“You can’t f—ing talk to me like that!” then-President Donald Trump yelled Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as Miley called Trump on his exaggerations about last summer’s racial protests. Trump had wanted to put Miley in charge of a crackdown. Axios reports this excerpt from The Wall Street Journal’s Michael Bender in his forthcoming book, “Frankly, We Did Win This Election.”
Seated in the Situation Room with [Attorney General Bill] Barr, Milley, and [Secretary of Defense Mark] Esper, Trump exaggerated claims about the violence and alarmed officials … by announcing he’d just put Milley “in charge.”
Privately, Milley confronted Trump about his role. He was an adviser, and not in command. But Trump had had enough.
“I said you’re in f—ing charge!” Trump shouted at him.
“Well, I’m not in charge!” Milley yelled back.
“You can’t f—ing talk to me like that!” Trump said. …
“Goddamnit,” Milley said to others. “There’s a room full of lawyers here. Will someone inform him of my legal responsibilities?”
“He’s right, Mr. President,” Barr said. “The general is right.”
A Trump aide labelled the info “fake news.” But so much has started to come out about Trump and his administration and tidbits and revelations come together to paint a portrait of someone with impulse control problems who seemed to want to opt for striking out in crises rather than defusing or stabiling them. And Trump’s new format since being nixed from social media — statements on a letterhead saying it’s from the 45th President — forther show a man consumed by anger, rage, who is either delusional or lying. Or, more likely, both.
In recent weeks we’ve learned:
Meanwhile, Trump has gone ballistic over reveleations about what Barr and then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnellfelt about his claims.
Former President Donald Trump lashed out at Bill Barr amid reports that the former attorney general referred to claims of widespread election fraud in the 2020 general election as “bullshit.”
Trump lost the election to President Joe Biden but has continued to foster doubt among his base by repeating the baseless claims that the election was stolen from him, despite a complete lack of reputable evidence.
“It’s people in authority like Bill Barr that allow the crazed Radical Left to succeed,” Trump wrote in a statement out Monday morning. “He and other RINOs in the Republican Party are being used in order to try to convince people that the election was legitimate when so many incredible facts have now come out to show conclusively that it wasn’t.”
What got Trump so angry about Barr? The Atlantic published a preview of Betrayal, from ABC’s Jon Karl, which delves into how Trump and Barr’s relationship deteriorated in the aftermath of the 2020 election.
“He had expected Trump to lose and therefore was not surprised by the outcome,” Karl wrote. “He also knew that at some point, Trump was going to confront him about the allegations, and he wanted to be able to say that he had looked into them and that they were unfounded.”
“My attitude was: It was put-up or shut-up time,” said Barr. “If there was evidence of fraud, I had no motive to suppress it. But my suspicion all the way along was that there was nothing there. It was all bullshit.”
Trump also reportedly raged at his attorney general, asking, “How the fuck could you do this to me? Why did you say it?” — in reference to an interview Barr gave to the AP in December that dismissed the claims of election fraud.
Trump also took a shot at Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who reportedly encouraged Barr to speak publicly to dismiss the former president’s claims of election fraud. “Now it was revealed that Barr was being pushed to tell lies about the election by Mitch McConnell, another beauty, who was worried about damaging the Republicans chances in the Georgia runoff,” Trump said.
Things are going to get much worse for Trump and his perceived legacy. There will be many more facts (and scandals) about the Trump administration that’ll come to public light through news articles, “bombshell” books by reporters and politicians, historians and in litigation.
It’s often said that in politics the “Happy Warrior” has the advantage. Trump is not a happy warrior and seems programmed to lash out and try to even scores. This isn’t news for the GOP going into the mid-terms. Trump supporters and Republicans still loyal to a party that no longer resembles the party they joined may like the spectacle. But revelations and Trump anger will remind many independents and anti-Trump conservative Republicans of why they voted to dump Trump in 2020.
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Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.