
The ex-president. Photo: Andy Jacobsohn/AFP via Getty Images When Bob Woodward first breathlessly reported the fragile mental state of a president on his way out of office, it was a national sensation. His and Carl Bernstein’s depiction of a drunk, unhinged Richard Nixon in 1976’s The Final Days shocked the country in an age of three television networks and zero social media platforms.
Yet while Trump was not interested in starting World War Three, he was actively trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election. There are a few new details in Peril on the games those around Trump played as they’d tried to manage him in the aftermath of the election, like how Secretary of State Mike Pompeo got on the phone with Milley one evening to express the need for the two to act in concert to protect the country.
Woodward and Costa also report that Biden believed that President Obama got rolled into sending more troops into Afghanistan in 2010 by a cabal that included both top military brass and then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Peril confirms the new president’s distaste for living in the White House, which he has compared to “a tomb.