- Every president, every public servant in the United States raises their hand and takes an oath to support and defend the constitution of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

Today's guest says the end of the Trump presidency saw an unprecedented threat to the constitutional order, emanating from the White House itself.

He's Robert Costa, this week on Story In The Public Square.

(upbeat music) Hello, and welcome to Story In The Public Square, where storytelling meets public affairs.

I'm Jim Ludes from the Pell Center at Salve Regina University.

- And I'm G.Wayne Miller, with the Providence Journal.

- This week, we're joined by Robert Costa, a national political reporter for The Washington Post.

He is coauthor with the legendary Bob Woodward of the best seller, "Peril."

Robert, thank you so much for being with us today.

- It's wonderful to be with you, thank you.

- Hey, "Peril" is really tremendous reporting and you and your co-author, I think have done the public a great service here.

For anybody who has not read it yet, can you just give us a broad 30,000 foot view of what the book is?

- The book is about the transition between the Trump presidency to the Biden presidency.

But of course, this was anything but a normal presidential transition.

It was historic, dangerous.

It included an insurrection.

In our book, "Peril," it is the culmination, the product of nine to 10 months of intense reporting between December, 2020 and July, 2021 about the national security crisis that unfolded behind the scenes, the domestic crisis that was far worse than anyone imagined, and the Biden presidency in its first year.

- So we're gonna get into each of those elements in a few minutes, but I'm curious, working with Bob Woodward, your own experience as a national political reporter, you're covering Donald Trump, really sort of a unique figure in American politics.

Can you put him, the character of Donald Trump in some sort of broader context?

- Donald Trump is someone I began covering a decade ago in 2011 when he was beginning this Birtherism campaign questioning president Obama's place of birth, his love of country, his credentials.

It was racist, it was a lie, but I covered Trump and took him seriously as a political figure.

And over the past 10 years, we've seen Donald Trump morph into the favorite of the Republican base, Ultimately the Republican nominee, and then the president.

He was a total outsider when he was elected.

But our book shows that by the end, four years into his presidency, he was anything but the outsider anymore.

He was an insider who knew how to use the levers of power to try to keep power.

And our story is about a man who has all of this history with the Republican base, with Birtherism, with immigration issues, with scandal and investigation.

But this is the critical moment of his presidency, the crisis of democracy that he sparked.

- So, you said you early on took him as a serious political figure.

And that was at a time you mentioned about 10 years ago, when a lot of people probably did not take him seriously as a political figure.

He had not held office, he had not run, he was known for his investments and properties and developing.

What did you see about him?

And also of course for his TV show, but what did you see about him that made you take him seriously?

And obviously whatever you saw was correct.

- As a reporter, you always try to jot down notes about things that give you a chill down your spine, or really make you wake up and realize what you're witnessing is not normal.

And I remember seeing him at the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2011, in Washington, a GOP type gathering.

I was a reporter there and he thrilled the crowd, electrified them as he tore into Obama in ways that were incendiary, different than the political norms, even the Republican norms at the time.

But the crowd, the supporters there who had come from around the country loved it.

And they loved his controversy, his ego, his outsides presence, they loved it all.

And he was widely dismissed even at that conference as some kind of fringe figure.

But the people there liked him.

And I wrote down that this person, Donald Trump has presence with Republican voters and he has a message that's just far more striking in its tone, red hot in its rhetoric than other Republicans.

So I said to myself, as a reporter, I'll at least keep an eye on him.

- That presence, which we could probably call electricity, other historical figures have had both here and abroad.

And even here in Rhode Island, the late mayor of Providence, Buddy Cianci, had that same charisma or electricity.

Did he remind you of any other figures, either in American or other countries history?

- The only other politician I've ever covered with that kind of electricity with people is former president Bill Clinton.

I've covered him in his post-presidency.

And when he walks into a room, there's just an electricity with a lot of the people there that they respond to the presence of Clinton.

And so many politicians have soaring rhetoric and words, but sometimes their presence enough, their persona can captivate an audience.

And I've covered president Obama at length, but Obama himself was inspiring to crowds and to people because of his message, what he represented, but he could sometimes be a somewhat contained figure, Trump's anything but contained.

- Robert, as we're talking about this, we're gonna get into some of the specifics of the book too.

But as we're talking about this, one of the questions that has puzzled me for the last five years is where does Donald Trump take his political guidance from?

So you're saying, you describe Donald Trump at the 2011 CPAC Conference, that sounds a lot like Donald Trump, who we knew as president from 2016 to 2020 or 2017 to 21.

Is this all Donald Trump's inherent political talent?

Was there some cohort of people around him?

This is before his association with Steve Bannon, I presume.

So where does that instinct, where does that political sense come from in Donald Trump?

- Like anyone, he's informed by his past.

There's a part of him that's a marketer.

People forget he flirted with a presidential bid in 1999 for the reform party, and he thought that Pat Buchanan at the time, an arch conservative on immigration was far too conservative.

And Trump was almost a moderate on immigration in 1999.

He said Republicans should be more centrist on that issue.

And I recall that to make the point that Trump and his politics, they're fluid, and he has changed them frequently over the years on abortion, on immigration.

But to your question, well, what actually is guiding him?

What drives him?

There are a few core things that if you look at his entire career, and I've interviewed him dozens of times, that he always comes back to his father, Fred Trump was a businessman.

He loves business.

He loves the idea of entrepreneurial leadership.

That's always been who he is.

Fred Trump was very populist on trade.

Trump has adopted that position his entire career, that China, Japan, these countries are taking advantage of the United States.

This is something that Fred Trump would have at the center of his own political thinking back in the 60s, 70s and 80s, Trump shares that whole position.

And then when it comes to policing, Trump has been very hardline over the years, kind of a law and order rough him up type person, not even just as a political figure, but a person.

And you combine that with the brashness of his celebrity, with his father's influence and with his ability to kind of adjust to the times and see where the GOP's going.

You have a political figure who's a composite of his past, but also of his marketing instincts.

- So the book, let's get into the book now, which is really an extraordinary contribution to history and literature.

It begins with a gripping account of the chairman of the joint chase, Mark Milley, becoming increasingly concerned with the president's erratic behavior after the election, which of course he contested and claimed he had one.

Can you get into that a little more detail?

What was it that that Millie saw that was so alarming to him?

- The Millie story deserves a full read, because it's not just about a couple of phone calls with the head of the Chinese military generally.

In brief, you see a general, the senior officer in the US military watching a presidency unravel.

And to me in Woodward as reporters, this really can be pinpointed as beginning, the unraveling in late May of 2020, when George Floyd is murdered.

President Trump's response is to try to have the insurrection act, to bring the 82nd airborne into Washington, to have violent confrontations with protesters.

His military advisors, including secretary of defense Esper at the time, general Millie are alarmed inside the Oval Office as they watched the president scream expletives right out of full metal jacket, that 1987 film where the gunnery Sergeant Pelts obscenities at recruits, they see this president acting like a drill sergeant in a manic way.

And then in November of 2020, the president goes outside of the usual channels on Afghanistan, again, alarming Millie and others that this president may not consult with them on significant national security decisions.

And others around the world are watching this.

The Chinese are very concerned that the president may try to have a wag the dog attack on them in late October, just days before the election.

Millie, we report knows this is untrue.

Trump doesn't want to attack China, but as we document, miscommunication can be the seeds of war.

And so Millie in generally talk on October 30th, 2020, and Millie says, calm down now, calm down.

We're not going to attack you.

We have a five-year relationship, there's always gonna be an escalation and a lot of back and forth before any kind of attack, just calm down.

The Chinese take its word, and Millie has testified under oath about this.

And then he has to calm the Chinese down again, January 8th, 2021, two days after the insurrection at the Capitol.

- So there's a phrase that Millie used and you use it in the book.

And that is that he believed that the president had gone into serious mental decline.

That's an alarming term.

What did he mean by that?

And what was the state of mind of ex president Trump at that point talking about the election between the election and the insurrection?

- We report that Millie did firmly believe Trump was in serious mental decline.

And that was a personal anecdotal assessment of the president's mental health.

He's not a psychiatrist as he testified before Congress under oath.

He's not in a position to make any kind of assessment of the president's mental health.

But as the senior military officer in the United States evaluating his commander-in-chief upclose, his assessment was his president, his commander-in-chief, his boss, was in serious mental decline, and he had to take certain steps within the bounds of his office, within the procedures outlined in his job, but certainly dramatic steps to make sure that things stayed stable in the final days.

And it's so captured in our book by General Millie's conversation with speaker Pelosi on January 8th in the morning, two days after the insurrection at the Capitol, we have the entire transcript in the book, and I just urge people to really read that transcript.

It's an amazing historical document to see the senior officer and the speaker of the house who's second in line to the presidency, be there talking about the president and whether the nuclear weapons of the United States are safe and under control.

- Robert, let me just say, I found that transcript and that account profoundly emotional.

I worked up on Capitol Hill.

I spent a lot of time up there and I found myself moved by the emotion that's evident in that transcript.

You talked about the things that General Millie did.

And as I thought about it in my own mind, there was the stuff he did on the foreign policy front, his engagement in particular with general Lee in China.

There's the conversation he had and the steps that he took to try to make sure that the president couldn't launch an unauthorized military strike, nuclear or otherwise, but there's a third piece.

He talked with a couple of other individuals about needing to "Land this plane."

And there, he seems to be talking about the peaceful transfer of power from one administration to the other.

Can you speak to us about what General Millie did in that particular context, and how exceptional is it for the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff to be in that role?

- It's highly, highly unusual in modern times, but also historically in the United States to have the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff in this position.

And that's why writing and reporting this book.

In some ways, the book's gotten a lot of attention and we appreciate that, but it hasn't almost got enough attention in the sense that what happened really happened, this is not some kind of story from a storybook.

This is real, this happened in this country, and a lot of people are moving on, understandably, but this is very real.

The alarm, the fear at the highest levels of the government about whether American democracy could continue, whether a president would seize power by pushing an election to the house, and Millie's watching all of this.

And he sees an intelligence failure, a national security crisis, with this insurrection at the Capitol, nothing in domestic politics happens in a vacuum.

But to your point about landing the plane, that's a line Millie uses behind the scenes when he talks to people like secretary of state Pompeo in the final days, trying to just make sure the peaceful transfer of power happens in the United States.

And you would almost take it for granted as a citizen that it happens.

I think back to my own father, who was a police officer in Washington DC in 1974, and my father growing up, he would always tell us he watched Nixon's helicopter take off in August of 74 after Nixon resigns.

And that night in Washington, it was just another normal night, people having dinner, drinks outside.

And my father's point then telling the story was that's America.

Even when a president resigns in disgrace, he gets in a helicopter and there's not civil strife in the street.

But decades later, Millie doesn't have that same comfort that a president can leave office under controversy and lacks civil strife, because he knows there was an insurrection that happened and who knows what could be around the corner.

- You used a fascinating turn of phrase just a couple of minutes ago, and that is observing the events particularly of January 6th, but also the events leading up to that as an almost fairy tale or fictional, having a fairytale of fictional element as if it really wasn't happening.

And that strikes a chord with me and I'm sure with a lot of other people, because I had the same reaction watching that.

It's like, this can't be happening.

This cannot be happening in America, it might happen somewhere else, and historically could have happened somewhere else, but not here.

What about you emotionally, as you observed all this, taking yourself back from the reporting, but just you as a person watching this as somebody who has lived and worked in Washington for so long.

- I have been deeply moved by spending nine or 10 months focusing on this and talking to people directly involved.

And I've come away with one conclusion.

And it has, I would guess, and I try to keep my emotions out of my work, but I would guess it has a bit of an emotional charge to it.

My conclusion is that I watched January 6th as a reporter.

You watched it, we all watched it.

And we saw a riot, an insurrection at the Capitol, and it seemed almost strange and surreal.

But when I dug into the reporting, it became so apparent to me that the story was not just the people at the Capitol, the terrible images from that day clashing with Capitol police officers, breaking windows.

The real story was far darker, was that the president of the United States, Donald Trump was coordinating a sprawling vicious pressure campaign, legally, politically, documented with the John Eastman memo we discovered, on his vice-president, the department of justice, members of Congress to prevent Biden from taking office and pushing the election to the house of representatives, where he was confident house Republicans would do his bidding and vote him into another term, despite losing the popular vote and having the electoral college certify the election for Biden in December.

And this wasn't an ego trip, a moment of narcissism, this was a coordinated effort from the very top of the United States government.

- Wow, that's a lot to process there.

Robert, there's one of the most stripping accounts in the book for me, comes on the evening of January 5th.

There are already folks out on the ellipse that president Trump could hear from the Oval Office, he's meeting with vice president Mike Pence.

Pence has basically told them there's nothing I can do to stop the vote count of the electoral votes tomorrow in the Senate.

Trump says, according to your reporting, "If these people say you had the power, "wouldn't you want to?"

Pence says, "No."

Trump says, "But would it almost be cool "to have that power?"

That's a chilling sort of almost, honestly what I was reminded of was the devil tempting Christ.

All of this power could be yours if you would just use it, that's chilling.

- And that's what happened.

And the other scene that happens right after it.

If you indulge me for a minute here.

- [Jim] Please.

- [Wayne] Yeah, absolutely.

- So Pence leaves the Oval Office on the night of January 5th and an advisor of his, Tom Rose, a Jewish man who wears a kippah to work at the White House, very close friends with Pence from Indiana, probably his best friend, sees Pence come out of the Oval Office.

And Pence looks like he's at a hospital and just saw someone die, as white as a ghost, stricken because Trump has tempted him in the ultimate way.

Effectively put the presidency on a platter in front of him and said, "Wouldn't it be cool if you could do this?

"Don't you want the power?"

The ultimate temptation in front of Pence, and Pence resists, but Trump still is not willing to let it go.

And so when Pence goes and leaves the Oval Office around 7:30 on January 5th to go home for dinner, he has a group dinner that night, that Trump stays in the Oval Office and around 7:45 at night, an aide comes in and tells the president, "Mr. President, your supporters, "your people are outside in the streets of Washington.

He goes, "Really?"

And he goes over and opens the door to the Oval Office, outside to the garden.

And it's 31 degrees outside, very windy cold night.

And he can hear the cries of people on Pennsylvania Avenue.

And it was loud.

I coincidentally was reporting that night, talking to some of those Trump supporters on the streets, and he can hear them shouting.

They're playing music, they're clashing with police.

But instead of closing the door, he keeps the door open on a freezing night.

And he calls in other aids from his press shop.

And Dan Scavino is there and others are there, his social media director, and some of them come in and they go, "Mr. President, we're cold.

"We're shivering, it's very cold outside, "can we please close the door for you, Mr.

President?"

And he says, "No, keep the door open.

"I want to hear my people.

"I want to hear my people."

And they just keep the doors open, listening.

And to Woodward, it gave him a real memory of 1974 when he wrote the "Final Days" with Carl Bernstein, it came out in 1976, there was a famous scene in that book of Nixon and total crisis, talking to the pictures on the wall at the White House of former presidents that a president in crisis in 74 was talking to the pictures on the wall.

Decades later, in January of 2021, Donald Trump wasn't talking to the pictures on the wall, he was talking to the mob outside.

- You talk about that cold night with amazing clarity and recollection.

Let's look at the people who are outside that night, the Trump supporters, and then the people on January 6th.

And I realized that we could generalize here.

But just give me a generalization.

What do these people see in Donald Trump?

And why this allegiance?

- That's a tough question because it would take years to answer it in some ways, but in the brief response.

- [Jim] You got three minutes.

- I would say this, I began my reporting career a couple of years after.

Well, right after, in 2009, the 2008 economic recession, and I covered the tea party movement in 2009 and 2010.

And in that period, I began to see the radicalization of normal run of the mill rank and file American voters.

Some on the left became radical in the sense of not just being progressive, but wanting to occupy Wall Street, you may remember that.

And the left began to have a new vigor to it after the economic recession.

And in 2009, 10, you had birtherism start to rise.

The rise of racism on the right, in some quarters began to appear.

And you also saw this new incendiary form of conservatism, tea party conservatism.

And then in 2011, I met Steve Bannon for the first time.

Before he was even at Breitbart, he was a propaganda filmmaker.

And he told me then, I'll never forget it for the rest of my life.

He said to me, in 2011, in Pella, Iowa, I was covering him have a film premiere there.

He said, "The future of politics "is populism and nationalism."

And I said, "What are you talking about, nationalism?

"Is that something out of the 1930s like Charles Lindbergh?"

He said, "No, the middle class "has been destroyed by the global economy, "and the future of our politics is rage."

And really, we've been covering that, I've been covering that since 2009, the politics of rage.

And you see elements of it on the right to be sure, but on the left, a new anger about the global economy, the rise of Bernie Sanders, the anger toward billionaires.

- Robert, we've got about 45 seconds left here, but as I read the book, I didn't want the book to end 'cause it's remarkable reporting, but I wanted the sense of peril to end.

And you make clear by the end of the book that the peril has not passed.

And about the 30 seconds that we have left, what are you worried about now?

- Trump has not gone, watch his rallies on PBS or C-SPAN, listen to what he's doing.

Pay attention to what politicians do.

And he's talking now with warlike cadence.

Never surrender, never give in, the election's not over, it was stolen.

Brad Parscale his former campaign manager said privately in the summer of 2021, "Trump had an army, an army for Trump he wants it back, "but when he runs again, it will be for vengeance."

This is a politician who pushed American democracy to the brink in January of this year.

And he's actively on the campaign trail right now.

When Nixon resigned in '74, he got on the helicopter and went back to California.

Trump's getting right back into the arena.

That's the difference, that's what's you have to pay attention to, democracy now is the issue as much as American politics as the issue.

- Robert Costa, this is important work.

The book is "Peril," thank you so much for being with us.

That is all the time we have this week, but if you wanna know more about Story In The Public Square, you can find us on Facebook and Twitter or visit pellcenter.org.

For G Wayne Miller, I'm Jim Ludes asking you to join us again next time for more Story In The Public Square.

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