The US labors in Donald Trump’s shadow, the Republican party “reborn in his image”, to quote Peter Baker and Susan Glasser. Trump is out of office but not out of sight or mind. Determined to explain “what happened” on 6 January 2021, when Trump supporters attacked the Capitol, the husband-and-wife team examines his term in the White House and its chaotic aftermath. Their narrative is riveting, their observations dispiriting.
The US is still counted as a liberal democracy but is poised to stumble out of that state. The stench of autocratization wafts. Maga-world demanded a Caesar. It came close to realizing its dream.
In electing Trump, Baker and Glasser write, the US empowered a leader who “attacked basic principles of constitutional democracy at home” and “venerated” strongmen abroad. Whether the system winds up in the “morgue” and how much time remains to make sure it doesn’t are the authors’ open questions.
Trump spoke kindly of Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-un. He treated Volodymyr Zelenskiy of Ukraine as a plaything, to be blackmailed for personal gain.
In a moment of pique, Trump sought to give the Israeli-controlled West Bank to King Abdullah of Jordan. For Benjamin Netanyahu, the former and possibly future prime minister of Israel, he had a tart “fuck him”.
At home, the US is mired in a cold civil war. Half the country deems Trump unfit to hold office, half would grant him a second term, possibly as president for life. Trump’s “big lie”, that the 2020 election was stolen, is potent.
The tectonics of education, religion and race clang loudly – and occasionally violently. The insurrection stands as bloody testament to populism and Christian nationalism. The cross and the noose are icons. The Confederacy has risen.
Baker is the New York Times’s chief White House correspondent. Glasser works for the New Yorker and CNN. Their book is meticulously researched and beautifully written. Those who were in and around the West Wing talk and share documents. Baker and Glasser lay out receipts. They conducted more than 300 interviews. They met Trump at Mar-a-Lago, “his rococo palace by the sea”, to which we now know he took more than 300 classified documents.
“When we sat down with [him] a year after his defeat,” Baker and Glasser write, “the first thing he told us was a lie.”
Imagine that.
Trump falsely claimed the Biden administration had asked him to record a public service announcement promoting Covid vaccinations. Eventually, he forgot he had spun that yarn. It never happened.
Baker and Glasser depict a tempestuous president and a storm-filled presidency. Trump’s time behind the Resolute Desk translated into “fits of rage, late-night Twitter storms, abrupt dismissals”. The authors now compare Trump to Napoleon, exiled to Elba.
Congress impeached him twice. He never won the popular vote. His legitimacy flowed from the electoral college, the biggest quirk in the constitution, a document he readily and repeatedly defiled. Tradition and norms counted little. The military came to understand that Trump was bent on staging a coup. The guardrails nearly failed.
The führer was a role-model. Trump loudly complained to John Kelly, his second chief of staff, a retired Marine Corps general and a father bereaved in the 9/11 wars: “You fucking generals, why can’t you be like the German generals?”
“Which generals?”
“The German generals in world war II.”
“You do know that they tried to kill Hitler three times and almost pulled it off?”
It’s fair to say Trump probably did not know that. He dodged the Vietnam draft, suffering from “bone spurs”, with better things to do. He is … not a reader.
In Trump’s White House, Baker and Glasser write, Kelly used The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, a study by 27 mental health professionals, as some sort of owner’s manual.
A week before Christmas 2020, Trump met another retired general, the freshly pardoned Michael Flynn, and other election-deniers including Patrick Byrne, once a boyfriend of Maria Butina, a convicted Russian agent. Hours later, past midnight, Trump tweeted “Big protest in DC on January 6th … Be there, will be wild!”
In that moment, the fears of Gen Mark Milley, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff who saw the coup coming, “no longer seemed far-fetched”. Now, as new midterm elections approach, Republicans signal that they will grill Milley if they retake the House.
Baker and Glasser also write of how Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump sought refuge from the Trumpian storm, despite being his senior advisers. They endeavored to keep their hands clean but the muck cascaded downward.
Not everyone shared their discomfort. Donald Trump Jr proposed “ways to annul the will of the voters”. Rick Perry, the energy secretary, pushed for Republican state legislatures to declare Trump the winner regardless of reality.
“HERE’s an AGGRESSIVE STRATEGY,” a Perry text message read.
In such a rogues’ gallery, even the wife of a sitting supreme court justice, Ginni Thomas, stood ready to help. Mark Meadows, Trump’s last chief of staff, was a child who yearned for his parent’s affection. He would say and do anything. And yet he managed to spill the beans on Trump testing positive for Covid before debating Biden. Trump called Meadows “fucking stupid”. Meadows has since complied with subpoenas issued by the Department of Justice and the January 6 committee.
Baker and Glasser conclude by noting Trump’s advanced age and looking at “would-be Trumps” who might pick up the torch. They name Ron DeSantis, Josh Hawley and Tucker Carlson.
On Thursday, Trump threatened violence if he is criminally charged.
“I think you’d have problems in this country the likes of which perhaps we’ve never seen before,” he said. “I don’t think the people of the US would stand for it.”
As Timbuk 3 once sang, with grim irony: “The future’s so bright, I gotta wear shades.”
The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021 is published in the US by Penguin Random House