“I thought I was having a heart attack,” Abdullah II recalled to an American friend in 2018, according to a new book about the Trump presidency to be released next week. “I couldn’t breathe. I was bent double.” The unreported offer to Abdullah is one of the startling new details about Trump’s chaotic presidency in “The Divider: Trump in the White House 2017-2021” by Peter Baker, chief White House correspondent for The New Yorker Times, and Susan Glasser, staff. New Yorker writer. The book, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post, is the latest in a long line of detailed behind-the-scenes accounts presented or written by members of the Trump administration, with some claiming they tried to curb the 45th president’s worst instincts. Baker and Glasser write that their book is based on reports they did for their respective publications, “as well as approximately 300 original interviews conducted exclusively for this book.” They added: “We obtained private diaries, memos, contemporaneous notes, emails, text messages and other documents that shed new light on Trump’s time in office.” The journalist husbands also did two interviews with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate. One theme that emerges in the book is Trump’s increasing commitment to attacking his perceived enemies and the growing concern among top administration officials that they must thwart Trump’s lawlessness and erratic demands. Several top officials “were on the verge of resigning en masse,” according to the book, citing an October 2018 message Kirstjen Nielsen, then the national security secretary, wrote to a top aide via the encrypted Signal app. Chief of Staff John F. Kelly; Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis; General Joseph F. Dunford Jr., Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Education Secretary Betsy DeVos; and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke “all” wanted to resign, Nielsen wrote, according to the book. Former Interior Secretary Zinke lied to investigators in casino case, watchdog finds At the time, Trump was fearful of losing control of Congress and eager to appeal to his base of supporters. Fox News was focusing attention on a caravan of migrants moving through Central America toward the southern border — referring to it as an “invasion,” the book notes. Trump, in response, urged Nielsen to “harden the border even to the point of forcing her to take actions she had no authority to take,” according to the book. Nielsen and Alex Azar, the secretary of Health and Human Services, even agreed that both would resign in protest if Trump resumed family separations at the southern border. In the fall of 2018, she wrote to an assistant: “The insanity is solved.” These officials eventually left the administration, but not together over a single issue. “The people who feared his reign the most were those in the room with him,” Baker and Glasser write. In November 2018, the Democrats took power in the House, winning the majority. While in the White House, Trump also tried to use his office to punish — demands that his own aides considered illegal and tried to stop, according to the book. Trump also targeted former Secret Service officials James R. Clapper Jr. and John Brennan, demanding more than 50 times that their security clearances be revoked. And when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit blocked one of his policies, Trump told Nielsen he wanted to eliminate the court altogether. “Let’s cancel it,” he told her, according to the book, adding that they should “get rid of” the judges and using profanity. Trump ordered the legislation drafted and sent to Congress as soon as possible, the authors write. Nielsen, according to the book, “did what she and so many other administration officials did when Trump issued silly demands — she ignored it and hoped it would go away.” Trump, who is eyeing another presidential bid, also ruled out picking former Vice President Mike Pence as his running mate, telling Baker and Glasser, “It would be totally inappropriate.” Pence’s refusal to block Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election, despite Trump’s false claims that the election was rigged, opened a rift between the two men. Trump, reeling from what he saw as a betrayal by Pence, told reporters: “Mike committed political suicide by not taking votes he knew were wrong.” On January 6, 2021, when a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol to stop the counting of electoral votes for Biden, several of the president’s supporters chanted “Hang Mike Pence.” The book also quotes Trump’s wife, Melania, as expressing deep concerns about her husband’s handling of the coronavirus. He spoke directly to Trump in the early days of the pandemic and, according to the book, recounted that conversation later to Gov. Chris Christie (RN.J.), whom the president routinely sought advice from. “You’re blowing this,” she recalls telling her husband, according to the book. “This is serious. It’s going to be really bad and you have to take it more seriously than you are,” she said, according to Baker and Glasser. Trump “just fired her,” they write. “You’re very worried,” she recalled Melania Trump told her, according to the book. The offer to Abdullah of the West Bank — which borders Israel and Jordan, and over which Trump had no control — came in January 2018. Trump thought he would be doing the Jordanian king a favor, not realizing it would destabilize his country, according to the book. An earlier excerpt from the book published in August in the New Yorker described how Trump once told a top adviser that he wanted “totally loyal” generals like those who had served Adolf Hitler — unaware that some of Hitler’s generals had tried to assassinate the Nazi leader many times. Trump complained to Kelly, then his chief of staff and a retired Marine Corps general, “why can’t you be like the German generals?” When Kelly asked which generals she meant, Trump replied: “The German generals in World War II.” “You know they tried to kill Hitler three times and almost succeeded?” Kelly said, according to the book. Trump didn’t believe him, the book says. “No, no, no, they were completely loyal to him,” Trump insisted.
