Peril book: Explosive details on the demise of Trump’s presidency revealed

Nearly eight months after Donald Trump’s presidency ended, a succession of new books have revealed dramatic details about the end of his tumultuous four years in the White House. Towards the end of his term, Mr Trump’s behaviour became so concerning to top US officials that they began to question whether Mr Trump’s mental stability would be so compromised after losing the 2020 election that he would take the country into war.

House speaker Nancy Pelosi was so incensed by Trump supporters’ invasion of the Capitol that she told chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen Mark Milley that she called the president a “dictator” who should have been arrested for attempting a coup d’etat. And Gen Milley himself was so troubled by how Mr Trump’s antics looked to foreign adversaries that he began a series of back-channel calls with his Chinese counterpart to assure him that the US government was stable and that Mr Trump would not launch an attack against Beijing.

These are just some of the new details revealed in Peril, a forthcoming book by Washington Post writers Bob Woodward and Robert Costa. The Independent obtained a copy of the book ahead of its 21 September publication date. Here are some of the book’s most explosive revelations.

Trump’s top military adviser was afraid he would launch a nuclear strike at China

After a mob of Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol in an attempt to prevent Congress from certifying President Joe Biden’s electoral college victory on 6 January, Mr Woodward and Mr Costa wrote that Gen Milley became concerned that Mr Trump would “go rogue” and order a nuclear strike on China at some point before he left office on 20 January.

Two days after the attack on the Capitol, Gen Milley convened a meeting of senior officers in charge of the National Military Command Center to review the formal process for initiating military actions, including the release of nuclear weapons.

Gen Milley told the officers that they were to disregard any orders that did not involve him.

“No matter what you are told, you do the procedure. You do the process. And I’m part of that procedure,” Mr Milley reportedly said before looking each one in the eye and asking them to verbally confirm that they had understood him.

Milley told a Democratic House member that he thought Trump ‘wanted’ his supporters to storm the Capitol

When a pro-Trump horde was rampaging through the US Capitol, Michigan Representative Elissa Slotkin contacted Gen Milley by phone from where she and many of her colleagues took shelter from the mob.

When Ms Slotkin told the general that he needed to get National Guard to the building, Gen Milley replied that help was on the way, and added that he’d informed vice president Mike Pence – not the president.

He…