The Washington Post does a look at the book.…
“I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year.”…..
In a speech at a “Save America” rally on the Ellipse on Jan. 6, Trump said, “Today I will lay out just some of the evidence proving that we won this election, and we won it by a landslide.” A pro-Trump mob breached the Capitol after the speech.
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At the White House, Trump set the tone for the day with an 8:17 a.m. tweet: “States want to correct their votes, which they now know were based on irregularities and fraud, plus corrupt process never received legislative approval. All Mike Pence has to do is send them back to the States, AND WE WIN. Do it Mike, this is a time for extreme courage!”
Many of Trump’s advisers knew this would never actually happen. They chalked the president’s tweet up to theater. Vice President Pence could have the courage of a lion, but there was no doubt that he would fulfill his constitutional duty and preside over the pro forma certification of Biden’s win. As one senior official recalled, “All of us knew this was the endgame. The clock had run out. By January 6th, it was game over … We knew we would take the blows. This was date certain. The vice president knew this.”
As Nancy Pelosi left her luxury condo building in Georgetown, she greeted her security agents who would drive her to the Capitol. “This is going to be quite a day,” the House speaker said to them. She kept the rest of her thoughts to herself, but later recalled thinking: “I know the Republicans will try some stunts. But at the end of the day, Joe Biden will be the president of the United States — the ascertained future president.”
In the Oval Office later that morning, Trump huddled with aides and family members. The president went in and out of the dining room to check on TV coverage, hoping to gauge the size of the crowd on the Ellipse. Stephen Miller was there going over the remarks he and his team had prepared for the president to deliver at the rally. Senior White House officials Mark Meadows, Keith Kellogg and Eric Herschmann were there, too, as were the president’s adult children Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump and Eric Trump, and Kimberly Guilfoyle, Trump Jr.’s girlfriend. Some of those around the president encouraged his fantasy of Pence the hero stepping in to overturn the election. Guilfoyle, referring to the growing crowd on the Ellipse, told him, “They’re just reflecting the will of the people. This is the will of the people.”
Ivanka Trump did not agree and was upset about what attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani and others had been advising her father. At one point that morning, she said: “This is not right. It’s not right.”
Trump called Pence, who was spending the morning at his Naval Observatory residence before heading to the Capitol. Pence again explained the legal limits on his authority as vice president and said he planned to perform his ceremonial duty, as prescribed by the Constitution. But Trump showed him no mercy.
“You don’t have the courage to make a hard decision,” he told Pence.
Ivanka Trump, standing next to Kellogg near a grandfather clock in the back of the room, had a hard time listening to her father badger the vice president to do something she knew was not possible. “Mike Pence is a good man,” she said quietly to Kellogg, the vice president’s national security adviser who was close to Trump.
“I know that,” he replied. “Let this ride. Take a deep breath. We’ll come back at it.”….
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….In his speech on the Ellipse, Trump said, “Our country has had enough. We will not take it anymore, and that’s what this is all about. To use a favorite term that all of you people really came up with, we will ‘stop the steal.’ Today I will lay out just some of the evidence proving that we won this election, and we won it by a landslide.”
The president repeated more lies about the election outcome, then said, “I hope Mike is going to do the right thing. I hope so. I hope so, because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election.”
He concluded his speech by urging his supporters to march to the Capitol and suggesting that he would join them.
“We’re going to walk down to the Capitol and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women,” Trump said. He added, “We’re going to try and give our Republicans — the weak ones, because the strong ones don’t need any of our help — we’re going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.”
And 70% of the Republican Party still believe his lies.
The Republican Party 2021