Yet another supposedly tell-all book about Donald Trump’s presidency alleges the nation’s 45th chief executive said whoever leaked information about his stay in the White House bunker should be executed.
According to CNN, author Michael Bender, in “Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost,” said Trump, wife Melania and son Barron were taken to the bunker over several days in May 2020 during the protests over the killing of George Floyd. Bender writes Trump held a tense meeting with top military, law enforcement and West Wing advisers, and said whoever leaked information about that stay had committed treason and should be executed for sharing details with the press.
Bender is a reporter with The Wall Street Journal.
‘Whoever did that, they should be charged with treason!’ Trump yelled, according to Bender’s book. “They should be executed!’”
Then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows “repeatedly tried to calm the president as startled aides avoided eye contact,” Bender writes, adding Meadows told Trump: “I’m on it. We’re going to find out who did it.”
Another new book about Trump’s White House provides alleged details into the weekly lunches he held with Vice President Mike Pence.
“The lunches were specifically meant to be an opportunity for Pence to tell the president exactly how hard he was working for him,” journalist and author Michael Wolff wrote in an excerpt of the book “Landslide: The Final Days of the Trump Presidency.” “He usually got 10 minutes to do this before Trump snapped on the television and launched into his current list of grievances.”
Trump was the keynote speaker this past weekend in Dallas at the Conservative Political Action Conference, which wrapped up Sunday.
Trump continued to insist on his unsubstantiated claims of a rigged 2020 presidential election. “No evidence? There’s so much evidence,” he insisted, during chants of “four more years” from thousands of activists who want him to make a comeback.
Whipping the crowd to a frenzy, he vowed that once Republicans take back Congress in the 2022 midterms, “We will take back that glorious White House that sits so majestically in our nation’s capital.”
Trump’s appearance at the Hilton Anatole was part of a reemergence since Jan. 20, when he retreated to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida in the final hours of his presidency.
Trump topped the CPAC straw poll for the 2024 GOP nomination, besting Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis 70-21. If Trump opts not to run, DeSantis would be the top pick for 68% of attendees.
Trump’s approval rating: 98%. President Joe Biden’s disapproval rating, for comparison: 97%.
“We have a much different party than we had five years ago,” said Trump, who snubbed CPAC in March 2016, when conservative activists were clamoring for anyone but him as the GOP nominee.
Trump was in Orlando for another CPAC event in late February and began holding his own rallies last month, starting June 26 near Cleveland. He had a second rally last weekend in Sarasota, Florida. Both drew tens of thousands of supporters. CPAC drew about 3,000 attendees, plus vendors, media and others.
On June 30, Trump joined Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in the Rio Grande Valley to tout the border wall whose construction Biden halted.
Tribune News Service contributed to this report.
