Trump told Jordan’s king he would give him the West Bank, shocking Abdullah II,
The unreported offer to Abdullah is among the startling new details about Trump’s chaotic presidency in the book “The Divider: Trump in the White House 2017-2021” by Peter Baker, chief White House correspondent for the New York Times, and Susan Glasser, staff writer for the New Yorker.
The book, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post, is the latest in a long-running series of deeply reported behind-the-scenes accounts featuring, or written by, Trump administration insiders, with some claiming that they tried to curb the 45th president’s worst instincts.
Baker and Glasser write that their book is based on reporting they did for their respective outlets, “as well as about 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 husband-and-wife journalists also conducted two interviews with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
One theme that emerges in the book is the growth of Trump’s fixation with attacking his perceived enemies and an increasing concern among top officials in his administration that they must prevent Trump’s lawlessness and erratic demands.
Several top officials “were on the verge of quitting en masse,” according to the book, citing an October 2018 message Kirstjen Nielsen, then the homeland security secretary, wrote to a top aide over the encrypted app Signal.
Chief of Staff John F. Kelly; Defense Secretary Jim Mattis; Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Education Secretary Betsy DeVos; and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke “all” wanted to quit, Nielsen wrote, according to the book.
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 pushing her to take action she had no authority to take,” according to the book.
Nielsen and Alex Azar, the health and human services secretary, even agreed that they would both resign in protest if Trump resumed family separations at the southern border. In fall 2018, she wrote to an aide, “The insanity has been loosed.”
Those officials ultimately left the administration, but not in unison over one single issue.
“The people who were most fearful of his reign were those in the room with him,” Baker and Glasser write.
In November 2018, Democrats swept to power in the House,…
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