March of Trump memoir: Mark Meadows and other Republican reads | Books

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The Chief’s Book is the most fruitful book in the Trump presidency. In his memoir, Mark Meadows admitted that it was possible to put Joe Biden’s life in jeopardy and then cover it up – all in digestible prose and unadorned voice. If nothing else, the book provided a lot of ammunition for Donald Trump who decided that Meadows had “betrayed” him.

Trump dismissed The Chief’s Chief as “fake news”, ridiculed Meadows as “fucking stupid”, and falsely claimed that the book “confirmed” that “he didn’t have Covid before or during the debate”.

Honestly, when it comes to events in Cleveland on September 29, 2020, Meadows wrote: “We probably won’t know if President Trump was positive that night.” But we know he can.

And imagine Trump giving Meadows a blurb for his cover: “We will have a big future together”. Hopefully, Meadows received at least 30 pieces of silver in advance.

By the numbers, Trump contacted about 500 people between the time he received his first positive review, followed by a negative, and his announcement that he did indeed have Covid. Not surprisingly, Trump blamed others for giving him the virus, even indicating that the gold star’s military families did it.

Last week, after the Guardian news about Meadows ’book, Michael Shear of the New York Times recalled:“ A few hours after he received the call from Meadows informing him of a positive test, Trump went behind the AF1 without a mask and talked with the journalists for about 10 minutes. “

“A few days later”, Shear himself was positive.

The 45th president looks like “patient zero”, a one-man super-spreader.

Switching topics, Meadows tagged Biden for being too handy and said Andrew Cuomo turned to Hope Hicks. Not surprisingly, Meadows removed mention of the allegations against his own boss. Just an example? E Jean Carroll’s defamation case against Trump, which stemmed from an alleged rape in a dressing room of a department store.

Turning to Republican politics, Meadows, a former North Carolina congressman, accused John Boehner, a former House Speaker, of acting like a “Mafia Don”. Again, Meadows did not mention the boss’s behavior.

As Joshua Green reported in Devil’s Bargain, Trump once contacted Paul Manafort, his former campaign manager, so: “You treat me like a baby! Am I a baby to you … Am I a fucking baby, Paul? “

Manafort was convicted on bank and tax charges in 2018. But he remained a loyal soldier and received a pardon from Trump.

At Christmas just a few weeks ago, Meadows threw out the following Trump quote as a holiday bonus: “I’m the only one who can save us.”

Meadows is not the only Trump administration alum doing his darnedest to describe their man as America’s savior. But he just lets us know that Trump was positive before he went negative. And that makes his book one for ages.

The other would-be stocking stuffers of Trump insiders indicate they were in the dark about Covid’s deadly trial or were careful not to share. Kayleigh McEnany, Trump’s last press secretary; Peter Navarro, an economics adviser; and Scott Atlas, a Covid adviser, has his own books.

In his non-tell-all, McEnany makes sure we know his academic credentials and reiterates his statement that he never lied to journalists. After all, he wrote, his studies at “Oxford, Harvard and Georgetown” meant he always relied on “true, well-sourced, well-researched information”.

He doesn’t mention his time at the University of Miami too much. Whatever. Elite degrees say more about future earnings and marriage prospects than the inclination to reality. Trump attended the University of Pennsylvania. Boris Johnson, Oxford. Richard Nixon went to Duke and Bill Clinton graduated from Yale.

Nixon was disbarred, Clinton’s law license suspended. Boris is Boris.

McEnany repeatedly thanked god. Her title, For Such a Time as This, comes from the Book of Esther. He remained on the message for more than 200 pages, praising Trump for his stand for “faith, conservatism and freedom”. But the first positive review on Covid, on Sept. 26, described by Meadows and has since been confirmed by Maggie Haberman and other Washington press columns? Nada.

McEnany wrote that on October 1, 2020, two days after the Trump-Biden debate, he learned for the first time that Trump and Melania had “tested positive for Covid-19”. On October 2, Trump was taken to the hospital. On Oct. 5, McEnany was told he also had the virus. He didn’t draw a line on Trump’s recklessness.

“Fortunately,” he wrote, “everyone in the White House has made a full and complete recovery, including me.”

False. McEnany did not mention Crede Bailey, head of the White House security office. When he was Trump’s press secretary, he did just that.

Asked about Bailey at a briefing, McEnany said: “Our heart goes out to his family. They ask for privacy. And he’s recovering, as far as I understand. We’re very pleased to see that. But he and his family will be in our prayers. “

On a GoFundMe page set up to help pay for Bailey’s treatment, a friend wrote: “Crede lost Covid-19 but it cost a lot of money: his big toe on his left foot as well as his right foot and lower leg had to be amputated. ” Bailey also suffered long -term damage to the lungs, heart, liver and kidneys. According to his family, Trump never publicly acknowledged Bailey’s “illness”.

McEnany delivers a bouquet to Meadows.

“You always remind me of faith,” he exclaimed. “Thank you for being an inspired leader for the entire West Wing.”

Navarro would probably disagree. In fact, it’s a good bet that he agrees with Trump’s new assessment of Meadows ’intelligence.

In his book, In Trump Time, Navarro repeatedly blames Meadows for inadequate honesty and accessibility. According to Navarro, after Trump defeated Biden, the heart and body of the White House chief of staff were often absent from the White House.

“Wherever” the Meadows are, says Navarro, “like Napoleon after Waterloo, preparing to be sent to Elba”.

Navarro also blames Meadows for failing to heed an alleged 2019 warning from Cleta Mitchell, a Republican activist and lawyer, that Democrats are “preparing to steal the election”. When Meadows was pressured in September 2020 about his failure to act on this tip, Navarro said, the only thing he could answer was, “It just didn’t happen.”

The fact that both the House and Senate have documented Meadows ’efforts to put pressure on Republican election officials failed to impress Navarro.

The Chief Executive may also have waived Meadows ’claim to executive privilege. Either way, the latest about Meadows ’face in collaboration with the House select committee investigating the events on Jan. 6 is unlikely to change Navarro’s impression of him.

As for Mitchell, he resigned from his law firm because of his role in an infamous call between Trump and Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state.

Aside from pushing the line that Democrats stole the election, Navarro lashed out at several officials for not dealing with China, including Mike Pence. Interestingly, as he chases Trump’s star-crossed vice-president, Navarro now seems familiar with anti-democratic rights.

He called Pence a traitor “Brutus” who betrayed Trump, an “American Caesar”. Did Navarro forget the gallows with Pence’s name on it? Regardless, the shoutout to a murdered Roman emperor was meant as a full throat compliment.

Kayleigh McEnany and Peter Navarro, and Stephen Miller, walk the South Lawn of the White House in July 2020. Photo: Andrew Harnik/AP

During the 2016 campaign, Paul LePage, the then governor of Maine, thought Trump needed to demonstrate some “power of authority”. Last May, Michael Anton of the rightwing Claremont Institute pondered whether the U.S. needed a caesar. Anton was on air with Curtis Yarvin, AKA Mencius Moldbug, a self-described monarch and pillar of the Dark Enlightenment, a take embraced by the alt-right.

Navarro called for “full forensic audits” of the 2020 election and posed that the insurrection on Jan. 6 could have been “made by people who sought to provoke an attack on our Capitol as a means of derailment” in a win. in Trump’s electoral college.

In A Plague Upon Our House, Scott Atlas chases Deborah Birx and Anthony Fauci for getting the headlines but ignores Trump Covid’s prediction, “one day – like a miracle – it will disappear” and his confession to Bob Woodward who will be Covid. worse than he said in public.

Covid has killed nearly 800,000 Americans – and counting. The US faces another Covid winter, with more than 100,000 new cases every day and the Omicron variant looming. Vaccine resistance and Covid deaths have become signs of the red state.

Atlas is a radiologist and a fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He joined the Trump White House in August 2020 and resigned after the election.

As an adviser to Covid, he opposed the extended trial and isolation, calling such measures “very wrong”. Instead, he argued that the virus can be prevented and herd immunity can be achieved when 20% to 25% of the population is infected with it. In his book, he appears to be minimizing the impact of the long Covid.

Faced with an open letter from Stanford faculty, challenging his credentials, Atlas threatened legal retaliation. Marc Kasowitz, Trump’s lawyer, called for an immediate retraction. No one followed.

Atlas, however, got one big thing right: the opposition to school closures, which he describes as a “serious and unexplained” policy failure. The closures helped cost Democrats in Virginia. Glenn Youngkin’s win in that race for governor was more than critical race theory.

Trump and Trumpism will remain a force in the Republican party for years to come. Hope Meadows, McEnaney, Navarro and Atlas.

Earlier this month, however, Chris Christie spoke at a DC poohbahs dinner.

“I gave Donald Trump my eternal allegiance,” he said. “And from what we found out this week, he actually gave me Covid.”

Just a reminder folks.

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