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      Peril review: Bob Woodward Trump trilogy ends on note of dire warning

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      BooksPeril review: Bob Woodward Trump trilogy ends on note of dire warning Behind the headlines about Gen Milley, China and the threat of nuclear war lies a sobering read about democracy in dangerLloyd GreenSat 18 Sep 2021 01.00 EDTLast modified on Sat 18 Sep 2021 01.02 EDTDonald Trump is out of a job but far from gone and forgotten. The 45th president stokes the lie of a rigged election while his rallies pack more wallop than a Sunday sermon and a bottle of Jack Daniel’s.Melania Trump like Marie Antoinette, says former aide in hotly awaited bookRead more“We won the election twice!” Trump shouts. His base has come to believe. They see themselves in him and are ready to die for him – literally. Covid vaccines? Let the liberals take them.Deep red Mississippi leads in Covid deaths per capita. Florida’s death toll has risen above 50,000. This week alone, the Sunshine State lost more than 2,500. Then again, a century and a half ago, about 258,000 men died for the Confederacy rather than end slavery. “Freedom?” Whatever.One thing is certain: against this carnage-filled backdrop Bob Woodward’s latest book is aptly titled indeed.Written with Robert Costa, another Washington Post reporter, Peril caps a Trump trilogy by one half of the team that took down Richard Nixon. As was the case with Fear and Rage, Peril is meticulously researched. Quotes fly off the page. The prose, however, stays dry.This is a curated narrative of events and people but it comes with a point of view. The authors recall Trump’s admission that “real power [is] fear”, and that he evokes “rage”.Peril quotes Brad Parscale, a discarded campaign manager, about Trump’s return to the stage after his ejection from the White House.“I don’t think he sees it as a comeback,” Parscale says. “He sees it as vengeance.”Parscale knows of whom and what he speaks. His words are chilling and sobering both.The pages of Peril are replete with the voices of Gen Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Bill Barr, Trump’s second attorney general. Each seeks to salvage a tarnished reputation, Milley’s somewhat, Barr’s badly.In June 2020, wearing combat fatigues, Milley marched with Trump across Lafayette Square, a historic space outside the White House which had been forcibly cleared of anti-racism protesters so the president could stage a photo op at a church. The general regrets the episode. Others, less so.In an earlier Trump book, I Alone Can Fix It, Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker, also of the Post, captured Milley telling aides just days before the attack on the Capitol on 6 January, “This is a Reichstag moment.” This week, in the aftermath of reports based on Peril of Milley’s contacts with China in the waning days of the Trump administration, seeking to reassure an uncertain adversary, Joe Biden came to the general’s defense.As for Barr, for 20 months he bent the justice department to the president’s will. Fortunately, he refused in the end to break it. Overturning the election was a far greater ask than pouring dirt over the special counsel’s report on Trump and Russia or running interference for Paul Manafort, Trump’s convicted-then-pardoned campaign manager. Barr, it seems, wants back into the establishment – having smashed his fist in its eye.Woodward and Costa recount Barr’s Senate confirmation hearing, in which he promised to allow Robert Mueller to complete the Russia investigation, Trump’s enraged reaction and an intervention by his wife, Melania. According to the author, Barr may have owed his job to her.Emmett Flood, then counsel to Trump, conveyed to Barr his mood.“The president’s going crazy,” he said. “You said nice things about Bob Mueller.”Melania was having none of it, reportedly scolding her husband: “Are you crazy?”In a vintagely Trumpian moment, she also said Barr was “right out of central casting”.In another intriguing bit of pure political dish, Mitch McConnell is seen in the Senate cloakroom, joking at Trump’s expense.“Do you know why [former secretary of state Rex] Tillerson was able to say he didn’t call the president a ‘moron’?” the Senate Republican leader asks.“Because he called him a ‘fucking moron’.”By contrast, McConnell has kind words for Biden – a man he is dedicated to rendering a one-term president. America’s cold civil war goes on. Some, sometimes, still send messages across no man’s land.Woodward and Costa show Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s 2016 campaign manager, the goddess of alternative facts, reminding Trump that he turned voters off in his second election. In 2020, Trump underperformed among white voters without a college degree and ran behind congressional Republicans.“Get back to basics,” Conway tells him. Stop with the grievances and obsessing over the election. From the looks of things, Trump has discounted her advice. Conway has a book of her own due out in 2022. Score-settling awaits.Ending somewhere near the political present, Woodward and Costa shed light on the withdrawal from Afghanistan and Senator Lindsey Graham with it.In office, Trump affixed his signature to a document titled “Memorandum for the Acting Secretary of Defense: Withdrawal from Somalia and Afghanistan”. It declared: “I hereby direct you to withdraw all US forces from the Federal Republic of Somalia no later than 31 December 2020 and from the Islamic Republican of Afghanistan no later than 15 January 2021.”Steve Bannon prepped Jeffrey Epstein for CBS interview, Michael Wolff claimsRead moreApparatchiks were baffled as to where the memo had come from. Then they blocked it. Trump folded when confronted.As for Graham, the South Carolina Republican and presidential golfing buddy expresses “hate” for both Trump and Biden over Afghanistan.Graham and Biden were friends once. As Graham has repeatedly trashed Hunter Biden, expect the fissure between him and the new president to prove to be long lasting. As for Graham and Trump, it’s a question of who needs whom more at any given moment. With John McCain gone, it’s a good bet Graham will latch on to an alpha dog again.Fittingly, in their closing sentence, Woodward and Costa ponder the fate of the American experiment itself.“Could Trump work his will again? Were there any limits to what he and his supporters might do to put him back in power?“Peril remains.”TopicsBooksBob WoodwardPolitics booksUS politicsRepublicansDemocratsUS CongressreviewsReuse this content More

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      Nancy Pelosi says US Capitol attack like 9/11 but an assault from within – video

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      Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker of the US Congress, has likened the 6 January attack to 9/11, saying one had been an assault on US democracy from within and the other from the outside. Speaking at a Chatham House seminar in London on Friday, she also claimed the Republicans had been hijacked by a cult that believed neither in science nor government, making it hard for the US to be governed

      US Capitol attack like 9/11 but an assault from within, says Pelosi More

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      US Capitol attack like 9/11 but an assault from within, says Pelosi

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      Nancy PelosiUS Capitol attack like 9/11 but an assault from within, says PelosiHouse speaker makes remarks at Chatham House seminar in London a day after meeting Boris Johnson02:52Patrick Wintour Diplomatic editorFri 17 Sep 2021 09.11 EDTLast modified on Fri 17 Sep 2021 11.02 EDTNancy Pelosi, the House speaker of the US Congress, has likened the 6 January insurrection fomented by Donald Trump to 9/11, saying one had been an assault on US democracy from within and the other from the outside.She also claimed the Republicans had been hijacked by a cult that believed neither in science or government, making it hard for the US to be governed.Her remarks, made at a Chatham House seminar in London on Friday, arguably breach the semi-honoured rule for domestic political disputes to end at America’s water’s edge.Pelosi a strong defender of the Northern Ireland Good Friday agreement, repeated her warning of two years ago that anything that imperilled the agreement could mean the US Congress would not ratify a free trade deal with the UK.She was speaking at Chatham House the day after meeting Boris Johnson in Downing Street.She said the prime minister had given her some reading material and that she would cross-examine him on the details when they met again in Washington next week.Johnson is due to travel to the US with Liz Truss, the new UK foreign secretary, prior to the UN general assembly.“This is not said as any threat,” Pelosi insisted. “It is a prediction. If there is destruction of the Good Friday accords we’re very unlikely to have a UK-US bilateral [trade deal].”The bulk of her remarks were concerned with the collapse of bipartisanship within the US, and the implications for its relationships as an ally with other countries.The 6 January demonstration, she said, was an insurrection incited by Trump, and added that it “was an assault on Congress, constitution and our democracy. How we deal with it is really the measure of the strength of our democracy.”She also challenged Republican senators for rejecting the congressional commission into the Capitol attack, asking: “Why do they reject finding the truth of what happened in January? Is it because they had some sympathy for the cause?”She compared the 6 January protest with 9/11, saying while the attack in 2001 had been an “assault from outside”, the Capitol attack was an “assault from within”.“Horrible in both cases. What had happened to our democracy on 6 January was horrible,” she said.Although Trump did not create the problems on 6 January, she continued, “he galvanised them” with the help of social media, especially Facebook. She ironically thanked Facebook for hosting 2 million followers of the conspiracy theory QAnon on its site and said social media was a blessing, but a double-edged sword.The roots of American populism lay in fears of globalisation, automation and immigration, and was expressed through Islamophobia, antisemitism and ideas of white supremacy, she said.She added: “I would say to my Republican friends – and I do have some – take back your party, the Republican party. The Grand Old Party has made tremendous contributions to our country founded by Lincoln. Don’t let your party be hijacked by a cult – essentially, that is what is happening.“This is not conservative. This is radical rightwing, off the spectrum, anti-governance and if you are anti-governance it is very difficult to govern.“If you are in denial about climate change, if you don’t believe the science and data and won’t respond to the data, that is a problem.”She admitted the Democrats “have a big fight on our hands whether it is in the states or nationally”. She also admitted some of the alienation was caused by inequality.“In America, capitalism is our system, it is our economic system, but it has not served our economy as well as it should. So what we want to do is not depart from that, but to improve it.“You cannot have a system where the success of some springs from the exploitation of the workers and springs from the exploitation of the environment and the rest, and we have to correct that.”TopicsNancy PelosiUS Capitol attackSeptember 11 2001US politicsRepublicansDemocratsnewsReuse this content More

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      Capitol police arrest man with knives in his truck near Democratic party headquarters

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      Washington DCCapitol police arrest man with knives in his truck near Democratic party headquartersTruck with white supremacist symbols contained bayonet and machete, a month after police standoff over bomb threat Maya YangMon 13 Sep 2021 17.04 EDTLast modified on Mon 13 Sep 2021 17.05 EDTUS Capitol police arrested a man who had multiple knives, including a bayonet and a machete, in his truck near the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington DC on Monday.Patrol officers noticed a Dodge Dakota pickup truck that bore a swastika and had other white supremacist symbols painted on it around midnight on Sunday. According to pictures released by the police, the truck did not have a license plate but instead a picture of an American flag. The truck also had antlers attached to its front grill.The owner of the truck was identified as 44-year old Donald Craighead of Oceanside, California. Bayonets and machetes are illegal in Washington DC, according to police.“Craighead said he was ‘on patrol’ and began talking about white supremacist ideology and other rhetoric pertaining to white supremacy,” according to a press release by the Capitol police.“This is good police work, plain and simple,” said the Capitol police chief, Tom Manger. “We applaud the officers’ keen observation and the teamwork that resulted in this arrest.”Monday’s incident comes less than a month after a North Carolina man who claimed to have a bomb in a pickup truck near the Capitol surrendered to law enforcement after an hours-long standoff. Police who searched the vehicle said they had not found a bomb but had collected possible bomb-making materials.Craighead’s arrest also comes as law enforcement officials prepare for potential unrest and violence during a rightwing rally on Saturday. The rally, titled Justice for J6, aims to defend the nearly 600 insurrectionists who were charged in connection with the deadly 6 January Capitol attack this year.Top security officials in Congress are expected to reinstall a 7ft fence around the Capitol and authorize the use of deadly force ahead of the rally. The officials have no plans so far to request the national guard as their threat assessment did not warrant their deployment, according to sources familiar with the matter.“We intend to have the integrity of the Capitol be intact,” said the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, last Wednesday. “What happened on January 6 was such an assault on this beautiful Capitol, under the dome that Lincoln built during the civil war.”In an interview with USA Today, Craighead’s father said he did not believe his son had been in Washington to attend Saturday’s upcoming rally, adding that his son had been struggling with drug abuse and mental illness. “He’s not a Trump supporter; I don’t think he’s ever hurt anyone,” said Donald W Craighead.TopicsWashington DCUS Capitol attacknewsReuse this content More

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      Trump’s White House chief of staff is target of Capitol attack records request

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      US Capitol attackTrump’s White House chief of staff is target of Capitol attack records requestHouse select committee investigating 6 January wants telecom and social media companies to preserve records on Mark Meadows Hugo Lowell in WashingtonMon 13 Sep 2021 05.00 EDTLast modified on Mon 13 Sep 2021 05.02 EDTThe House select committee investigating the 6 January attack on the Capitol has instructed telecom and social media companies last week to preserve records of Donald Trump’s White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, according to a source familiar with the matter.The move positions the select committee on the doorstep of the Oval Office as it pursues a far-reaching inquiry into whether Trump and his White House helped plan or had advance knowledge of the insurrection perpetrated by the former president’s supporters.Republicans in crosshairs of 6 January panel begin campaign of intimidationRead moreHouse select committee investigators signaled their intention to examine potential involvement by the Trump White House and House Republicans when they last week made a series of records demands and records preservation requests for Trump officials connected to the Capitol attack.In the records preservation requests, the select committee instructed 35 telecom and social media companies to avoid destroying communications logs of several hundred people, including the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, and 10 House Republicans, in case it later issues subpoenas.But the previously unreported inclusion of Meadows on the list of people whose records the select committee wants preserved suggests the panel will seek more information on the most senior aide in the Trump administration and could upturn every inch of the West Wing in its inquiry.The former chief of staff is among several top White House officials who may hold the key to unlock inside information pertaining to the extent of the former president’s involvement in the Capitol attack that left five dead and nearly 140 injured.Meadows remained at Trump’s side in the weeks before 6 January as well as on the day itself, as the White House strategized ways to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and ensure the then vice-president, Mike Pence, would not certify Joe Biden’s victory.The White House chief of staff started the day of the insurrection with Trump in the Oval Office, before attending the “Save America” rally that preceded the Capitol attack, according to a Trump administration official familiar with his movements.Meadows then accompanied Trump back to the White House with a coterie of aides and advisers, from where the former president told the Republican senator Ben Sasse that he was “delighted” at the images of his supporters and domestic violent extremists storming the Capitol in his name.He then also spoke to Marc Short, the chief of staff to Pence, as well as Kash Patel, the chief of staff to the then defense secretary, Christopher Miller, the official said.Such proximity to Trump and the chiefs of staff to two key Trump cabinet members closely connected to the Capitol attack suggests Meadows is likely to be a prime witness for the inquiry, insofar as he can shed light on Trump’s private thoughts as the violence unfolded.A spokesperson for the select committee declined to comment on the preservation request for Meadows. But the chair of the House select committee, Bennie Thompson, previously told the Guardian that any conversations with Trump would be investigated by the select committee.The inclusion of Meadows on the list, alongside McCarthy and 10 other far-right House Republicans, nonetheless provides a clearer picture of the sharpening contours of the investigation and its overall direction as the select committee ramps up its work.It also echoes congressional investigations of eras past: Richard Nixon’s White House chief of staff, HR Haldeman, came under scrutiny from the Senate select committee into the Watergate scandal and was forced to testify about the extent of Nixon’s involvement.But it was not immediately clear which companies had received a records preservation request for Meadows from the select committee. Some telecom and social media companies – such as the online forum 8kun popular with QAnon conspiracy theorists – did not even receive a list of names, counsel for the forum said.House select committee investigators are still in the evidence-gathering phase, but the committee is likely to schedule its second hearing before the end of the month, according to a source familiar with the matter.The select committee said on Friday that investigators had received thousands of pages of documents, and that they understood the National Archives had started the process required by law for the review of presidential records.Meadows’s communications, meanwhile, may be of interest to the select committee in other aspects of the inquiry into the origins of 6 January, an area that falls under the panel’s purview after it took charge of all congressional investigations into the Capitol attack.The select committee subsumed several inquiries into the Trump administration’s efforts to subvert the 2020 election, including one by the House oversight committee that was examining how Meadows pressured the justice department to investigate baseless allegations of election fraud.Top Republicans under scrutiny have embarked on a campaign of threats and intimidation in an attempt to thwart the inquiry.The Republican House minority leader, McCarthy, last week lashed out at the select committee’s records preservation requests and warned that the GOP would retaliate against companies that complied when his party retakes the House majority.McCarthy argued, without citing any specific law, that it would be illegal for telecom and social media companies to comply with the records requests – even though congressional investigators have obtained phone and communications records without issue in the past.TopicsUS Capitol attackHouse of RepresentativesTrump administrationUS politicsnewsReuse this content More