Chapter OneONE Thirty-five Years Later As rioters stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, President Donald Trump watched on television from his private dining room next to the Oval Office. His supporters climbed the walls of the historic building, shattered windows and attempted to force the front doors open with a battering ram. Gallows were being set up outside. "Hang Mike Pence. Hang Mike Pence. Hang Mike Pence," Trump''s supporters called for the vice president, who had refused to overthrow the certification of Biden''s 2020 election win. "Where is the president?" Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy was calling the White House, asking aides to connect him with Trump. McCarthy''s office was being vandalized.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi''s was being ransacked. Supporters took pictures with their feet on her desk. They left a note on her keyboard: WE WILL NOT BACK DOWN. Congressional leaders, including McCarthy and Pelosi, had been rushed out by Capitol security and driven to a secure location, Fort McNair, a U.S. Army post a few blocks from the Washington Nationals baseball stadium. But their staff were still in there, hiding in various offices with the lights switched off, desks barricading the doors. President Trump finally got on the phone.
"You''ve got to get out and tell these people to STOP! We''ve been run over," McCarthy said. He was intense. "Someone just got shot." At 2:44 p.m., Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt was shot and killed by a police officer inside the Capitol as she and others tried to breach a door near lawmakers. Among the rioters were leaders of pro-Trump, far-right militia groups, the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys, as well as conspiracy theorists from groups like QAnon. What began as a Trump rally had escalated into a violent attack on the constitutional order of the United States.
"I''ll put a tweet out or something," Trump replied. "They''ve taken over the Capitol!" McCarthy yelled at him. "You''ve got to tell them to stop. You''ve got to get them out of here. Get them out of here. Now." The president seemed not to grasp the gravity of the situation. "Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are," Trump said.
The FBI later estimated that over 2,000 people entered the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Five people died, 172 police officers were injured, and more than 500 were arrested. The cost of the damage to the historic Capitol building exceeded $2.7 million. It took President Trump 187 minutes to post a tweet telling his supporters to "go home." Two months earlier, Donald Trump had lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden. But he rejected the loss. Instead, he said it was "rigged," "a fraud on the American public," and "stolen.
" Even now, 35 years after our interview, Trump was convinced any loss--even a presidential election loss--could be brushed aside if he simply didn''t fold . At Trump''s "Save America" rally on January 6, he urged his supporters to "fight like hell." "We won this election, and we won it by a landslide. "We will never give up. We will never concede. "We are going to the Capitol." The House Select Committee investigating the January 6 attack later concluded that Trump "engaged in a successful but fraudulent effort to persuade tens of millions of Americans that the election was stolen from him." Garret Miller, a Trump supporter who brought a gun to the Capitol on January 6, said, "I believed I was following the instructions of former President Trump.
" Another supporter, Lewis Cantwell, testified that he had watched President Trump on TV "telling the world" the election was stolen. "What else would I believe, as a patriotic American who voted for him?" Stephen Ayres, who also stormed the Capitol that day, said he was "hanging on every word [Trump] was saying." Ayres had posted on social media that "Civil War will ensue" if Trump did not stay in power for a second term. "You need to call Joe Biden and you need to do it today," House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy told Trump shortly after the attack. No, Trump said. He claimed Biden only won because of fraud. "Stop saying that," McCarthy said. "Just stop saying that.
You need to leave Joe Biden a letter in the desk." A tradition. "Well, I haven''t decided," Trump said. McCarthy was emotional and exhausted. The violence on January 6 carried a shocking, traumatizing weight. "Your legacies will be different now because of that day," McCarthy warned him. "Call Joe Biden." No, Trump said.
McCarthy told him it was important for the country for some sort of conversation between the outgoing and incoming leader to take place. A president should acknowledge his successor. "Okay, okay, okay," Trump finally said. He wanted off the call with McCarthy, but McCarthy stayed on. "What do you think your grandchildren are going to think of you if you don''t do this?" McCarthy said. "Okay, okay," Trump repeated. The phone call to Biden never happened. But on his last night in the Oval Office, January 19, 2021, Trump hand-wrote a two-page letter to Joe Biden.
He finished it at 10:00 p.m., signed it Donald J. Trump and placed it inside the desk. Biden would later tell his White House press secretary Jen Psaki it was "shockingly gracious." Trump, with First Lady Melania, left the White House early on January 20, 2021, for their club and Palm Beach estate, Mar-a-Lago. On board Air Force One, Trump took a call from Republican National Committee chairperson Ronna McDaniel. It was a farewell message on behalf of the committee.
"I''m done," Trump said, cutting her off. "I''m starting my own party." McDaniel balked. "You cannot do that," McDaniel implored Trump on the phone. "If you do, we will lose forever." "This isn''t their Republican Party anymore. This is Donald Trump''s Republican Party," Trump''s eldest son, Don Jr., had declared onstage at the "Save America" rally on January 6.
"Exactly. You lose forever without me," Trump snapped at McDaniel. "This is what Republicans deserve for not sticking with me." He wanted to take down the Republican Party. The Republican National Committee leadership would later make clear to Trump''s advisers that the former president''s lust for revenge would hurt not only his legacy but his finances. The Republican Party threatened to cease paying Trump''s legal bills and destroy the value of his campaign''s email list that contained 40 million Trump voters. Trump had been selling the list to other Republican candidates. If he tried to use it they would give it away for free.
Trump backed down. He later denied to ABC News journalist Jonathan Karl that he''d ever even thought about starting his own party. "Oh, that is bullshit. It never happened," Trump said. Karl later released the tape of his interview with McDaniel recounting Trump''s threat. On Air Force One, the Trump family sat at the front of the plane, a bunch of his closest senior and junior staff at the back. "They never came back," a Trump aide said. Not the president, nor any of his family.
Even among his closest aides, there was a sense of almost overwhelming shell shock. Many did not have a plan for what they would do next. Some didn''t know where they would live. Usually staff had about two and a half months, from the election to January 20, to prepare for life after the White House. "For a lot of people that was compressed into 13 days," an aide said because it wasn''t clear to them that Trump would leave the White House until after January 6. At 11:59 a.m., January 20, Trump was in his cavernous apartment at Mar-a-Lago.
No tweets. No speeches. At 12:01 p.m., as Biden was sworn in as the 46th president of the United States, Secret Service agents began shrinking the fortified security set up around Trump''s estate. Trump didn''t like it. He stayed in his quarters the rest of the day. "Hey, it''s your all-time favorite president," Trump said on the phone to House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy a few days later.
"Look, I want to talk," he said. "I''m down in Florida." McCarthy had said on the House floor on January 13 that Trump "bears responsibility" for the Capitol riot and called on him to "accept his share of responsibility." Trump exploded with anger when he saw the TV replay but appeared to have gotten over it. "I''ll stop by," McCarthy said. He didn''t tell anyone he was going, not even his staff. McCarthy knew Trump had not been seeing many Republicans. He was moping.
The media spotlight had dimmed over Mar-a-Lago. Republican strategist Ed Rollins once said of Trump, "There''s only one thing you need to know about him. He watches television all day and then at night goes on television." Trump was now fighting for attention. He no longer had his Twitter feed or Facebook, having been kicked off the sites after his torrent of election lies. He began making surprise appearances at wedding receptions at Mar-a-Lago. President Trump, in a dark suit and yellow tie, was grinning as McCarthy walked into Mar-a-Lago on January 28. "You know Melania said this has more press than when I met Putin," he said.
"There are four TV helicopters outside!" McCarthy''s visit to the former president was all over the news. Having the top House Republican come for lunch showed Trump was still i.